The 2025 North Suburban Synagogue Beth El Softball Team. (Photo credit: Michael Salberg)
On Sundays, at Techny Prairie Park and Fields in Northbrook, synagogue small talk gets replaced by lineup cards and friendly heckling. They may have met to pray. Now, they meet to play. They are the Northern Illinois Synagogue Softball League.
“We have umpires, and it’s a real deal,” said Commissioner Michael Salberg, a board member of North Suburban Synagogue Beth El in Highland Park. “Everybody tries to go out there and have a good time.”
“Some people say I go to Torah study every Saturday, and that’s my community. Well, now we say, my Torah study is Sunday softball with some of the guys,” added Ross Erlebacher, a member, and former President, of Makom Solel Lakeside Congregation in Highland Park.
Now in its 13th season, the league includes 12 teams from 10 synagogues: Am Shalom in Glencoe; Darchei Noam in Glenbrook; Congregation Beth Judea in Long Grove; Congregation Or Shalom in Vernon Hills; Congregation Beth Shalom and Temple Beth El in Northbrook; North Suburban Synagogue Beth El and Makom Solel Lakeside Congregation in Highland Park; and Temple Beth Israel and Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob Synagogue in Skokie.
“Every team has a captain who figures out the lineup. We let everybody bat,” said Mark Trachtenberg, a member of Temple Beth El. “Sometimes the competition gets ramped up, but it’s in the spirit of men’s clubs and brotherhood. Good sportsmanship takes the day.”
Opening Day landed on a sunny but chilly April day. The regular season runs through late July, followed by the playoffs and a championship game in early August.
The league started with six teams— and a mission to engage younger synagogue members in men’s clubs and, thereby, the greater congregation.
“The league is getting younger,” Salberg noted. Previously, the players had typically been in their 50s or 60s. But this year, Salberg said his synagogue team has nine new players younger than 42, including a couple of fathers, sons, and sons-in-law.
“It’s a nice way to start spanning the generations, and getting people aware of the purpose of a men’s club and a synagogue: for people to meet. You may not know someone or be the same age or grow up in the same spot, but we’re meeting each other,” Erlebacher said.
“There’s a lot of humor from the familiarity from seeing the same guys, a little bit of trash talking on the field, too,” Trachtenberg joked.
The League is creating camaraderie off the field, too. “I bump into guys in their civilian clothes out in the community, or in synagogue on High Holidays. I sometimes do a double take because they’re coming up to me and saying Hi,” Erlebacher said.
“I don’t recognize them without the baseball hats,” Salberg kidded.
“We don’t know what each other’s hair lines look like,” Erlebacher added, with a laugh.
Teams pay an entry fee to cover the costs of the fields, umpires, and insurance. Any remaining funds at the end of the season are donated. In recent years, the group has donated to The Friendship Circle, which creates a supportive Jewish community for children with special needs and their families.
The players are also mindful of their own families. “We take Mother’s Day off… but we play Father’s Day because that’s our day,” Erlebacher explained.
After a few years of playing in the park district softball league, Trachtenberg acknowledged the fun of playing against other men’s clubs, and the comfort one player expressed when he showed up with an Israeli baseball cap. “He said, ‘I just can’t wear this hat too many places. This is one place I’ll be welcomed.’”
“It’s about community,” Erlebacher said. “Strengthening existing relationships, building new ones, strengthening the fraternity within our congregations, and giving guys a different outlet with their Jewish identity.”
Julie Mangurten Weinberg is a Chicago-based freelance journalist with 25-plus years of experience in broadcast, print, and digital media.
