Jewish Football Star Visits Morristown Yeshiva

MORRISTOWN, NJ [CHI] — Super Bowl Champion Shlomo Veingrad took his position, downed a last cup of water and prepared to astonish a waiting crowd of fascinated students and locals.

The Rabbinical College of America campus at Morristown welcomed the star offensive lineman and baal teshuva on Thursday, and heard the remarkable story of his sporting success and return to his Jewish roots.

The students sat engrossed as Veingrad, who played for the Green Bay Packers from 1986-1990 and wears a Super Bowl ring from the Dallas Cowboys victory at Super Bowl XXVII, regaled them with stories of his early days at Texas A&M, his successful bid for the Packers, and his later teshuva with his wife and children.

The six foot four, 240 pound chassid grinned through his thick beard as he demonstrated how he stopped a veteran player in his tracks his first time taking he field. “Okay, are you ready?” He asked a nervous-looking middle aged Jew who couldn’t have stood more than 5’2“ as he stood him up and as a volunteer for the demonstration. The little white haired man sat down without a scratch, after Veingrad just put his arms out in a show of stopping power ”I hit him with all the 400 pound bench press and he couldn’t pass me“

”My father always kept my football card in his pocket“ he told the audience, gathered in the main study hall of Yeshiva Tiferes Bachurim for the lecture, ”He shows that thing to everybody he sees. It’s really embarrassing. But he told me once that he’s prouder of the yarmulke on my head now than he ever was of the football helmet.“

More enlightening, some say, was the farbrengen afterwards, which lasted well after midnight. Veingrad compared the devotion required of a chassid to that of an NFL player. ”Nobody says you have to push cars up hills, nobody says you have to work out and train all the time, but you do, because you know it makes you a better player.“ He declared, ”it’s the same being a chassid of the Rebbe, nobody says you have to put on Rabbenu Tam’s, nobody says you have to grow a big long beard, but you do it, because you know it makes you a better Jew.“

He addressed the idea that one cannot necessarily succeed in a secular profession if he insists on revering his Judaism, keeping Shabbos, eating kosher etc. ”You think somebody can be in the NFL and be observant at the same time?“ He asked those gathered, somewhat rhetorically. Answers of ”yes!“ and ”no!“ came from all sides, until Veingrad affirmed ”Of course, it depends on how well he plays the game of football“ elaborating that anything is possible if one elevates oneself to the level of excellence in his field ”If Tom Brady said tomorrow he’s not going to play on Saturday and he needs kosher food, he gets it” he said with a grin.

Walking out of the hall escorted by a gaggle of students, Veingrad was still telling stories, all the way back to where he was staying that night.