ספורט

00:00 This is Iggers, and today we are going to talk about the Rebbe's position on sports. Specifically, we're not gonna talk today about spectator sports, about spectating on sports, about being a fan of a sports team. We're just going to talk about playing sports, and obviously because adults are, uh, fat and lazy by and large, this will largely center around children playing sports. Although a lot of the values that we'll see here in these letters will also apply to adults engaging in physical fitness activities, uh, marathoning and the like. Uh, the first letter that I wanna show you on this topic, none of them are from any particular year, this is a collection of letters on the topic, is Vav Tav Shin Ayin Beis. That's the designator on the letter. It's from Tav Shin Yud Tes. And here I think you get a pretty good idea of the Rebbe's nuance on the topic of yeshiva students, of people learning Torah, also taking part in physical activities and in physical sports. And in this letter, the Rebbe is essentially going to say, "Of course Torah is important, but of course also making sure that the people who are learning in yeshivas are involved in some form of group physical activity with a Torah stamp of, of approval on it, specifically for American students, is an issue of their wellbeing and their health, and should be encouraged." So you see here in this letter sort of a, uh, a, a heter, if you will, for basketball during the

01:06 break when you're in yeshiva. Uh, this is Tes Zayin Adar Sheni Tav Shin Yud Tes, and the Rebbe says, "Shalom u-bracha. I'm responding to your letter from Erev Purim," so it's almost timely. "And, uh, I've attached with it-- you, you attached with this letter," the Rebbe says, "a letter from one of the mothers of one of the students that's in your class." So a m- a concerned mother wrote to the yeshiva. She's going to be, uh, she's going to be happier on her end as long as things are going that way. The Rebbe's saying, "I read this mother's letter. She's not really opposed to her son becoming religious. She's opposed to her son becoming sad and sad and fat. Uh, she doesn't want him to be unhealthy or, uh, or to be mentally unhealthy. So make sure he's healthy and mentally healthy, and she's also gonna be okay with his religiosity." We're not going to read the rest of this letter, although it's fascinating and it's in your WhatsApp group. In the end, the Rebbe talks about the importance of teachers being so, uh, into Yiddishkeit that they automatically impact their students just by being in their surroundings, ayin sham in that letter. So what we get from this first letter is the Rebbe is not at all saying that people shouldn't be playing sports in yeshiva, that, uh, Hasidisha people don't play sports or engage in physical activity. He's actually saying in this letter that it might be unhealthy for young American yeshiva students

04:53 to not be engaged in some form of physical activity as long as it's sanctioned by the yeshiva, it's in a, it's in a Torah and Yirah style, it's done in a way that's kosher, of course, and it doesn't get in the way of the tzedakah of Limud HaTorah. The Rebbe seems to feel that in yeshiva there's, uh, it's, it's justifiable, not just justifiable, but happy, but healthy, and not just healthy, but perhaps mandatory that the students participate in these, uh, in these group physical activities. I don't think this letter specifically says this, the one that I'm about to show you. It's labeled Yud Beis Taf Kuf Samech He. I'm reading into something a little too deeply, and I'm warning you about that. But in this letter on the screen from the year Tav Shin Lamed Ches, uh, the Rebbe is responding to somebody who, if you look below the line, had said that he wanted to donate an ulam for sport in Seminar Beis Rivkah in Far Chabad. He wanted to donate a gym. He wanted to donate a giant room in the seminary in Beis Rivkah for them to play, uh, to-- for them to play in, for activities, for, I don't know, soccer, basketball, whatever people do in indoor gyms. Indoor, uh, hockey. I have no idea. Uh, he was donating what they would call a gym in America, which is a, uh, not a gym like you work out at, a gym like a school gym. And the Rebbe doesn't push back

