Op-Ed: Fit and Healthy — End or Mean?

Despite suffering recent losses over the past week, the last-minute victories of Denver Broncos ‘miracle’ quarterback, Tim Tebow, have wowed sports commentators and football fans alike. Along with his recognition on the gridiron, Tebow’s act of bowing in prayer after scoring a touchdown has sparked popular interest, bringing the discussion of religion and its role in sports to the forefront.

From baseball greats Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax to boxers such as Daniel Mendoza and modern-day champ – and rabbinical student – Yuri Foreman, Jews have long since left their mark on the professional sports scene. Nevertheless, the traditional approach to sports and its role in Jewish life has always been somewhat complex.

Central to this discussion is Judaism’s perspective on the physical, as illuminated in the Chanukah story. Maimonides notes in the Mishne Torah, that “a healthy body is a necessary part of [our] divine service, for one can not properly study or learn [Torah] if he is sick.”

In stark contrast to this, the Hellenic view saw the physical perfection not as a means to something higher, but as end unto itself. Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, records Antiochius building a gymnasium to serve as a bastion of Greek culture and sport, and he points to this as one of the motivations for the Maccabean revolt.

In a public address on April 12, 1980, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of blessed memory, took a more pragmatic look at sports and offered a corresponding spiritual message. Though an obsession with sports, as prevalent in Western culture, remains foreign to Judaism, the Rebbe analyzed sports through the prism of Chasidic thought. The objective of one team bringing a ball into a marked spot in the opposing team’s territory, the Rebbe taught, could be viewed as a lesson in the service of G-d:

The world, a great sphere, was given to us with the mission to elevate it, to refine it, and create a more spiritually sensitive, holy environment. Though G-d could have created the world to already exist on such an elevated level, He wanted us to take part in this task. The opposition we encounter then, serves as an “impetus to delve ever deeper into [our] souls and reveal the great potential we possess.”

In the analogy, just as a team needs alacrity and esprit de corps to succeed, our own personal drive for Jewish identity and education must be similarly inspired.

Alan Veingrad, a former Green Bay Packer and Dallas Cowboy, and Super Bowl XXVII champion, who once had a “casual” relationship with his identity, said he took lessons from his own althletic drive and applied them to his life as a Jew. Today he is a Torah-observant Jew.

When he “first began to delve into [his] Jewish heritage,” he found the “approach to religion was the same as to football. From my time playing in the NFL,” he said, “I learned the structure, schedule, responsibility and camaraderie,” that are central to Judaism.

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