Sports can be a powerful rhetorical tool to illuminate truths about Jewish life and help religious leaders connect with their congregants
Rabbi Adam Cutler
Beth Tzedec Congregation, Toronto
Rabbi Adam Scheier
Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, Montreal
Rabbi Scheier: Last week, my wife and I hosted our pre-marriage group at our home. The couples who took part showed tremendous sacrifice by attending this program, since the event coincided with the first night of the NHL playoffs.
I often wonder about the place of professional sports in religious life. Sometimes we embrace spectator sports as a community-building opportunity, such as the young families Super Bowl party we host every year. At other times, as when a major contest coincides with Shabbat services or a community lecture, we begrudge the hold that sports have on our congregants. Sometimes, we discuss sports in our sermons to illuminate truths about Jewish life.
How does sports fandom factor into the life of your congregation?
Rabbi Cutler: Alas, this year we have not experienced the tension between watching our local NHL franchise in the playoffs and doing something more synagogue-oriented.
The relationship between sports and Judaism is well reflected in a tale, published in Time magazine in 1951, involving the president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Solomon Schechter, and his student Louis Finkelstein, who went on to become a future JTS president.
Rabbi Schechter, walking one day with Finkelstein, stopped at a newsstand to read the latest World Series scores. “Can you play baseball?” he asked his companion. “No,” admitted Finkelstein. “Remember this,” said the old man. “Unless you can play baseball, you’ll never get to be a rabbi in America.”
The story is about the subordinate status of sports in relation to Judaism, but also the recognition that religious leaders must engage in worldly interests in order to connect with congregants and non-Jews. Personally, I think it’s wise to use whatever means necessary to build relationships and to engage sports metaphors, so long as they elevate the conversation or sermon. And on an institutional level, Beth Tzedec is now in its second year of lectures on the topic of “Jews in Sports.”
Rabbi Scheier: I have a vivid recollection from my childhood when my sports hero – a professional baseball player – was arrested for a drug-related offence. I recall my sense of disappointment when I found out. My mistake, I believe, was that I admired him for being something he never aspired or claimed to be – a leader of integrity and morality. I had confused athletic excellence with moral excellence.
Where sports excel are as a lens for expressing our values. Just this past week, I shared a story with my congregation about the Lubavitcher Rebbe, as he encountered a father and a son walking to a Brooklyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field. He asked the young boy to explain baseball to him, and the boy explained that, if one team has a large lead toward the end of the game, the fans might leave early.
“Do the players leave early?” the rabbi inquired. “Of course not,” the boy responded. “They have to finish the game!”
The lesson, of course, is central to religious life: are we spectators or players? When times are difficult, do we leave the game, or play out our destinies? This is but one example of how sports can be a powerful rhetorical tool to teach values.
Rabbi Cutler: When Rabbi Gunther Plaut, the long-serving rabbi of Holy Blossom Temple, passed away, the New York Times ran a lengthy eulogy. It concluded with the following story:
“In 1935, shortly after he came to the United States, the future Rabbi Plaut received an eloquent lesson in textual interpretation and the reader’s need for a learned guide. Newly arrived in Cincinnati, he was shown an article in the sports section of a local newspaper by his fellow seminarians. Glancing at the headline, he recalled years later, he thought the article was about a revolution in Italy. The headline said, ‘Reds murder Cardinals.’”
I have long suspected that rabbis have turned to sports as an entry point into “normal” life. In a field that generally focuses on a small segment on the population and limits most meaningful interactions to one’s co-religionists, a turn to fandom enables a rabbi to share something with his non-Jewish neighbours and be part of something greater than himself that is completely apart from any official duties.