05:52 on this at all. The Rebbe says, "Thank you so much." So the, uh, Rebbe says in this letter, uh, "Al debesh dinad lev mar," based on the donation that you're saying that this person gave, which is that he wants to donate a, uh, a giant room for sporting activities at Beis Rivkah in Far Chabad. It sounds like it's all going, uh, going, uh, as planned. And then the Rebbe says, . The Rebbe says that, uh, "I cannot emphasize to you enough, and certainly I don't need to emphasize for you, the importance of any of these sorts of good actions and donations when it comes to expanding good Chinuch among Jewish girls." Uh, specifically, every one of them one day grow up to be an among the Jewish people. And she will run her home according to the Chinuch that she receives. So the Rebbe receives a letter saying somebody's donating a gym to Beis Rivkah, and the Rebbe's response is-- Beis Rivkah in, in Kfar Chabad, and the Rebbe's response is, "Great. Everything that goes into girls' Chinuch is a positive thing. They become Jewish leaders. They become people who are Jewish leaders in the households, and they'll end up raising their homes in the way that they learn in school." Which to me is sort of the Rebbe's, uh, quiet haskama to there being rooms in schools for children to engage in sports. At the same time, uh, that's the end of the positive side. If you if you wanna know what the, the

07:10 Rebbe like-- If you want the part where the Rebbe likes you playing sports when you're in yeshiva or seminary, and that's the part you wanna hear, now is the time to stop listening. From here on, I'm going to show you the Rebbe complaining at length about how much emphasis is put on sports specifically in schools. That's the end of the positive side. On the negative side, this letter is, uh, labeled Zayin Kuf Lamed Tes. We're going to the very middle of the letter, and, uh, the middle letter is a very harsh letter. It's one of the harshest letters I think I've ever read because, uh, in this letter, people write to the Rebbe saying they wanna visit the Russian Jews who are still trapped behind the Iron Curtain. And the Rebbe says, "I don't think you should go." They'd gotten permission to, like, make a-- make some sort of visit from Eretz Israel. And he said, "I don't think you should go." And, uh, he initially didn't wanna tell them they shouldn't go, but they kept on pushing him. So he says, "If you're forcing me to tell you, I, I don't wanna tell people things they're not gonna listen to, but I think you're going to have a negative impact on the Russians," which is just a wild thing to say on the letter. The Rebbe says, "These are people who have sacrificed everything and are keeping kosher and Shabbos despite incredible difficulties, and they're going to meet you, and you are not doing

08:06 that. And I think you're going to take the wind out of their sails." And if you look at what the Rebbe says here when he describes their skewed pri-- the skewed priorities of the people who wanna visit Russia, he specifically mentions that they put a little bit too much emphasis on things like sports. I'm gonna read that section to you. These, uh, Yidden in Russia have been living in this way for, for tens of years, uh, under incredible stress to keep every last bit of Yiddishkeit. They're proud of how they dress. They're proud of the Torah they learn, and they don't give in to societal pressures. Now you're going to come and visit them, and they're going to finally meet people who live in a land where they're allowed to learn Torah and keep mitzvahs openly. No, no government stopping them. Some of you are gonna be coming from Eretz Israel, and imagine they're gonna meet Jews from the Holy Land in a land where nobody stops them from being good Yidden. And even from a distance, they're going to notice that there's something wrong with you. They're going to see just by the way-- just by the arrivals of the people who are coming to visit them, that, that you do everything possible to make sure you don't look like Jews. You make your faces not look Jewish. I assume that means that they don't have beards. They don't dress like Jews. They don't have their tzitzit hanging out . So the first thing

09:19 they're going to notice is that they're risking their lives to look like Jews, and you guys living in Eretz Israel, where you're allowed to look like Jews, specifically don't wanna look like Jews. When they ask, when they do-- when they then ask you, "What do you do for a living, and how are you using this incredible freedom you have when it comes to Torah and mitzvahs?" What are you going to answer? You're going to answer, This person's a soccer player, and he's very successful. This one's involved in theater, and he's very good at that. The very best of them, of course, some of them do keep Torah and mitzvahs, but what do they spend most of their time doing? They wanna learn in universities, right? They, they use their brain for university learning. So yeah, they learn Torah, but they're also mainly involved-- Their main efforts are in university learning. That they are completely free. And every now and then, when they have free time, they're going to learn Torah. The, uh, Rebbe says it's a big question whether you're going to do more harm than good by introducing yourselves to people who are baalei mesirat nefesh. So the Rebbe here-- The reason why I'm bringing this is in this letter where the Rebbe talks about the skewed priorities of people who are free to learn Torah and do mitzvahs all the time. He lists all of the essentially time-wasting activities people engage in when they should be learning Torah. And on that list is

