Elie Kligman is waiting for me at the top of the stairs. He’s leaning on the railing, dressed to a tee for a traditional Shabbos service: a deep blue pullover, dress pants, polished loafer shoes. His hair is neatly tucked back and adorned with a kippah, the head covering required for all Orthodox Jewish men. He’s two minutes early.
It’s 7:36 on a Friday night, and the sun is just starting to dip over the horizon. I’m standing outside the Chabad House of Ann Arbor, a few minutes before the candle-lighting that marks the beginning of the holy day of rest. I open my phone to a message from Kligman: He’s on his way. It’s the last text he will send until Sunday morning.
***
It’s 6:50 p.m. at Ray Fisher Stadium. Junior right-hander Gavin DeVooght is on the mound for the Michigan baseball team. He’s fiddling with his glove, a little nervous that the Wolverines’ lead has been cut to only one run. He delivers a fastball that gets whacked, popped up to center field and caught for a flyout. The game is over.
Kligman watches the ball arc through the air, then takes off, already halfway to the locker room. The game started at 4 p.m., and sundown isn’t for another hour — so today, he got to stay all the way through. He hurries to take his leg guards off and shoves them in his locker. There’s no time for me to meet him outside the dugout. He has to book it to his apartment down State Street to change for Shabbat dinner.
***
It’s late summer of 2025, and Wolverines assistant coach Jake Valentine is staring at the phone number of a graduate transfer prospect. He’s a catcher from Sacramento State, a versatile switch hitter with four years of college baseball under his belt. The only catch: He’s a practicing Orthodox Jew. From Friday night until Saturday at sundown, he cannot play. He cannot travel, work or use technology. He will require special culinary accommodations to conform to a Kosher diet.
Valentine picks up the phone and dials him anyway.
At this point, Kligman is accustomed to the rhythm of the offseason. The strangeness of the last game, the carefree fun of summer ball, the familiar moment of being back to the drawing board. He’s wrapping up his last taste of a lighthearted spell with the Portland Pickles, but Kligman isn’t quite ready to be done with the game that’s shaped so much of his life.
He’s playing MLB: The Show in his room when his phone starts ringing. Kligman recognizes the name — it’s a recruiter from Michigan who followed him on X, asked for his number and said he’d call back. Kligman’s heard that one before. There are a lot of coaches he’s still waiting to hear back from, and honestly, he doesn’t blame them. Kligman answers the call. It’s a surprisingly quick conversation, finished before he even wins the game. He puts his controller down and smiles. He’s heading to Ann Arbor.
***
I open the Chabad door to the sound of chanting. The sun hasn’t fully set, but in Orthodox tradition, it’s a mitzvah, a good deed, to begin Shabbat early. I pick up a prayer book and follow Kligman, who’s already anxiously walking over to the service. We enter the shul room, filled with a dozen men all standing up, facing toward the east. The rabbi continues to recite the blessings.
Kligman guides me to a table at the very back right of the room, opens his prayer book and sits down. When I follow suit, trying not to make myself conspicuous, I realize the rabbi is staring at me. Suddenly, everyone in the room is staring at me.
I’ve forgotten to bring a kippah.
After what feels like an eternity, the rabbi and Kligman bring a spare one over for me. I carefully place it on my head and adjust it until I’m positive it won’t fall off. I sit back down.
The rabbi continues chanting, far too fast for me to understand. Eventually, I resort to glancing at Kligman through the corner of my eye, turning the pages when he does. He’s leisurely sitting, his leg partially resting on the empty chair between us. He knows when to get up and when to sit back down. This is routine for him.
At the end of the service, the rabbi comes over to us, and Kligman explains that I’m a journalist who wanted to visit him on Shabbat. The rabbi smiles and formally welcomes me to Chabad, before turning to Kligman. I awkwardly stand there as the rabbi chastises him for being late.
Kligman doesn’t sweat it. He nods respectfully and apologizes. When the rabbi heads downstairs, Kligman tells me not to worry about it, that it’s never happened before.
