Football fans are gearing up for the Super Bowl, North America’s largest annual professional sporting event. As the country’s best football teams prepare to meet at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., for Super Bowl XLIX, let’s take a few moments to look at the Jewish contributions to the game.
But first, a bit of Torah. A good rabbi is able to look at practically any phenomenon and teach a Torah lesson from it. Rabbis Simcha Barnett and Eric Coopersmith must be good at their jobs because of the lesson they extracted from the New England Patriots’ surprise win over the heavily favoured St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI.
“Throughout the entire season, the Patriots players refused to be introduced individually, as is traditionally done at the start of NFL games. Even fines from the league office could not deter their statement that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In the process, the Patriots discovered perhaps the greatest human tool: the power of unity.”
The rabbis continue with examples of how Jews, when united, have excelled whether they were receiving the Torah at Sinai, fighting in the Six Day War or struggling on behalf of Soviet Jewry. And then they conclude that “the most memorable moments in sports are those where the talents of individuals fuse into the almost mystical indivisibility of the whole, as the harmonious interplay leaves us awed and lifted.”
As for the Patriots, they went on to win three Super Bowls under the leadership of owner Robert Kraft. Shortly after their third win, Kraft was in Jerusalem to attend the unveiling of the newly refurbished Kraft Family Stadium, donated to the local league, American Football in Israel. As Kraft said, “My mother and father would’ve been proud of our Super Bowl wins, but much more of the work we’ve done in Israel.”
On this side of the border, Howard Sokolowski and David Cynamon bought the Toronto Argonauts out of bankruptcy in 2003, saw them win the 2004 Grey Cup and owned the team for six years. Winnipeg’s Sidney Halter was the CFL’s first commissioner and a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. You can read the CJN’s profile of current CFL commissioner Mark Cohon who’s been at the helm since 2007 and will be stepping down in April.
Former NFL Coach of the Year Marv Levy presided over the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills (as well as the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes.) In a 2002 interview with Sports Illustrated, Levy was asked to name the other Jews in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was able to remember two. Do you know them all? You’ll find their profiles along with bios of over 450 other Jewish football players at the JewsInSports.org website.
Who can you cheer on right now? Wikipedia’s Jews in Football includes a dozen current (and recent) Jewish players including brothers Geoff Schwartz (offensive tackle, New York Giants) and Mitchell Schwartz (offensive tackle, Cleveland Browns), free agent Brandon Kaufman (wide receiver, B.C. Lions, Buffalo Bills) and Gabe Carimi (guard and tackle, Atlanta Falcons).
When Carimi played tackle for the University of Wisconsin Badgers, he was faced with a dilemma: whether to fast just before an evening game against Iowa in the Big Ten Conference opener. Carimi fasted. He then played. And he won. “Religion is a part of me, and I don’t want to just say I’m Jewish. I actually do make sacrifices that I know are hard choices.” In March 2011, the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame awarded him the Marty Glickman Award as the male Jewish Athlete of the Year.
For six years, Alan Veingrad was an offensive lineman for the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys. While in Green Bay, he was invited by a local family to join them in a nearby synagogue. “When I heard the Hebrew,” he told the New York Times, “I felt a pull.” Veingrad – now Shlomo Veingrad – has developed strong ties with the Chabad community and when he appears as a motivational speaker, he wears both his tzitzit and his Super Bowl ring.
But have these nice Jewish boys been breaking a Torah prohibition by enjoying their game while tossing around a football made from pigskin? Rabbi David Samson says there’s nothing to worry about. “One is not allowed to eat the flesh of a pig, but a Jew could make a football from its skin.”
Truth be told, there really could be no problem. Pigskins, you see, contain no pig skin.