What’s Jewish about the Olympics?
Rabbi Stephen Wise – March 1 2014 – 29 Adar 1 – Pekudai
Sidney Crosby and PK Subban each had exactly zero
goals as Team Canada approached the Gold Medal game vs Sweden. There was much talk about why the best player
in the world had not scored and why the NHL’s best defenseman from the previous
year was not even being dressed for the game.
The prevailing wisdom was that when Team Canada puts together a hockey
team, its not about individuals, its about the team. And that is not just for hockey, its for the
entire Canadian contingent at the Olympics.
When any athlete competed to the best of their abilities, it was the
team that succeeded. When a Canadian
received a medal, it was tallied towards the Team Canada total. There of course were wonderful stories of
athletes succeeding beyond expectation and others unable to fulfill their
dreams. When snowboarder Spencer Obrien
failed to finish in the top 3 spots of her discipline, she broke down in tears
in an interview saying “I'm really disappointed and really sad
that I let Canada down”. Hold your head up high Spencer, you didn’t
let Canada down, but you did realize that we work together as a team, its not
about individual achievement, its an overall effort by multiple people to
achieve a goal. Indeed in the gold medal
hockey game, Crosby played as well as he had all tournament and in one defining
play, was backchecking when he stripped the puck from a Swedish player, raced across the ice, past 3 players, deked out the
goalie and scored putting Canada ahead comfortable 2-0 on route to a 3-0 final
score gold medal. And it was PK Subban
who stood in line to receive the very same medal Crosby did. How poetic that the two are side by side with
medals around the necks and huge smiles on their faces for the Gold Medal team
photo.
Olympic fever has slowly started to dissipate this
week across Canada and as we move past
these extraordinary games, though I feel this cold weather has given us fever’s
of another variety. But its fitting to
look back at the games on this Shabbat from a Jewish perspective to examine if
there is anything that connects to our faith.
This weeks portion is Pekudai which accounts the records of all that had
been built in regards to the Holy tabernacle – the Mishkan – which would be
filled with God’s presence. The holy
priest would be adorned with Gold, a testament to this medal holding the
properties of the most valuable material, fitting for the top Olympic
performers. And just as the verses make
an accounting of all the precious metals used, so too do the Olympics finish
with an accounting of all metals won – from gold to bronze.
But as we delve more deeply in the Jewish connection
to the Olympics, we would be mistaken to see Jews in sports as a high
value. In ancient times, while we were
busy attending to worship in our holy temple, it was the Greeks who valued
sport and the human body and began the Olympic games, in honour of their
Gods. In this way the Olympics are tribute
to idols, completely foreign in every way to our worship of the one true god –
unseen, unchallenged, omnipotent. We
Jews had our heads in the books while the Greeks used the Olympics to highlight
natural human movement and the shape of muscles and the body. It was as much a
religious festival as an athletic event with sacrifices to Zeus. When the Maccabees defeated the Greeks and
rededicated our Temple, it was a pushback not just on our political freedom but
to eliminate cultural assimilation into the new Greek ideas, game, foods and
dress.
For most of Jewish life
from ancient times to the 20th century, we placed much more value on
literacy than sports, as most famously joked about in the movie airplane when a
passenger asks the stewardess for some light reading she says “I have this 1
page leaflet- famous Jewish sports legends”. Other than stoning, it would be
hard to find a Jewish sport in the Bible or any Talmudic source. Jews have however in the 20th
century and beyond embraced sports and certainly in each professional league in
every era we can often find one Jewish athlete we can rally around such as
boxer Barney Ross, baseball players Hank Greenberg or Sandy Koufax, ice skating
champions Sasha Cohen, and more. Our
children would probably value sport over religious school these days, though it
does warm my heart when a child makes the effort to come to religious school in
their soccer uniform to learn some Hebrew before heading off to the pitch.
But I also think there are values in the Olympics that
are in line with Jewish values.
1.
Healthy bodies. Athletes are very careful about what they
eat, and how they exercise and stay healthy.
These are lesson for all of us, perhaps not to compete at an Olympic
level but to make healthy eating choices and regular exercise to avoid disease,
maintain energy and mental acuity and live longer more productive lives. Jews too value health and
nutrition. In ancient times we had rules
about food, including never eating an animal we found dead or had disease, we
had to kill it properly and humanely, thereby only eating proper meat. We also ritually washed our hands before each
meal. There is a wonderful new book out by the Reform Rabbis called “the Sacred
Table: creating a Jewish food ethic” with essays about Jewish dietary
practices. A lot of it focuses on healthy eating and the spirituality of
food. Amy recently gave talk about it
after her research. As Jews we know that
taking care of our body is important, not just to ourselves but to God, who
created us, made us in Gods image and breathed life into us. It is therefore our responsibility to take
care of this vessel and keep it healthy throughout our lives.
2.
Team work. As I alluded
to in the beginning, the word Team in Team Canada is first because every
athlete understands what it means to be part of a team. Even in individual races on the skating rink
or snow slopes, the athletes are collectively part of a team. They train together, travel together, get coached
together and compete together. A win for a Canadian athlete is a win for the
team. In the team sports of course its
even more crucial to work together. The
lead curler who seems to be throwing rocks on an empty sheet of ice is setting
up shots for the skip to take home the points.
