What was I, a fifty-six year old rabbi doing, on an afternoon in August, barely one month before the Jewish High Holidays at the training camp of the New York Jets? My colleagues were occupied at this critical time in crafting their sermons for the single annual opportunity to speak with their entire congregation. I delayed that challenge because a congregational friend had arranged through a mutual acquaintance to meet second round draft choice offensive guard, Matt O'Dywer at the Hofstra training site. Following practice, his sweaty three hundred and eight pound six foot five corpus embraced me for a photograph which would replace the now irrelevant Blair Thomas mugshot in my study appropriately autographed "To Rabbi, good luck."
I had stood in line at a local sporting goods outlet for an hour for the chance to shake Thomas' hand and obtain what seemed at that time like a valuable signature from a future NFL star. Such miscalculations and wasted time has been common for zealous Jet fans over the years.
Assorted perquisites that are voluntarily extended to clergy by laypeople are an informal supplement to the formal rabbinical diploma of the rabbi. Twenty years ago a generous member of my congregation gifted me two tickets for single games of the New York Jets. "I can't use them and the rabbi comes before everyone else who might want them", he explained. That gracious act really made me feel that I had arrived as a rabbi! Additional confirmation of my status occurred when upon arrival at the stadium I discovered that the seats were on the fifty yard line. Eventually, single game tickets became a pair of season tickets for myself and my son...perenially on the fifty. "They are yours as long as I am alive", my benefactor assured me.
Weekends, holidays, AM and PM are demarcations of time that do not appear on the clergyman's clock. My rabbinic service requires that I be on call seven days a week, beginning with early morning worship services and ending with late night meetings. To be able to escape, first to Shea stadium and then to Giant Stadium for an afternoon of Jet football, became my temporal oasis. Scanning the newspapers for updates on the Jets personnel was a pleasant interruption to emergency phone calls and consultations. Even the tediousness of summer training camp was a respite from the busyness of the religious business. Since on Saturday I was occupied guiding others to a proper observance of the Sabbath, the four hour break watching Jet games became, in effect, my secular mini-Sabbath.
As the years unfolded, though, I began to have the gnawing feeling that what I hoped would be my respite had become my punishment. Enduring cold, wind and rain only to witness teams that crashed in December and did not do much better before that, seemed a masochistic break from the wear and tear of my clerical work. My hopes were lifted each time there was a change of coach or the drafting of a star college player. Todd and Harper and Klecko and Mcneil were names almost as familiar to me as Rabbi Hillel and David Ben Gurion. Unfortunately, Jones (Lam) and Farrout and Nagle were equally well-known.
The Miami Mud Bowl of l983 when my Jets fell short but one game away from the Super Bowl was a loss which lingered as painfully as a failed High Holiday sermon. In particularly ugly seasons, my personal Super Bowl was the uncanny ability of the lowly Jets to somehow upset the usually superior New York Giants during regular season play, as in l993. At the end of each yearly ordeal, I would consider relinquishing my gifted tickets, but a voice urged me to keep them in the hope of revival the next year.
My son went on to college and then graduate school where academic immersion replaced his former absorption with the New York Jets. Friends and members of the congregation initially welcomed my invitation to occupy the second seat, but as the dismal seasons progressed, it became more difficult to secure game partners. Eventually, only teenagers who were students in my religious studies classes and who were without long memories of a cheerless Jet history accompanied me---or their fathers, who were discreet admirers of that day's opponent.
Today, it is the image of the suffering of the Biblical Job that defines my mood as the new season begins. Why do I deserve to endure such anguish for twenty years? Is the Almighty a Michigan fan and punishing my youthful sins in Columbus, Ohio when I served as a boyscout usher at football games of Ohio State University and began my lifetime love affair with this sport?
I conclude with Job that my pathetic lot must all be part of the divine plan. But what heavenly wisdom governs a franchise which consistently drafts miserably, plans poorly, and plays dismally? Job's friends counseled him that God's beneficence would not necessarily be apparent in one lifetime. My recurrent nightmare is that in the season immediately following my death, the Jets arrive to the Superbowl. My wife wakes me as I groan, assuring me that it is only a bad dream. I explain that it is the reality, not the dream, that elicits my anguish.
The ability to laugh at one's situation is a helpful response to painful situations in life. A tattered quip tells that had Moses, on his departure from Egypt, turned to the right instead of the left, the Arab nations would own the sand and the Jewish nation the oil! Had my benevolent friend gifted me Giant and not Jet tickets two decades ago, it would not be the image of Job, but that of LT which would accompany me each Sunday afternoon..
A good friend invited me to officiate at his daughter's wedding today. For the first time in two decades, I will miss the home opener. Is this a frustrating absence,or the Almighty's way of providing me with temporary relief from additional anguish after last week's hurricanel in Miami? But out with such thoughts. For I am at my core a Jet fan who is preparing for the Jewish New Year. High Holidays bring high hopes for the world, the Jewish people, and for my New York Jets,which is the underlying reason that I found my way to Matt O'Dwyer and his perspiring colleagues on that sweltering summer day.