“RABBI’S MUSINGS (&
AMUSINGS)”
Erev Shabbos Kodesh
Parshas Yisro
19 Shevat 5779/January 25,
2019
Joe McConnen was a husband, father, grandfather, neighbor,
activist, and philanthropist. But above all, he was legendary as an absolutely
diehard New York Giants fan. They said he bled (big) blue. He was obsessed with
everything football and his schedule surrounded the NFL schedule.
Joe’s father Phil had raised him on football. Though all
their friends were more into the Yankees and baseball, Phil and Joe’s first
love was football. But as fanatical as Phil had been about football, Joe was
far more invested.
All week long he would talk about the games. He was the
quintessential Monday morning quarterback. He would review every play ad nauseum
and was a regular caller on all the local sports talk shows.
Joe was meticulous about casting his predictions for the
coming week, after hours of contemplation and agonizing over every statistic
and strategy. On Saturday and Sunday, no one was able to talk to Joe about anything
else. He had season tickets and didn’t miss a game, no matter whether the
Giants were playing at home or anywhere else in the country. He didn’t miss a
Super Bowl since he was eight years old. Even when Jenna, his beloved wife of sixty-three
years, died two days before the big game, Joe made it to the game. He knew that
that’s what Jenna would have wanted him to do.
Joe invested tremendous amounts of his wealth in various
football endeavors. The strange thing about Joe was that despite his incredible
love for football, he never included his son Mike in any of his football
dealings. He never took him to a game and never discussed the game with him. In
fact, Mike didn’t know the difference between a fullback and a wide receiver.
On his death bed, when Joe begged Mike to carry on the
McConnen family’s devotion to football Mike begrudgingly agreed.
The problem was that after years of being neglected by his
father because of football, Mike didn’t have any love for the game. Still,
despite his resentment towards football he loved his father, and so after Joe’s
passing, Mike began to attend every game. He would come late and leave early,
and during most of the game he kept busy texting and checking social media. He
never cared to discuss the games and he cast his predictions without giving
them much thought. As per his father’s final request, Mike also made sure to
bring his own sons, Eric and Joe Jr., to every game.
To Mike’s chagrin, as his boys reached adolescence, they
began to refuse to attend the games. All of Mike’s reasoning, yelling, cajoling
and discussion about family tradition and respect fell on deaf ears. They were
simply not interested.
Mike tried everything. He got them special passes to be on
the field, and even to meet some star players, but it was all to no avail. Even
the frenzied excitement of the playoffs and Super Bowl did nothing for them.
The more he pushed the more they seemed to resist.
One day, Mike was speaking with one of his father’s close
friends. After reminiscing about his father and his unquenchable love for the
game, Mike poured out his heart. He tearfully related how frustrated he was
with his children for not valuing the family tradition. He admitted that he was
at wits end and didn’t know what else to do.
The friend replied that he wasn’t really surprised. After
all, it wasn’t really hard to see that Mike himself didn’t care much for
football and was only interested in assuaging his guilt and fulfilling his
promise to his father. His children didn’t want to have any part in a time-consuming
superficial endeavor.
If he really wanted his children to value the game, then he
had to value the game. If he got into it and didn’t just attend passively and disinterestedly,
he would become emotionally attached to the game like his father was. Then his
children may begin to love the game too.
We don’t give over values with words, lectures, or guilt
trips. We convey values through living them and demonstrating emotional
attachment and personal connection. When we see that others find meaning and
purpose from their involvement in something then we yearn for that connection
as well. This is surely true about parents as well.
While Mike McCannon and his issue may be fictitious, our
ultimate desire to instill love and deep connection to Torah and Judaism is
very real.
We want our children to “go long” in transmitting the Torah
to their children, and to always “remain in bounds” of halacha. (The desire to
always get the “quarter back” is just a nasty joke....)
To accomplish that we must make sure that our observance is
not just a matter of doing what we were taught and fulfilling our obligations,
but something we are passionate about because we recognize that it is where
fulfillment lies.
Our ancestors emotionally called out “na’aseh v’nishma”. Their
words have remained ingrained within us until today, thousands of years later
and worlds apart.
Good Shabbos & Shabbat Shalom,
R’ Dani and Chani Staum