Jews in Sports: Something to Think About and Appreciate
Joe Bednarsh There are so many jokes associated with the phrase “Jews in Sports.” Most use the typical self-deprecating, good-natured Jewish humor that sustains our people, but inherent in those (self) jabs is likely a feeling that, as Jews, we just don’t have the goods to be at the top of the game. Or maybe it’s just “pas nisht,” not for us—we need to put more effort into our futures and the futures our families. One need not look any further than the well-known professional players of yesteryear whose stories of triumph and episodes of placing observance above the game thrilled us in our youth and fueled our desire to play, to know that we’ve got the talent. So why do we put ourselves down? Maybe it’s the one-upsmanship game of “my son is a doctor,” “my son is a lawyer,” “my son owns a business” over “my son plays college ball”? Was it about education? Think about how culturally important education has been to our people even before the modern standardized schooling of today. Did our families reason that sports participation would take too much time away from their young ones’ studies and therefore negatively impact their ability to make life better for their children and grandchildren? And if it was an issue of time taken away from growing intellectually, were they wrong? From a practical perspective, perhaps a piece of the puzzle involves the salaries in the early years of professional sports. In the past, professional sports didn’t pay as well and could not help one set up future generations to live better than the current one, a staple of the immigrant mindset. By making sports the target of jokes, did we dissuade young Jewish boys and girls from playing so that they would concentrate on education and be better positioned to improve the experience of the next generation? From a historical perspective, is it fair to postulate that some representation in pro sports was a boon to Jews? As a people, we have historically tried to fit in in new countries and be viewed as one of the people. Was that a way to prevent anti-Semitism and perhaps prevent violence and expulsion? Wouldn’t that make life better for future generations? Certainly, in America, what better way to have the feeling of being “regular” and “one of the guys” or some other measure of acceptance than to excel in the national pastime. Nowadays, we know the benefits of sports participation. We have empirical evidence that student-athletes have higher GPAs than the student body, better graduation rates and stronger retention rates. YU’s numbers reflect that as well. Sports participation teaches lessons that cannot be learned in the classroom, such as how to be both a leader and a follower depending on the needs of the team—what boss doesn’t want someone like that in their employ? Sports participation teaches time management and prioritization techniques that help make student-athletes more successful after they graduate. Now, throw in the opportunity to play at YU, the only school that won’t ever schedule a practice or game on a Shabbat or holiday, the only school to play both Hatikvah and the Star-Spangled Banner before home games, the only school where men can play in kippot and women who choose to can play in skirts. We don’t just identify as Jews, we’re one step short of being in-your-face about it. We’re proud that despite the dual curriculum, the religious obligations, the very different school calendar, the smaller recruiting pool and the dozens of other challenges, we are incredibly successful on and off the field of play, we’re incredibly connected to our Judaism and we embrace the dichotomy of being both like and unlike, both the everyman and the only man, both the athlete and the scholar. In conclusion, I’d like you to leave this little food-for-thought essay thinking about how the concept of Jews in sports should not be the punchline but rather the headline.Two Religious Reflections
Rabbi Shalom Carmy Two brief comments on the possible value of playing or following sports in the framework of a religious life: First, an excerpt from “You Taught Me Musar and the Profit on It,” published in Tradition 42:2 10 years ago. [1] As part of a longer critical discussion I wrote:What remains for most of us who grew up loving sports is the memory of our own modest athletic competence and the vision of true mastery by the elite. The athlete, however gifted, achieves this mastery only through years of incessant training, rehearsing the same set of physical moves and responses for thousands of hours until they become second nature, all the while anticipating the stage of actual performance when he, or she, must confront a new situation, similar but not quite the same as what was encountered in practice or in previous experience, and meet that challenge, under pressure, with skill and grace. Except for the requirement of grace under pressure, this description uncannily recalls the intellectual combination of constant learning, review and creativity without which one cannot become a serious talmid hakham [student of the sage]. Nor is the element of pressure absent when we must bring our Torah education to bear in the immediacy of the personal encounter, often at moments of crisis.
What survives into adulthood, in a word, is gratefulness for what athletes, in their genuine or affected humility, call their “God-given talent,” together with a heartfelt admiration for the persistence and discipline that translates rare gifts of strength and coordination into the magnificence of performance under competitive conditions. Perhaps because athletic excellence, like most manifestations of beauty, is neither necessary for temporal success nor essential to our moral and spiritual existence, and because the attainments of professionals are so incontrovertibly beyond our aspirations or capabilities, our admiration tends to be pure, uncontaminated by the envy or jealousy that so often poison our attitudes towards those superior to us in some department.
For those of us, fifty years ago, who continued our Talmudic studies with R. Aharon Lichtenstein during the break between the semesters, there was the bonus of playing ball with him—touch football in January, basketball in June. If you knew him, you will not be surprised to learn that he played with the same relentless passion he displayed in the Beit Midrash. In fact, he once confessed that seeing young Torah students play lackadaisically caused him dismay. Here is what his wife, Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein, said after his passing: I tend to think that he played sports as a young man not only because he enjoyed the physical exertion of basketball and what he called “the moral value” of teamwork, but also because the game allowed him to be part of a team. It gave him an opportunity to belong, to fit in, at least on the basketball court. [2] [1] http://traditionarchive.org/news/_pdfs/0001-00061.pdf [2] A Life Steady and Whole: Recollections and Appreciations of Rabbi Aharon Lichtensteinzt”l (ed. Elka Weber and Joel Wolowelsky, Ktav 2018)