A friend and chavrusa sent me this from a talk given by R' Wieder - a Rebbi in YU.
Wow! I hope he keeps his job....
II. Organized Sports
Physical activity can take many, many different forms. It could be walking, and it could be jogging, and it could be hiking or swimming - but it could also be organized sports. And many in our community choose to engage in organized sports. There is an extensive range of forms that comprise these organized sports. It could just be a group of people getting together to play basketball or something similar on an ad hoc basis. You might have something a little more organized, such as intramurals. (I don’t know if they still exist here.) Then, you take a step up from there to league sports, which is a much greater commitment and demands a much greater focus. And then, of course, this leads to a related issue, but not one of actual physical activity, and that is watching sports.
To the extent that these activities serve to enhance one’s mental health and עבודת השם - that is wonderful. Certainly when you get together with friends, to play ball, ערב שבת in yeshiva, that’s a healthy thing to do, and it probably does enhance one’s עבודת השם. And, the truth is, even something like intramurals are nice - as they are not a terribly large investment, and they typically don't become the focus of your life.
When you get the question of organized sports leagues - it starts to become potentially more problematic. It’s not that it’s inherently אסור; but there is a question of how much time and resources are invested. And perhaps even more problematic, it often becomes the obsessive focus of people’s lives (especially in yeshiva high schools) - a colossal waste of time and energy which is antithetical to any kind of serious spiritual growth.
As to the question of watching sports - the energy invested and the התלהבות shown are deeply troubling. Rav Moshe has a תשובה arguing that attending a sporting event in a stadium is אסור because of ביטול תורה and because it is a מושב לצים. I don’t think this is the accepted position in many parts of the frum community, that is, to treat attending a sporting event on an occasional basis as being technically אסור. But when this becomes the organizing principle of your life, it is profoundly troubling – it's not even as if it entails any physical activity that produces benefits, which, at least, one gets from playing sports (in almost any venue).
It is particularly disturbing in our community, in the Modern Orthodox community, the level of התלהבות for sports. In yeshiva high schools (at least, in the New York area), hockey is קרוב לעבודה זרה. And there’s nothing wrong with having a hockey league, but the obsessive focus on it - you go to high school open houses and it's a major selling point – is absurd, at least from the vantage point of the mission of our yeshiva high schools (or at least what that mission should be.) And when it comes to watching professional sports, the amount of energy people spend arranging their lives around watching sports (and attending sporting events) is astounding and troubling.
When these activities are done to enhance one’s עבודת השם, that’s one thing; but when these things become a focus of life, and where one places one's energies - it contributes to and reflects a spiritual emptiness. If you would ask many of the young men in our community (I know not every young man is into sports, but there are very large numbers who are quite focused on sports) they could probably name you every team in the NFL, and they could probably list for you the statistics of the starting quarterback for every team, and all of the teams in the NBA, and probably in major league baseball, etc. They could share with you reams of statistics, and players names and so on. If you were to go around and give a בחינה to high school kids in our community in, how many of them could name the twenty-four books in תנ"ך (not knowing their contents, just name them), twelve books of תרי עשר and the sixty-three מסכתות in ש"ס, what would you find? If you compare this knowledge to their sports בקיאות, you will realize that they are not lacking in their capacity to memorize.
For a serious בן תורה, physical activity (in whatever form it takes) is an absolute necessity, but should fundamentally be means to an end, not the end itself.
III. The YU Basketball Team
There is something problematic about the publicity surrounding the Macs – and it's not about the players, but rather about an attitude that seems to be commonplace in our institution and community.
It should be clear– being good at putting a round object into a cylinder, being really good at it, is not a קידוש השם; winning fifty or however many games in a row is not a קידוש השם. And this is so even if outsiders think that it's really cool – other people's admiring the truly unimportant does not make it a קידוש השם. (And I respect that the members of the team and students might be really excited – but from the larger perspective of the search for real meaning in life and in comparison to most of what happens in our institution, it is of trivial importance.) The Jewish army being victorious in battle may be a קידוש השם (as in יחזקאל ל"ו) but a Jew winning an Olympic medal or a Super Bowl ring or a World Series ring is not a קידוש השם. And make no mistake – nobody would make a big deal of the comradery, sportsmanship, communication, working hard if the Macs were a .500 team, even though any meaningful spiritual accomplishment would not change based upon their record.
Welcoming a non-frum young man to our institution because he is genuinely interested in/open to exploring Judaism and Torah as part of his program here, even if he is not committed to becoming frum, is arguably good; but recruiting someone who is not frum just to play basketball (even as they think everybody needs to respect other people's choices; please note the deep confusion as to what our mission is supposed to be, even as we welcome students of all different backgrounds and perspectives) is deeply troubling - not on the part of the student, but on the part of the institution.
And unrelated to our institution - but related to the Orthodox community in general - in light of a number of relatively recent newspaper articles, there is a need to set something clear for the halakhic record:
Playing ball/exercise on Shabbos for purely recreational (not professional or health-oriented) purposes inside an eruv while wearing bigdei shabbos entails a serious and nuanced discussion of how far afoul of שבתון, of אם תשיב משבת רגלך, it might run. Exercise done primarily for health reasons violates גזירת רפואה . But playing ball professionally on Shabbos even if you don't drive to the park or engage in any specific melakhah is unquestionably חילול שבת – more specifically חילול שבת מדברי קבלה and חילול השם דאורייתא. On the other hand, someone who is playing professionally, but will not show up under any guise on Shabbos and Yom Tov - that is a tremendous קידוש השם. Choosing YU over Division I because continuing to study Torah or being in a more Torah-friendly atmosphere is more important – that is a huge קידוש השם, but it doesn't depend on how well or poorly you play.
It is in this context that I find the celebration of the importance of the truly unimportant to be deeply troubling – for example, in the video advertising our institution on its website (in all, about 100 seconds), I count three appearances of the men's basketball (note, by the way, that we have many other sports teams that could have shared the limelight – our cross-country team has been rather successful year in and year out; we have sports teams at Stern College that could have gotten a cameo) – three appearances, one more than the inside of the Beis Midrash, and certainly more airtime. If I were to be מלמד זכות I would say that someone has decided that this will bring in more money and students. Even if this were an accurate assessment, I think that the message conveyed – of what is important in our institution - is rather unfortunate.
There are many things displayed in that video that are wonderful and central to the mission of an institution dedicated to Torah and its values: The Beis Midrash and religious-spiritual pursuits; College classes – science, humanities, business; The Innocence Project (an enormous קידוש השם). The basketball team? Not so much. We should be careful about making the עיקר into a טפל and a טפל into the עיקר.
