President Barack Obama talks with Rachel Robinson, a former nurse and the widow of baseball player Jackie Robinson.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was to baseball what Barack Hussein Obama was to politics, so it made sense that the president watch the movie “42,” named after the number on the back of the man who changed baseball, in the company of Robinson family members, including the great man’s widow.
I love a good baseball movie and I just finished watching the entire seventh season of The West Wing, where Jimmy Smits, as Congressman Mathew Santos, gets to be the first Hispanic American president. Back in 2006 it was still common wisdom that America would have to vote light brown first, before going dark brown.
The late Douglas Adams said the number 42 was the ultimate answer to the question of life, the universe and everything. And, of course, he was right: we recite every day (if we come to shul early enough to say Korbanot) the 42-letter name of God, ensconced as an anagram in the 2nd century cabalistic poem “Ana B’ko’ach.”
42 is a very good answer.