learning the cheers

When was the last time you… 

• attend­ed a concert?
• went to a sports event?
• played a musi­cal instru­ment with a group of people?
• played a group sport?
• par­tic­i­pat­ed in a barn raising?
• helped build a house with Habi­tat For Humanity?
• par­tic­i­pat­ed in any col­lec­tive endeavor?

Same with me.

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this was first shared with my con­gre­ga­tion Etz Chaim of Ramona (Cal­i­for­nia), long before COVID-19 and our phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, for Erev Yom Kip­pur of 5760 (Sep­tem­ber 20, 1999). Repost­ed now in recog­ni­tion of a phys­i­cal­ly dis­tanced Super Bowl.

But that’s our task together.

We’re not used to doing this. Putting out effort for some­thing we have to share in com­mon is very unusu­al for us.

Those of you who were with us on the morn­ing of Rosh haShan­nah may recall that I led us through what we call the P’sukei d’Z­im­ra. I even got us all singing “Hal­lelu­jah!” I think we who were here togeth­er even enjoyed it. We felt good about rais­ing our voic­es in song.

When we end­ed those vers­es of song I men­tioned that we had done our warm-up exer­cis­es and we were, I hoped, ready to get up for the seri­ous effort ahead. I had hoped that we could main­tain the par­tic­i­pa­tion lev­el. How­ev­er, for some unclear rea­son, that did not hap­pen. I know, it does­n’t have to be that way. But so many of us are “out of prac­tice”. How did we fall out of prac­tice, and how can we change it?

jews invented the sports bar!

How many of us will watch the Super Bowl? How many hoped to get tick­ets to the World Series? Those of us who did­n’t… have you ever gone to sports bar to watch an impor­tant game?

Did you know that we Jews invent­ed the “sports bar”? When­ev­er you’re sit­ting in a syn­a­gogue, you’re in a precursor.

Over two thou­sand years ago, the Jews liv­ing all around the land of Israel lived a busy life. The main cultural/religious event hap­pened in Jerusalem up in the moun­tains. The roads were less than two lane and most peo­ple usu­al­ly had respon­si­bil­i­ties at home so they did not go up to the Tem­ple in Jerusalem as often as they might. In fact, the activ­i­ties in the tem­ple were divid­ed up so that dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties would have a reserved place (on the 50 yard line, or near the third base line, so to speak) at des­ig­nat­ed times of the year. Even then not every­one in town was able to go. When it was their turn, the town’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive would go up to Jerusalem to the Tem­ple and the locals would gath­er at their local club­house. In fact they called it a meet­ing house “Beit Knes­set”. There, in the town club­house the locals would wear the appro­pri­ate clothes, drink the appro­pri­ate drinks, eat the appro­pri­ate foods, and call out the appro­pri­ate cheers… as though they were there in Jerusalem with their bud­dies, the representatives.

I learned this les­son from my teacher Dr. Ellis Rivkin at HUC-JIR in Cincin­nati, OH, espe­cial­ly his book A hid­den rev­o­lu­tion — The Phar­isees’ Search for the King­dom with­in. How­ev­er, apply­ing the metaphor of the sports bar is my own extension.

After a while a local Howard Cosell would devel­op. He’d offer a com­men­tary on what every­thing was all about. We call this in Hebrew a “drash” and so, the club­house also came to be known as the “Beit haMidrash”.

So, here we are, two thou­sand years lat­er. We sit (pre- and (hope­ful­ly) post-pan­dem­ic) in our club­house. How­ev­er, many of us haven’t been prac­tic­ing, or we haven’t used our sea­son tick­ets. We don’t know how to rec­og­nize what a “first down” is and don’t under­stand what “off­sides”, nor a “pop-up foul” or “grounder” means, and so when the can­tor and rab­bi lead the foot­ball cheer: “Push ’em back, push ’em back, way back!”, we’re not all able to par­tic­i­pate with the right kind of intensity.

So, what are these cheers?

They’re designed to help us remember:

• who we are
• the rules of our existence
• why we’re here and
• what’s expect­ed of us.

You know that after the warm-up exer­cis­es the can­tor calls us all togeth­er to praise the Source of the cos­mos. As soon as we’ve done that we focus on the cos­mos itself, the flow of light and dark­ness. We then look inward a bit and call out the cheer that speaks of the con­nec­tion between the cos­mos, its cre­ator and human beings. And all of this leads us to a renewed aware­ness of the uni­ty of all cre­ation so we say the Shema.

Maybe the logos on the pen­nants are a bit out­dat­ed. Maybe the rhythms of the cheers need a renewed beat. But hey, think if it:

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

Can you imag­ine cheers more awe­some? It feels good, reas­sur­ing, even, to repeat them:

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

 

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

But it does­n’t stop there. We Jews believe that the Source of the cos­mos plays a role in human his­to­ry. I’ve ref­ered to this before. We cel­e­brate this in our hol­i­days (not Rosh haShan­nah and Yom Kip­pur, but) Pesach espe­cial­ly. And so we have spe­cial songs we sing that cheer about how this Source of the cos­mos inter­rupt­ed the cycle of events and set a tra­jec­to­ry into his­to­ry by enabling a group of slaves to go free. That’s what we’re doing when we sing:

Who is like you among all the team man­agers who peo­ple cheer for?

You enable redemption

Now this is get­ting per­son­al. Not only do we cheer that redemp­tion hap­pens, but that was our redemp­tion! The ten­sion and excite­ment builds:

Cos­mos

The flow of light and dark

The text that connects

The uni­ty of all

You enable redemption

It’s at this point that our cheers get up close and per­son­al. But, you get the point.

Join us at the club­house. To mix a vari­ety of metaphors, togeth­er we can cre­ate a cho­rus that will raise the roof.

ready for the kickoff?

Very few Juda­ic but­tons deal with sports. Of these, the vast major­i­ty are from var­i­ous Mac­cabi­ah events. A few com­mer­cial but­tons have images of Jew­ish sports fig­ures. Oth­ers, more nov­el­ty items, were cre­at­ed by Sal Kluger of Sim­cha Sales who pro­duced a great num­ber of Juda­ic but­tons and sold them (and oth­er chatch­kas) at “nycechatch­kas”.

This Kick Off but­ton was pro­duced by the Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Divi­sion of UJA-Fed­er­a­tion Joint Cam­paign (NYC) for the begin­ning of its annu­al fund-rais­ing dri­ve. While at the time I was on the staff (my first job after rab­binic school)…

…I had noth­ing to do with its production.

Date:	1979
Size:	5.5
Pin Form:	clasp
Print Method:	cel­lu­loid
Text	KICK OFF

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lying around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point, they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.

The image at the top is of The Fair­fax Five per­form­ing at the inter­sec­tion of Fair­fax Ave. and Rose­wood Ave. in Los Ange­les on Octo­ber 2, 1972. The group con­sist­ed of (from left to right: Mark Hurvitz, Eilene Water­stone, Jay (Jacob) Ben­der, Steven Puzarne, & Bill Lyfield [Eytan Ben She­viya] (on drums, hid­den)); pho­tog­ra­ph­er, unknown.