R' Amichai Gordin
"Who posted the article?" the students rightfully wanted to know. An article about an American basketball player who went on the court to play with a temperature of 38.5 degrees (that is, 101.3 F) didn't seem to be the right thing to appear on the bulletin board of the yeshiva. One of the students put his hand out to tear the article down, when he suddenly noticed a line that was added anonymously by the hand of the person who had hung up the article.
Here is what was written in the tiny handwriting that could only belong to the Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein: "If Michael Jordon can go on the court to play with a high fever, then we can also come to our Beit Midrash even if we have a headache."
In the following, we will try to follow the way of thinking of our mentor and to learn a lesson about good habits from the best basketball league in the world.
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The first few months that David Blatt was the coach of the team known as the Cleveland Cavaliers were very difficult for him. The team went through an embarrassing period with a string of losses. "Blatt lacks leadership, and our patience is beginning to wear thin." That is what the American sports writers said. "It is not clear whether the players have any respect for him, they appear confused. Their body language is terrible."
Back in Israel the criticism was much sharper. "The illusion of the great accomplishments of David Blatt in Cleveland is beginning to disappear," one senior analyst wrote. "Their star player LeBron James was against the idea from the beginning... Blatt's leap from coaching a team in Israel to a senior team in the NBA is completely illogical..."
The boldest comment came from an analyst at Galei Tzahal, the IDF station, who claimed that the running feud between Blatt and LeBron had already come to an end. "In the United States everybody already knows that LeBron will make sure that Blatt will be fired. It is impossible to fight against the best player in the world. I am sorry to say that it is not a matter of a few weeks or days, it will take only a few hours."
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However, the rest is well known. Five months later, David Blatt lifted the championship cup of the east coast of the best league in the world high above his head, after his team trounced their tough opponents. In spite of the deadly criticism, in spite of the pride and ploys of LeBron, in spite of mistakes due to inexperience that almost led to a loss in a critical game – in spite of everything, Blatt won the day.
What is the secret of this man, who didn't crack in the toughest and most embarrassing moments? Part of the answer was revealed by Blatt in a closed session where he appeared in the Jewish Community Center in Akron, Ohio. Blatt said that the man who had the greatest influence on his professional career was Phil Morris, who was David's coach in high school.
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"I had hair growing down to my shoulders, and he told me to cut if off. His message was that he had no problem with my long hair, but that if I wanted to be part of something big and if it mattered to me, then I would have to accept the rules and the values of the team. That was a critical moment for me, because I had talent but I had no direction and no special meaning. Morris helped me understand what was important in my relationship to sports and to life in general."
Blatt is very thankful to the man who demanded from him discipline and a commitment. Decades later, Blatt remembered the man, who was not afraid to make it clear to the youths around him that there are rules and obligations. The man who had the greatest influence on Blatt's career is the man who taught him that there are laws and that there is discipline.
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I am sorry to say that the way the religious educational system appears today I am afraid that if David Blatt were studying in this system today he would not have gone very far – certainly not to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Our system takes care to caress, to hug, and to encompass all the young men and women (which is indeed very important!), but it forgets its additional role, that of setting limits. We are afraid to make demands of our children. We are thus forgetting an important part of our appointed task.
Why is it that in many nonreligious schools there is a dress code, but not in our schools? Why can't we tell a young boy or girl what Phil Morris said to the boy David Blatt? "The way you dress doesn't matter to me, but if you want to be part of our school you must dress in a specific way!"
We must differentiate between our absolute and total obligation to love and take care of our students and the simple fact that they are not really obligated to love us. We are too involved in an effort to make sure the students will love us and will not register any complaints, and not enough in the need to set limits for them, to make rules and teach them values.
The sad news is that all of this works backwards. If in order to make sure that the students will not be angry with us we will never make any demands on them, they will really be angry with us. Not today, but ten years from now. Only if we continue to love our students and to make demands from them without any fear of how they will react, will they in the end appreciate and love us.
