Weekly Quiz - Pre 2019
The World Series
[Note: We will be on vacation Monday, October 27, and will return with our next weekly Jewish trivia quiz on Monday, November 3.]
31 years before Sandy Koufax skipped a World Series game because it conflicted with Yom Kippur, Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg made a similar decision when the Tigers played a crucial pennant race game against the New York Yankees on Yom Kippur. What was one way in which Greenberg's decision not to play on Yom Kippur was publicly noted?
A. The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit erected a statue on the grounds of the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit depicting Greenberg wearing a yarmulke and tallit, with a baseball bat lying on the ground beside him.
B. Poet Edgar Guest wrote a poem which read in part:
Came Yom Kippur - holy fast day wide world over to the Jew -
And Hank Greenberg to his teaching and the old tradition true
Spent the day among his people and he didn't come to play
Said Murphy to Mulrooney, 'We shall lose the game today!
We shall miss him in the infield and shall miss him at the bat,
But he's true to his religion - and I honor him for that!
C. Poet Dr. Seuss wrote a poem which read in part:
I am Hank.
Hank I am.
I do not eat green eggs and ham.
I’m a Jew,
A Jew for sure.
I will not play on Yom Kippur.
D. The Tigers lost the Yom Kippur game to the Yankees. Some very angry Tiger fans publicly expressed their feelings regarding Greenberg's decision by spray painting the walls of Navin Field (as Tiger Stadium was called at that time) with anti-Semitic graffiti.
E. Because of his professional success and his decision not to play on the holy day of Yom Kippur, Greenberg was the first athlete selected for induction into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Commack, New York.
Ebola
In a recent online survey by the Israeli news and entertainment website Mako, what did slightly fewer than half of the Israeli respondents say regarding ebola?
A. 48% of Israeli respondents said that they wished to give President Barack Obama an envelope with the ebola virus for his birthday.
B. 47% of Israeli respondents said that they believed the cure for ebola would come from research at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
C. 49% of Israeli respondents said that to prevent the spread of ebola, all Africans in the country should be deported or quarantined immediately.
D. 46% of Israeli respondents said that they saw the potential spread of the ebola virus by terrorists as a greater threat than the Iranian nuclear program.
E. 45% of Israeli respondents said that they included an extra line in the U-Netaneh Tokef prayer on the High Holidays - "who by ebola and who by enterovirus.”
Sukkot
The pitom is the extension of an etrog at the opposite end from the stem which connects it to the tree. When is an etrog without a pitom considered kosher?
A. Only if it was accidentally broken off rather than intentionally.
B. Only if the etrog never grew with a pitom in the first place.
C. When (kosher) pigs fly.
D. Only if the etrog is first immersed in the mikvah.
E. Only if it broke off while being carried around the synagogue during the Hakafot processional.