JTA Before last November, Shlomo Lipetz already had his dream job.
After drinking coffee and listening to a morning news podcast “The Daily,” from the New York Times he would then take the L train from his Brooklyn apartment and head to his job as vice president for programming at City Winery, a music venue and wine bar franchise headquartered on the Hudson River in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.
There he would dig straight into his emails an estimated 500-700 per day and get to work on lining up some of the thousands of shows that the City Winery franchise hosts in its over 10 venues across the country each year. He recently booked, for example, dozens of post-rehab comeback shows for comedian John Mulaney and a cross-country tour for the provocateur pop star Sinead O’Connor (who promptly decided to retire from music after agreeing to the concerts).
Ty Kelly bats in an exhibition game with Team Israel in Arizona, May 2021. (Courtesy of Israel Baseball/ via JTA)
Team Israel s Ian Kinsler blows a bubble while playing second base during an exhibition game in Arizona. (Courtesy of Israel Baseball/ via JTA)
This will be the first Israeli baseball team to play in the Olympics. (Courtesy of Israel Baseball/ via JTA)
JTA In May, as the latest violent Israel-Gaza conflict heated up, Ty Kelly did something he could never do in any other professional baseball dugout: He turned to some teammates to learn more about the situation.
Kelly, a 32-year-old currently playing for the Tacoma Rainiers in the Seattle Mariners’ minor league system, was in Arizona for a training camp with the Olympics-bound Team Israel squad.