The bobsledders who push the sled at the top give it that edge of time
so the driver can steer through the rest of the course for victory. In Judaism we always stress our collective
identity. In this week’s portion, each
Israelite gave something towards the building of the mishkan, whatever they
were able, and then it was up to Bezalel the master artist to gather the
materials and create the sanctuary. Our
synagogue is made up a team of individuals who each bring their own strengths
and gifts to make this shul work as a whole.
Some are great cooks providing communal meals, some serve on boards to
set guidelines and fiscal responsibility, some attend worship and education
regularly keeping our spirituality high, some work behind the scenes raising
money or preparing the kitchen or making phone calls. Collectively as a team we make this shul
great, and only working together do we succeed.
3.
Practice makes perfect.
In Olympic sports the athletes trains for years and years to compete in
the moment. Practicing is the only way
to achieve excellence, and even then it might not be enough because some of the
sports are so detail oriented. The
racing events such as luge, skeleton, skiing and skating – often come down to
1/100th of second to mark the difference between a winner and 10th
place. It’s incredible how close the
athletes are in skill when such tiny measurements of time can determine
victory. In Judaism too the details are
important. God does not just say build
me a mishkan. There are a dozen chapters
with exact instructions as to how to build it, what dimensions and what
materials. Listen to the details on just
the breast piece of the outfit for the high priest
“on
the breast piece they made braided chains or corded gold, they made two frames
and two rings of gold, and fastened them at the end. They attached them to the inner edge which
faced the ephod, the rings were fastened to the front, low on the shoulder
pieces close to the seam but above the decorative band, and held in place by a
cod of blue from its ring to the rings of the ephod…..”
When a bar or bat mitzvah student is
getting ready for their coming of age ceremony, we don’t start a week
before. These children being learning
Hebrew when they are in kindergarten. A
year before the big day they begin learning their portion with weekly
appointments with a tutor to learn the Hebrew of their portion, prepare to read
it without vowels and learn the trope marks to sign it. In addition they learn
their haftarah, lead some of the prayers, do a mitzvah project and write a dvar
torah. I remind them, this will take a
year of practice and there are many many details to get it right.
Perhaps the best lesson for our student athletes that
is different from the Olympics is that they don’t have to be perfect or the
best. Each child strives to their best,
not in competition with any other students because our community, and god, only
want to see each child achieve as best as they can do. Moreover no one can read
the torah perfectly, that is why we have a gabbai who reads along with the
portion and guides the torah reader as they go.
It’s a bigger mitzvah to correct the reader to make sure they are doing
it right, then the mitzvah of actually chanting torah. Its not a mistake, rather its an opportunity
for the gabbai to guide towards the correct word. In the Olympics if you fall on a qualifying
run or during a big race, you are done and have finished your competition. In Judaism you are always able to get back up
and compete again. Not just in your bar
or bat mitzvah reading torah, but in every facet of life we have the built in
ability to start again, teshuvah. It was
given to us at the moment we were created, the ability to get a second
chance. Whether its taking that
opportunity in the moment or during our holiday of yom kippur, our tradition
reminds us that we humans are not created in perfection, we all miss the mark
at times, and we have the ability to start again, make changes, get back on the
right path and finish the race we call life.
4.
And finaly I want to
talk about patriotism. I felt it in my
heart when I watched the Canadian team walk into the opening ceremonies, in
fact I felt for each country as they walked in, in the countries colours,
flying the flag, so proud to represent a common group. It was even more special at the closing
ceremonies, because no matter how each athlete did, win a medal or place in any
position, they competed as a team and so team Canada walked in together. In the sports village everyone had a similar
room. The NHL players have multimillion
dollar salaries but they lived in the same rooms as the amateur athletes who
might have even paid their own way to Sochi to attend, who don’t have endorsements
or salaries, who might be going back to regular jobs after the Olympics as
factory workers or small business owners or bank tellers. For these few weeks
it was a team who put away their selfish interests and pocketbooks to live and
compete together. And when Canada
actually won, again and again, in skiing or men and womens curling or men and
womens hockey - again- I had tears in my
eyes as we sang the Canadian anthem together.
As Jews we can be proud that our tiny country of Israel sent Olympians,
we sent 5 for the winter but often have a large presence at the summer
games. Its interesting because of those
5, none were actually born in Israel but now live there. I often think to myself, if I was competing
at an Olympic level I could actually choose to compete for Canada or by making
aliyah I could just as easily compete for our Jewish homeland. Most people in
the world don’t have the option to choose for which country they compete. Now Israel could probably use more athletes
but one would likely have a better chance to win with Canada. Luckily we have the maccabee Olympic games,
the one for Jewish athletes every four
years where we can cheer for everyone because everyone is a member of the tribe
To the question what is Jewish about the Olympics,
indeed when you look closely there is a lot in common. Our shared values of healthy eating and
healthy bodies, team work, practicing to get things rights, the details are
important, guidance of teachers and coaches and competing for a country or
people. Indeed our Jewish tradition ought
to have a prayer for sports – for competing hard and achieving goals. And I want to end with this which I put
together from two different sources.
It’s a prayer not for someone to win a race or a game, but to compete
well and at the end realize its not a blessing for the sport but rather for
life.
“My you run and not grow weary. May you be strong and walk in Gods ways. May you mount up with wings as eagles. May you pursue and then overtake your
foes. And may you prosper in all that
you do and wherever you turn. Amen.
(taken
from Psalm 18:38, Isaiah 40:31, 1 King
2:2-3, Ken Bresler from Ritual well)
