Please join us for a remastered version of the acclaimed documentary on the 25th anniversary of the film’s release and the 90thanniversary of Hank Greenberg’s Yom Kippur stand. 

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg is a humorous and nostalgic documentary about an extraordinary baseball player who transcended religious prejudice to become an American icon. Detroit Tiger Hammerin’ Hank’s accomplishments during the Golden Age of Baseball rivaled those of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

This compelling documentary examines how America’s first Jewish baseball star was a beacon of hope to American Jews who faced bigotry during the Depression and World War II. Included in the colorful collage of 47 interviews are Hank Greenberg and family members; sports figures Ira Berkow, Ernie Harwell, Joe Falls and Dick Schaap; fellow players Bob Feller, Charlie Gehringer and Ralph Kiner; fans Alan Dershowitz, Congressman Sander Levin and Senator Carl Levin; and actors Walter Matthau, Michael Moriarty, and Maury Povich.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with director, producer, and writer Aviva Kempner, Pulitzer prize-winning sports columnist for The New York Times and editor of Hank Greenberg: The Story of My Life, Ira Berkow, and Hank Greenberg’s son, Stephen Greenberg. The discussion will be moderated by Rebecca T. Alpert (Temple University).

Washington, DC based filmmaker Aviva Kempner makes award winning documentaries about underknown Jewish heroes for 44 years. Kempner just completed A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings (2023), which chronicles the heroism of the two Ciesla Foundation namesakes, Helen Ciesla Covensky and David Chase—siblings who survived the Holocaust separately and managed to reunite after the war. She co-directed, co-wrote and co-produced Imagining the Indians: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting (2022), adocumentary on the movement to remove Native American names, logos, and mascots from the world of sports. Her The Spy Behind Home Plate (2019)is about baseball player and OSS spy Moe Berg. Kempner launched the SEW: Sports Equality for Women website which strived to amplify the stories and voices of women in sports.

Kempner made Rosenwald (2015), a documentary about how philanthropist Julius Rosenwald partnered with Booker T. Washington in establishing over 5,000 schools with African Americans in the Jim Crow South. She also made Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (2009), about Gertrude Berg who created the first television sitcom. She also wrote and directed the short film Today I Vote for My Joey (2002), a tragic comedy about the 2000 Presidential Elections in Palm Beach County. Kempner directed the Peabody awarded The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1999), about the Hall Famer slugger who faced anti-Semitism during the 30s. It is being rereleased this September for its 25th anniversary. She also produced the award-winning Partisans of Vilna (1986), about Jews fighting the Nazis, whose entire interviews are being digitized by the USC Shoah Foundation.  

She is presently finishing a film on famous screenwriter and journalist Ben Hecht, who as an activist exposed the horrors of the Holocaust to the American public and advocated to bring more Jews to US shores. Kempner is also making Pissed Off, a documentary short exploring the struggles faced by female lawmakers in Congress who advocated for potty parity in the United States Capitol.

Ira Berkow earned his BA in English Literature at Miami University, and his MA from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. He was a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, a syndicated features writer, sports and general columnist, and sports editor for the Newspaper Enterprise Association. 

From 1981 to 2007 he was a sports reporter and columnist for The New York Times and has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Art News, Seventeen, Chicago Magazine, The Chicago Tribune Magazine, National Strategic Forum Review, Reader's Digest, and Sports Illustrated, among others. 

He shared the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his article "The Minority Quarterback" in The New York Times series “How Race Is Lived in America.”  His work has been reprinted or cited over six decades in the annual anthologies Best Sports Stories and its successor Best American Sports Writing, and a column of his was included in Best American Sports Writing of the Century (1999). The novelist Scott Turow wrote, "Ira Berkow is one of the great American writers, without limitation to the field of sports." He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, "For thoughtful commentary on the sports scene." 

In 2006, he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. He holds an honorary doctorate degree from Roosevelt University (Chicago), 2009. Berkow is the author of 26 books including the Edgar Allan Poe Award nominated non-fiction The Man Who Robbed The Pierre: The Story of Bobby Comfort and the Biggest Hotel Robbery Ever. 

Stephen Greenberg is the son of Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg. He currently serves as Managing Director at Allen & Company, where he focuses on the sports and media industries. Previously, Stephen served as Deputy Commissioner of Major League Baseball and, with his business partner Brian Bedol, co-founded Classic Sports Network (now known as ESPN Classic) and CSTV: College Sports Television (now known as CBS Sports Network). He is on the Board of Directors of the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Rebecca T. Alpert is Professor of Religion Emeritus at Temple University. She attended Barnard College before receiving her Ph.D. in religion at Temple University and her rabbinical training at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pennsylvania.

Her major work in the field of religion and sport, Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball, was published by Oxford University Press in June 2011. She is currently the book review editor for the International Journal of Religion and Sport and co-editor of a soon to be published Routledge Handbook on Religion and Sport.