Jews in Sports: Something to Think About and Appreciate
Joe Bednarsh![](/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2019/09/Bednarsh_Joe_300.jpg)
Two Religious Reflections
Rabbi Shalom Carmy![Shalom Carmy](/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2019/01/Carmy_Shalom_300.jpg)
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)A Gradual Understanding: The Interaction between Judaism and Athletics at Yeshiva University from the Coach’s Perspective
Danielle Carr![](/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2020/01/Danielle_Carr.jpg)
Taking the First Knee: Blackbirds Boycott the 1936 Olympics
Greg Fox![](/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2020/01/Greg_Fox_02.jpg)
Jews in Sports: Behind the Microphone
Barry Neuberger![](/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2020/01/Barry_Neuberger_02.jpg)