Teach your children

With all the competition and diversion demanding our children’s attention these days, it’s refreshing to find a story that has “old-fashioned” values. Here’s one about a local school sporting event from The Jewish Advocate from Boston that speaks to a previous entry here in the Korner:

Faith places first

The Newton North girls who chose to be in synagogue Saturday rather than at a track meet in Franklin Park can consider themselves winners on a much higher field.

They put observing a nearly 4,000-year old tradition ahead of a day of sports. They put Judaism first.

That is part of what it means to belong to a religion. You make sacrifices for what you believe in. The track meet forced the girls to think about the importance of Rosh Hashanah. And, because of the publicity their story generated, they prompted a lot of other people to think about the holiday as well.

The Newton North athletes put themselves in good company. You don’t have to be a sports fan to remember Sandy Koufax. For a five-year stretch in the mid-1960s, Koufax was perhaps the most dominating pitcher in the history of baseball. But it was not his blazing fastball and mystifying curve that many Jews remember most, but rather a decision he made on Oct. 6, 1965. That day the Los Angeles Dodgers wanted him to pitch the first game in the World Series against the Minnesota Twins. But as it was Yom Kippur, Koufax refused to take the mound. As it would turn out, Koufax won two games in that series, including the seventh and deciding one, despite having had just two days rest.

The Massachusetts Coaches Association came under fire last week for scheduling a track meet on Rosh Hashanah — unfairly so. As the association notes, finding a place and time when thousands of students can gather is a logistical nightmare. For example, some students will miss another meet because PSATs are held the same day.

We give the association director credit for acknowledging that he should have taken Rosh Hashanah more seriously. “Personally, I’ve become a lot more aware of how holy a day it is,” Frank Mooney said. We believe him, but we can’t expect that he will always be able to avoid such conflicts in the future.

It’s interesting that so many Jews get upset when secular events are scheduled on the High Holidays. Where are they on the only holiday specified in the Ten Commandments?

In case you forgot, it’s the one noted in Commandment No. 4: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

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Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports © 2009 New Jersey Jewish News

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