Fandom Hits a Religion's Boundaries

Gerald L. Zelizer

This weekend's football game between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills was scheduled in western New York for late Sunday night in order to enable many of those in the extensive metropolitan New York Jewish fandom to return home after their Yom Kippur eve services and still be able to catch most of the competition on television.

The moguls of sports planning finally heeded the whining of the area's large Jewish population, which in past seasons objected when area sports collided with major Jewish holidays.

A different solution is illustrated in the story told of the congregant who approaches his rabbi complaining of a conflict between Yom Kippur and the World Series, which so frequently overlap. The rabbi eases the concern of his layperson: "That is what VCRs are for." To which, the congregant answers, "Oh, you mean that I can tape the Yom Kippur service?"

I am a rabbi by calling and a fan of the New York Jets by obsession. For 25 years, through thin and recently thick, my seats on the 50-yard line, gifted to me yearly by a generous benefactor, have been an oasis of respite in a rabbinate that keeps me on call 24 hours a day and seven days a week. My passion for the Jets is such that I have attended their training camp on sweltering August days, when many of my colleagues were behind their computers grinding out their holy day message. I have gerrymandered my schedule and broken a few speeding laws in order to attend a Jets-Giants rivalry on the afternoon prior to Yom Kippur but still return to my synagogue properly costumed in body and soul in order to repent myself and assist my flock in their repentance for 26 hours.

But this Sunday night, given the game's later starting time, I will confront the border between that which is transient and that which is transcendent. The results and details of this game, which would ordinarily occupy my every attention, will have to wait until Monday evening after sundown. Because Yom Kippur begins just before sunset Sunday, I will not watch the game, although some Jews will.

Individual sports personalities, too, have, occasionally, staked out personal limits. A common thread connected Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, who sat out a World Series game that fell on Yom Kippur, with Muhammad Ali, whose newly acquired Islamic religion compelled him to refuse induction into the Army and resulted in the subsequent stripping of his boxing titles.

Similar lines in the sand have been drawn by lesser-known figures. Eli Herring became a high school football coach in Utah after rejecting a draft offer from the Oakland Raiders in 1995 because, as a religious Mormon, he believes that a sports competition should not occur on a Sunday, which is a day for church, not work.

This is not to gainsay the function of sports in today's American society. As Catholic theologian Michael Novak has written: "Because baseball, football and basketball have great ritual and drama attached to them, and the entire population participates, sports is more like a natural religion. It's not Christianity or Judaism, but it is a kind of pagan awe-inspiring moment."

The stadiums are cathedrals, the cheers are prayers, and attention is devoted to statistics and box scores rather than, as in classic religious contexts, theology and liturgy. The National Football League may have seduced many a couch potato away from his family on Sunday, but it has also bonded fathers and sons who watch and discuss limitlessly their favorite teams.

But how to compare the significance of this Sunday's Jets-Buffalo match with these words from the Jewish sacred liturgy of that same evening: "Dust am I though I live; surely after death will I be dust. In your presence, aware of my frailty, I am embarrassed and confused. With your great compassion, wipe away the sins I have committed."

It's no news that a rabbi, even one who is a sports fan, will refrain from watching sports on the holiest night of the Jewish year. The news is the boundaries established by religion.

To the fundamentalist of all faiths, God has stated clearly in Scripture what is prohibited and what is forbidden. But many Americans participate in more liberal forms of organized religion. Those denominations believe in God as fervently, but also acknowledge evidence that religious writings and traditions are shaped by human interpretation. Therefore, the choices of a religious liberal are actually more difficult than those of the fundamentalist.

Nevertheless, the adherent of liberal religion also knows with instinctive certainty when he bumps against a border that cannot be crossed.