Jewish Football Player Chooses Chabad as Neighbor

Abraham Mercado is an Orthodox Jew who takes his religion seriously. He davens daily, attends shul regularly and will take his tallit if away from home on Shabbat. He also spends so much time explaining Judaism to his college friends that the 20-year-old jokingly claims he could write a 10,000-page book on the details of kosher food.

Mercado has answered so many of those questions because he’s the only Jewish player on the football team for Morgan State, one of the nation’s premier historically black colleges and universities. Mercado picked the school himself after the coaches offered him a scholarship as a place-kicker. Now in his third year at the college, Mercado says he definitely made the right choice.

How did an Orthodox Jewish boy from Florida find his way into the heart of the Baltimore African-American community’s intellectual jewel?

Mercado’s longtime dream was to be a major college kicker. The 5-foot-8, 165-pounder sent tapes of his high school action (Western High in Davie) throughout the country. He wound up with two high-level scholarship offers — from Morgan State and Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

That’s where religion entered the picture. Mercado’s research showed the nearest shul to the Arkansas school — Chabad Lubavitch — was 90 minutes away. But Baltimore’s Chabad community is but a few miles from Morgan State.

“Here, the Chabad in Pikesville is 20 minutes away,” Mercado said while talking in the athletic department’s media relations office last week. “So for me, that was the ultimate decision of why I decided to come to Morgan. For me, being kosher [90 minutes away] wouldn’t have helped.”

Mercado knew that Morgan’s student body is primarily African-American, but he wanted to play football, and Morgan wanted to give him that chance. It’s easy to see how much both football and religion mean; the emotion is clear in his voice.

For the record, his Jewish parents supported the decision to head to Baltimore. For sure, he and the Morgan football program had to work out some details by the fall 2009 semester. Several early problems included kosher food needs, which took nearly his whole freshman year to work out. Eventually, the school gave Mercado money for the cost of his dining program, and he regularly visits Seven Mile Market in Pikesville to buy kosher food so he can cook his own meals.

Mercado cooks in his room and often prays there as well, something he made sure to explain to his roommates.

“The first time I put on my tefillin, I said ‘I’m about to pray, and it’s going to look very weird. … Just know that I’m not worshipping the devil,’” he said with a laugh.

Religion has long loomed large in the Mercado family. Its roots go back to Syria, Mexico and Florida. His family migrated from Damascus to Mexico in the early 20th century. Both of his parents were born in Mexico, but moved the family to Florida when Mercado was 9 amid worries about the kidnapping of Jewish children.

Mercado became a bar mitzvah in Florida. When he can, he can be found at religious services at the Johns Hopkins University Hillel.

With food and worship issues taken care of, Mercado can focus on life on the gridiron. The broadcast/media production major didn’t play in the fall of 2009, so he is considered a “redshirt” sophomore, meaning he is a third-year student but a second-year athlete — giving him two more years of college eligibility.

He didn’t score a point until this year, but now he is doing so with regularity. Mercado, who has been battling Ervin Gonzalez for the first-string kicking job, now handles the lion’s share of kickoffs. He has made five of nine field-goal attempts and all four extra points. (For his part, Gonzalez is 3-for-10 in field goals and 12-for-12 in extra points.)

For Morgan State head coach Donald Hill-Eley, who is an observant Christian, his Jewish kicker fits in well. So well, in fact, that Hill-Eley did not blink when the kicker said he would have to miss this year’s Oct. 8 game due to Yom Kippur.

“His [teammates] just kept moving on; they understood,” Hill-Eley says. “It was one of those things where I really didn’t know as much about the culture until he got here. I told him that you have to tell me about the events that are coming up in advance so I can plan.”

Likewise, Morgan State punter Nicholas Adams has learned from Mercado about Judaism ever since his fellow kicker came to town.

“He really loves the game of football, is a real sports fanatic, and so am I,” Adams says. “Now he cooks, but we still break bread together.”

Hill-Eley and Mercado both agree that sports can help many break bread. In fact, the coach was fascinated by what he saw on a recent team bus ride.

The coach saw Mercado and teammate Nader Furrha — a quarterback with Palestinian family roots — studying next to each other. So Hill-Eley walked over and snapped a picture of both players laughing. The image sits today on the coach’s cellphone.

“Those two studying side-by-side, over a game of football, and these two guys both have respect for each other,” Hill-Eley says, shaking his head. “This is a [great] picture.”