A Few Thoughts on Jews, Sports, and Tebowing
November 19, 2012 
5 Comments
by David Stanley and Rabbi Mark Goldfarb
What image comes to mind when you hear the name Tim Tebow? Heisman trophy winner, maybe? Second-rate back-up quarterback for the New York Jets? Most likely, you get the mental image of someone on one knee, a la The Thinker, which has become Tebow’s signature “thank-you, Jesus” pose. The now-trademarked and widely aped posture is known as Tebowing.
It’s fall, and we’ve just passed World Series time. What happens every time a player from the mainly Catholic Caribbean comes to the plate? He makes the sign of the cross. Fall also means soccer. The last gesture made as a Catholic player runs onto the pitch? Again, the sign of the cross.
We Jews don’t do those things. Why not?
Let’s first examine why Christian athletes do do these things. In Olde English, the word “gospel” means “good news.” What’s the good news? They believe the works of Jesus Christ are the “good news” that Christians are charged with spreading – and hence the reason why they proselytize. For many Christian athletes, publicly thanking God is a way for them to share the gospel.
As for Jews? We ask, “Are you sure you wanna do this?” three times before we let you join our religious club. In general, Reform Jews don’t pray to ask God for material things. We don’t believe God will necessarily give us that for which we ask. We don’t thank God for touchdowns. We don’t, generally, do intercessory prayer. The one true exception is the relatively new Mi Shebeirach, a prayer for the sick. (For a great piece on the power of this prayer, read Ritual: Exorcism in Baltimore by Steven M. Fink in Reform Judaism magazine.)
Why don’t we share a Jewish signal with the world?
We have external signs: kippot, tzitzit, and the rest of the traditional Orthodox attire. However, these are more about things for the individual to do rather than for others to see.
We have gestures. For starters, there’s the Birkat Kohanim/Vulcan greeting, which Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy acknowledges he borrowed from his Jewish childhood memories). There’s also the touching of tallit to Torah during an aliyah and then kissing the tallit, as well as the bending and bowing during a service. These are gestures, however, that are rarely seen outside the synagogue or the Shabbat-celebrating home.
What we don’t have are movements that advertise our Jewishness to the outside world. Judaism is a way of life as well as a religion; we are a community and a religion. Vos macht a yid? We know who’s a member of the Tribe.
In a moment of creative Midrash, you might, in the words of Bill Nye the Science Guy, “consider the following”: Perhaps the most important reason why Jewish athletes haven’t developed a score-winning, Jewish-themed movement for the individual athlete to perform is the Jewish emphasis on community. Though the individual athlete may very well have scored the goal, touchdown, run, or points, none of this is possible without other team members doing their part. Rather than emphasize the achievement of the individual athlete, Jewish athletes choose to emphasize the role of the team and the community, not of themselves.
Is it time? Do we need a Jewish signal? With intermarriage and conversions and the decline of local temple life, would it be a good thing to let our Jewish athletes loudly and proudly proclaim their Jewishness on the playing field in moments of triumph?
We’re not sure whether we truly need a signal. We’re not sure what that signal might be. We do know that baseball games are already long enough. How much longer would they be if we had to watch Kevin Youkilis or Ryan Braun dig a Magen David in the dirt with a bat every time they stepped up to hit?
David Stanley is a member of Temple Beth El in Flint, MI. He is a teacher, athlete, coach, and cancer survivor blogging about education, cancer, sport, society at DStan58-Rants & Mutters. Rabbi Mark Goldfarb serves Temple Beth Ohr in La Mirada, CA.
My friend Scott Lichterman left this for me and said I could post it to this piece: “You want a signal? A sign to others? Look to the greatest sign of all sportsdom. 1965 World Series. Dodgers vs. Twins. Game 1 falls on Yom Kippur. Who’s the game 1 starter for the Dodgers? Should be Koufax. It’s Drysdale. Why? Because Sandy said I’m not pitching on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. He didn’t have to make a sign to others. It’s what he didn’t do that was the greatest sign to others.”
and I replied; That, Scott Lichterman, for men of our generation, is the single most important Jewish/sports moment of our lives. For men of our fathers’ age, it might have been Hank Greenberg being a huge war hero, but for us, you hit the nail right on the head
I agree with this post in general, but wish to remind everyone that there is actually some precedent for a form of intercessory prayer in historic Reform/Progressive Jewish thought, long before Mi Sheberach. Everyone knows the standard history that “in those days” Reform Jews were cold and rationalist, and then we had a “revolution” in which we “warmed things up”. This narrative is substantially revisionist.
Belief in a personal God who does, in some way, “hear and answer” prayer (as assured in the Adon Olam) seems to have been normative in the period commonly referred to as “Classical Reform”. The early Reform/Progressive siddurim seem to speak to and about such a God, and in fact, during the editing of the 1940 Union Prayer Book, spearheaded by Rabbi Samuel S. Cohon, there seems to have been a push to shift the theology even more toward a personal, “listening” God. Even the ultra-radical reformer Kaufmann Kohler wrote that God would grant guidance and inspiration to those who prayed for help, even if God would not physically intervene in the natural order. I think sometimes that even though the Reform Movement has embraced more traditional outer forms and added the Mi Sheberach prayer, the Jews-in-the-pews, and to a greater extent, the clergy, have less faith in such things than they did when only Bar’chu and Shema were in Hebrew and it was a sin to wear a kippah!
I can only speak for myself, but I believe there is room within a generally liberal and rationalist worldview for affirming unseen, mysterious phenomena associated with the God of the Adon Olam. Not that God will take away Grandma’s cancer if enough people get together and sing Debbie Friedman’s Mi Sheberach, but that somehow our outpouring of love and concern on behalf of those we love makes a difference, even if it’s spiritual rather than physical or medical.
Of course it’s nonsensical to pray for a football victory or a parking space, but I think we’ve lost something precious and essential if it seems ridiculous to pray for help with personal, internal matters or even those of a friend or loved one. Perhaps we should heed the warning of Talmud B’rachot 12b: “Whoever is able to pray for another but fails to do so is a sinner.”
I agree very much with what you have said Jordan. So much so that’s about all I have to say on the matter which is radical for me.
Great conversation happening on Facebook around this post, in case anyone cares to check it out and join in: http://goo.gl/wgtfM