“I’ve gotten so used to it that it’s not even really a burden anymore,” Kligman told The Michigan Daily. “Sometimes it takes a little more forethought, like I gotta text (Michigan coach Tracy Smith), ‘Hey, I gotta be out of here at a certain time today.’ Or yeah, I have to unfortunately miss some games and practices. But overall, this is just the normal experience for me.”
We’re walking to return the books to the wooden shelf by the door, and Kligman asks if I’m staying for dinner. “Of course,” I tell him, and he grins. “That’s the best part.”
***
I’m deep in conversation about whether it’s appropriate to have zucchini in a matzo ball soup. I must make a shocked face when Kligman dumps it in his bowl, because he gives me a puzzled look. I tell him there’s no way zucchini and matzo balls taste good together. “Why not?” he said. I realize I can’t really think of a reason why not.
“Fine, what’s your ideal matzo ball soup, then?” I ask him.
Kligman shrugs. “Soup. And matzo balls, I guess.”
Despite the strict rules of kosher, meals have never been a problem for him. Kligman eats here at Chabad for Shabbat, and otherwise, he prepares his own food at home and brings it to practice. He uses an app to find kosher restaurants for away games, and Michigan director of baseball operations Danny Stolper either DoorDashes food for Kligman or picks it up himself. It’s far from a hassle.
“When I first heard about him, I was like, ‘Alright, that’s gonna be interesting,’ ” Stolper told The Daily. “But it’s been pretty smooth, and actually been a lot easier than I was anticipating.”
The walk down to the dining room feels familiar. The table is plastered with traditional Jewish appetizers: the soup, challah bread and wine for Shabbat blessings. Including the women I didn’t see at the service, there are about 60 to 70 people in attendance. Kligman and I are sitting in the back right corner of the room once again, with some girls from New York and the rabbi’s young daughter. Even if Orthodox men and women cannot pray in the same room, they’re still allowed to eat together.
I refill my glass of water, drain it and think about what it’d be like going to a college where no one shared my religion. “Was it weird?” I ask Kligman. “Your freshman year at Wake Forest. There couldn’t have been a lot of Jews there.”
“It was definitely different,” Kligman says. “I was definitely the only practicing Jew there, obviously, besides the rabbi on campus. So I became really close to that family. But I enjoyed the people in the community. We always had some good dinners there.”
I’m about to ask him if this is around average attendance for Michigan, but Kligman beats me to it, informing me that this is a smaller crowd than usual. Still, it’s loud and teeming with life.
Kligman leans back in his chair and soaks in the noises of the dinner. The rabbi’s been giving a sermon about Chabad principles for the last 10 minutes, but for a room filled with very religious people, a lot of them seem to be talking anyway. A boy with round glasses is making fun of the way his friend holds his fork. Two girls at the table across from us are gossiping in hushed voices. This is familiar for Kligman.
“I grew up in the Chabad world,” Kligman said. “So that’s where I’ve been going for a while. At Wake (Forest), Sac State, everywhere. … But here, this is a pretty established place.”
For Kligman, life has always been about feeling part of something bigger than himself. He explains that’s part of why he wanted to play for the Wolverines. He felt a strong sense of school spirit when he visited, and that was just another aspect of his lifelong search for community.
“A lot of times, if you get too caught up in your own personal goals, then it becomes a little bit too much about you,” Kligman said. “And especially for me, in the position I play, most of my time needs to be focused on how I can help the pitchers, how I can help the team.”
Playing around the country with four different teams, Kligman has traveled from coast to coast. And wherever he goes, he finds a way to intertwine faith and community. It’s why he chose “Low Down” by Lil Baby as his introduction when he steps up to the plate. It’s a modern rap beat similar to the tracks of his teammates, but it also starts with the line ‘Go to lunch in the Jewish community.’
“I had other walkup songs,” he explains in between bites of spaghetti. “But I settled on that one.”
