The New York Mets are facing backlash after fans noticed that Jewish Heritage Night is missing from the team\u2019s 2026 promotional schedule \u2014 a gap that has quickly sparked claims, speculation, and a broader debate about why.<\/p>\n
Despite the 2026 schedule being public since February, backlash intensified after writer Kevin Deutsch published a Substack essay<\/a> claiming that the team omitted the event due to the \u201cpotential liability\u201d of anti-Israel protests and a rise in antisemitic incidents across the United States.<\/p>\n But the public record is more complicated.\u00a0<\/p>\n Related post: How did Jewish pro baseball player Moe Berg become a CIA spy?<\/a><\/p>\n What\u2019s the story?<\/p>\n Jewish Heritage Night has not appeared on the Mets\u2019 schedule since 2023, and in 2024, the team said it was replacing multiple standalone heritage events with a broader \u201cCelebration of Queens Culture\u201d initiative.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe team is holding many ethnic heritage celebrations in 2026, and Jews are excluded from that list,\u201d Deutsch told<\/a> JTA. \u201cThe dropping of the Jewish heritage event and the exclusion of Jewish fans from the team\u2019s identity-based celebrations is a fairly recent development, and a major ongoing story.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2026 calendar includes a wide range<\/a> of other heritage and themed nights \u2014 including Italian, Puerto Rican, Black American, Dominican, Irish, Japanese, and Mexican heritage, as well as LGBTQ+ Pride Night, Women\u2019s Night, and First Responders Night \u2014 and the omission has raised new questions.<\/p>\n There is no public evidence that the Mets said the event was removed due to Israel or security concerns. Claims circulating online that the team viewed the event as \u2018too risky\u2019 are unsubstantiated, and the Mets have not offered a public explanation for its absence.<\/p>\n Are other MLB teams hosting Jewish heritage nights?<\/p>\n Across Major League Baseball, Jewish Heritage Nights are being held this season for 12 out of the 30 teams<\/a>. The Boston Red Sox will host a Jewish Heritage Celebration at Fenway Park in May, while teams including the San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Philadelphia Phillies all have Jewish-themed events scheduled throughout the 2026 season. Many of these events include themed merchandise, from Hebrew-lettered jerseys to menorah-inspired giveaways.<\/p>\n In addition, 19 minor league teams have scheduled Jewish-themed nights, including the Mets\u2019 own affiliate, the Brooklyn Cyclones, who will host a Jewish Heritage Night on May 3.<\/p>\n While some commentators have claimed that the New York Yankees will host a Jewish Heritage Night in August, no such event appears on the team\u2019s public schedule.<\/p>\n What are Jews saying about the Mets?<\/p>\n Deutsch\u2019s claim was quickly amplified by several Jewish voices online, including pro-Israel writer and influencer Melissa Chapman and Jeffrey Lax, a City University of New York law professor and founder of the Zionist campus group Safe Campus. Some went a step further, falsely claiming that the Mets had said it was \u201ctoo risky\u201d to hold a Jewish Heritage Night.<\/p>\n \u201cRumors are that the Mets don\u2019t want to deal with policing antisemitic protests. The night would attract pro-Palestinian and antisemitic activists bringing signs or unfurling banners,\u201d wrote Michael Brendan Dougherty<\/a> in the National Review.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, not every Jewish Mets fan is convinced by this reasoning.\u00a0<\/p>\n Comedian Eitan Levine, who threw one of the first pitches at the Mets\u2019 Jewish Heritage Night in 2023, called out what he viewed as fearmongering by other Jewish influencers.\u00a0<\/p>\n While wearing a Hebrew-language Mets cap, Levine pushed back on the idea that the team\u2019s omission of Jewish Heritage Night was necessarily tied to Israel. \u201cThe Mets have been nothing but kind and welcoming to their Jewish fans,\u201d Levine said. \u201cThere are a ton of teams in the MLB that don\u2019t have a Jewish heritage day, and it has nothing to do with Israel.\u201d He argued that reading the decision through that lens was both speculative and unhelpful. \u201cMaking everything about Israel doesn\u2019t help anything,\u201d he said, adding that Citi Field\u2019s stands are so visibly full of Jewish fans that \u201cevery single game at Citi Field is Jewish Heritage Day.\u201d<\/p>\n Some fans agree that the controversy is overblown, arguing that Jewish fans are already well represented at Citi Field without a dedicated theme night.<\/p>\n What changed?<\/p>\n The Mets\u2019 most recent Jewish Heritage Night, held in 2023, featured guest appearances, live music, and in-game programming<\/a> centered on Jewish culture. The team had hosted similar events intermittently in prior years, sometimes alternating with a \u201cCelebrate Israel\u201d night. The team has not scheduled a Jewish-themed night at Citi Field since.<\/p>\n Ahead of the 2024 season, the Mets said they were rethinking how they approach cultural programming, moving away from individual heritage nights toward a broader \u201cCelebration of Queens Culture\u201d initiative. The team framed the change as an effort to reflect the borough\u2019s wide range of communities in a more collective format.<\/p>\n The change came during a period of heightened tension around Jewish public life, following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza. In the months since, concerns about antisemitism and the visibility of Jewish events have become more pronounced in many public settings.<\/p>\n Still, the Mets\u2019 silence has left room for competing interpretations. A spokesperson for the team did not respond to a request for comment, and without a public explanation, it remains unclear whether the absence of Jewish Heritage Night reflects scheduling changes, shifting priorities, or something else entirely. That vacuum has helped fuel the more pointed claims made by critics such as Deutsch, who wrote that \u201cin Jewish community circles, fans say the Mets view Jewish Heritage Night as a potential liability at a time when Jews are being harassed, stigmatized, and attacked across New York and globally.\u201d<\/p>\n Related post: Everything you want to know about Jewish baseball sports hero Sandy Koufax<\/a><\/p>\n The Mets\u2019 relationship with Jewish fans is not easily reduced to this one omission. Over the past year, the team has publicly honored Holocaust survivor<\/a> Lidia Mayer, and Citi Field has notably expanded its kosher offerings, including Passover options earlier this month. Those moves complicate the idea that the organization has simply turned away from its Jewish fan base.<\/p>\n At the same time, the missing event has become a flashpoint for some of the team\u2019s loudest critics. On Thursday, radio host Sid Rosenberg posted a video accusing Mets owner Steve Cohen \u2014 one of the six Jewish principal or controlling owners of MLB teams \u2014 of deliberately leaving Jewish Heritage Night off the calendar for political reasons, alleging without evidence that the move was meant to curry favor with Mayor Zohran Mamdani <\/a>as Cohen pursues a casino project in Flushing. Rosenberg\u2019s comments were part of a broader feud he has recently waged against the team over its interactions with the mayor, going as far as to accuse the team\u2019s mascot, Mr. Met, of antisemitism<\/a>.<\/p>\n For now, the gap between what has been confirmed and what has been claimed continues to drive the conversation: a missing event, a lack of explanation, and a debate shaped as much by inference as by documented fact.<\/p>\n Until the Mets provide a clear explanation, the absence of Jewish Heritage Night remains an open question \u2014 one that has been filled, in the meantime, by speculation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Mets are facing backlash after fans noticed that Jewish Heritage Night is missing from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[14607,10725,5499,37,4204,8982,26336,549,6393],"class_list":{"0":"post-71043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-anti-israel","9":"tag-anti-zionism","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-october-2023-war","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-zionism"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116423102483393901","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}