According to Adam Sandler’s famous Chanukah Song, Hall-of-Famer Rod Carew is a Jew.
According to Rod Carew, this is not true. But one of his good friends is Jewish (Adam Sandler).
Update: More here:
In 1994, Adam Sandler came up with a popular song on Saturday Night Live called “The Chanukah Song,” in which Sandler would list (to music) a bunch of people in the world of show business who were Jewish
(sample lyrics include: You don’t need “Deck The Halls” or “Jingle Bell Rock”
‘Cause you can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock- both Jewish )In any event, at one point in the song, he sings (remember, this 1994, so you’ll have to forgive the then-perfunctory reference to OJ Simpson):
“O.J. Simpson, not a Jew
But guess who is? Hall of famer Rod Carew- he converted.”This did not originate the belief that Rod Carew was Jewish, but it certainly solidified it in the public consciousness.
It is not, however, the fact of the matter.
Carew, a Hall of Famer who first began playing for the Minnesota Twins in 1967 (when he won the American League Rookie of the Year) and stayed with the team until he was traded in 1978 (a year after winning the American League Most Valuable Player), is married to a woman of the Jewish faith.
And he and his wife, Marilyn, raised their children in the Jewish tradition, but he never himself became a member of the Jewish faith.
He certainly did a number of things to suggest as much to the public, though, like discussing the topic of possibly converting to Jet Magazine during the mid-70s, and he would also take off Jewish holidays in respect of his family.
So it’s not like it is an absurd leap of logic to think that he did, in fact, convert. But he did not. I don’t know if he is still an Episcopalian (the religion he grew up in and was still a member of the Episcopalian Church in the late 1970s), but he is not Jewish.
And according to this article, Carew received death threats when he announced plans to marry a Jew.