Kligman’s always kept community close to him, even though it’s taken many different forms. Initially, being the first Orthodox Jew in Division I baseball was a lonely journey — but his father, MLB agent Marc Kligman, was there to support him. And eventually, his brother, Ari Kligman, followed in his footsteps. When Elie and Ari played together at Sac State, they didn’t have Chabad, but they had each other.
“When there’s a struggle happening or we just need to talk, we go to each other a lot for that,” Elie said. “If my swing isn’t doing good, he’s the one that can help fix it. Which is funny, because he couldn’t really hit himself. But he knows me so well.”
At Michigan, Elie doesn’t have his brother, but he has his teammates. Three of them — David Lally Jr., Evan Haeger and Matt Ossenfort — are also his roommates. They have conversations about Elie’s faith and think about what it means. He is a co-captain even though he’s new to the program. Baseball is in his blood just as much as Judaism is.
“I’ve learned so much in terms of his religion and everything like that,” Lally told The Daily. “And it’s honestly special because I had absolutely no knowledge of that coming in.”
Elie wishes he could still share Shabbat dinner with his brother and family. Then again, he also wishes he could keep getting lessons from Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz, one of his father’s clients. He wishes he could still snack on the challah his mom used to bake from scratch back home. “There’s no way to explain how good it is,” he says, wistfully staring at the bread on the dinner table.
If Elie’s relaxed demeanor tells me anything, though, it’s that he’s content. From the moment he got off the phone with Valentine and signed with the Wolverines, he’s felt like he belonged here. His teammates have made sure of it.
“We didn’t think we’re gonna get another recruit,” Lally said. “We thought we were gonna be out of a roommate, because we already had signed the lease and everything. Then (Valentine) texted me and said, ‘Go get him.’ It was Elie, and he sent me his contact. I FaceTimed Elie right as (Valentine) sent that, I was at the field, … And I was like, ‘Well, I’m on the team. You want to room with me?’ And he was like, ‘Sure.’ I told him all the details, and he was like, ‘Sweet.’ The day that he showed up on campus, he’s the absolute man.”
I can see why Elie’s teammates look up to him. He’s navigating something no one has done before — but in his eyes, he’s not overcoming a barrier. He’s sharing his story.
“Especially these days, what people see in the media about the Jewish religion is not usually a positive thing,” Elie said. “For me, I get a chance to teach people about what it really is. I mean, I’m living it every day, so they get to see how I’m doing it, what I’m doing. That provides more of a positive impact on them than what they can see online.”
Elie eats very slowly. The flurry of conversation slowly dies out as people finish their meals and trickle out the door. Before she leaves, Shayna, one of the girls at our table, asks if either of us wants another matzo ball. Elie laughs. “That would be great,” he says.
Everyone besides the rabbi’s family and a few out-of-town friends have left. Elie stays behind to help clean up. He spends a few more minutes with the rabbi to finish his prayers, then heads off toward State Street — to his other home.
***
Elie opens the door to the sound of cheering. His roommates are sitting in the living room, ecstatic that he’s finally back. Lally’s eager to chop it up about the game. They stay up and hang out together for another hour and a half before Elie heads to bed for some much-needed rest.
The rest of the team will be at the stadium at 11 a.m. tomorrow for gameday. Elie — if he can manage to get up in time — will be back at Chabad at 9:30 a.m. for Saturday services. At this point, he’s accustomed to the rhythm of midseason.
“It’s really just games every day,” Elie said. “Night game, it’s pretty much dinner, go to bed. Day game, (it’s) eat, hang out, do some homework, ideally go to sleep early.”
From Friday night to Saturday at sundown, Elie Kligman’s home is Chabad. For the rest of the week, he’s just like any other player in the Wolverines’ dugout. He belongs on the diamond of Ray Fisher Stadium, with a helmet covering his head and a bat in his hand.
Elie’s played in many places where he’s found that sense of belonging. But he’s chosen this one.