10:43 playing sports, going to, uh, uh, being involved in theater, and studying in universities. There's people here-- So the Rebbe puts these in three categories of time-wasting activities that would be better spent on learning Torah. You might remember the following, the letter coming up. This is the letter that we had a whole shiur on. We were trying to get to the bottom of it. I don't know if we ever fully did, but the letter here is It's a very short letter. Uh, in this letter-- Did I get the right one? Uh, yes, it is the right one. Uh, you have to look below the line to figure out what happened, but they were doing a raffle. Uh, they were doing a, uh, raffle to in-- to, uh, to increase the Chinuch of the children. And, uh, in this raffle-- Let me get the part we need. They raffled off a, uh, a soccer ball, and the Rebbe is furious that they would raffle off a soccer ball. I mean, I, I don't dare say furious by the Rebbe, but look at the exclamation points. And he has four exclamation points-- Excuse me, two exclamation points, two question marks. So that's a, that's a lot of fury in a letter. Was there literally nothing else in the land of Israel you could have used besides a soccer ball? Did nobody who was involved in this project think that maybe the prize given out for this activity should have been something that has to do with Chabad or

11:51 the Alter Rebbe, anything but a soccer ball? Uh, give them bicycles, give them, give them, uh, give them candies, but a soccer ball? but not a soccer ball. So we see here a real, uh, a real resistance to the idea that there would be-- that the, that the big prize or the big obsession, that something that would make a child's eyes light up should be a sporting object. We have a sicha from the Rebbe, which I can only say, uh, is, uh, is, is timed in a, in an interesting way. Uh, this sicha is from the year Tuv Shin Lammed Gimel. It's from Vayikra-Chesh Teves. You'll find it in Terias Menachem, volume seventy, um, on page three twenty-two. Volume seventy on page three twenty-two, and this was shortly after the Munich massacre, uh, when the Yidden went to the Olympics in Germany and were, and were, Rachmana Litzlan, killed. And the Rebbe talks about this specifically, and h- the sicha says, "I don't know what they were doing at the Olympics. I don't know what they were doing in Germany at the Olympics, and, uh, I don't approve of the Olympics in general." So I wanted to show you this anti-Olympic sicha, uh, to once again emphasize some of the things that the Rebbe finds problematic about, about engaging in sports, specifically engaging in Olympic sports. So the Rebbe says here, uh, let me go down here. «There was a horrible thing that happened in the past few weeks.» That would be the Munich massacre.

13:04 «Regarding the sport which is called the Olympics. This is, of course, based on a form of Avodah Zarah that used to exist in ancient Greece.» And then the Rebbe describes it in what can I-- can only call the most disparaging terms possible for, uh, describing Avodah Zarah, which is great because this is how we should describe Avodah Zarah. But, uh, the, the words are so much fun that I can't skip them. The Rebbe says, "Once upon a time, the Greeks were involved in all kinds of wisdom, and they were involved in the wisdom of math, and they were involved in the wisdom of building, and they came to the conclusion that they also need to be involved in the wisdom of faith. So they had to invent a faith, but they didn't have one. So they decided they were gonna pick a certain mountain called Olympus, and they were going to say that the god of all gods is on top of that mountain, and he's the god of water, and he's the god of the sun, and that there are different gods up there along with him, and that they're all going to fight with each other all the time. And whenever they get in an argument, this causes negative things to happen in the world and negative attributes to enter the world." This was their bright idea. Even though the Rebbe says, "This nev-- this doesn't make any sense at all," and it really doesn't make any sense because if you're going to

14:03 make up a religion, at least put the place where the gods are supposed to be somewhere that people can't reach. But here you're putting it on a mountain where, uh, where anybody can go, where, uh, where, where cows and sheep and even people can walk up to the top of the mountain and see there's no god. So it was actually a pretty dumb religion. But in any event, the people would go up to that mountain, they would offer sacrifices, and they would celebrate holidays. This turned into a custom that once every four years-- this is still the Rebbe talking. This turned into a custom that once every four years, uh, all of these seven nations-- all of these seventy nations of the world would come, and they would arrange a sporting event, uh, running far distances and also, uh, uh, coming face to face and hitting each other and wrestling with each other. And anybody who succeeds in beating up his friend more gets a medal. So this is the Rebbe's description of the Olympics. A, uh, idolatrous ceremony meant to celebrate a stupid Greek god, uh, that is-- that involves giving medals to people who can run faster, beat each other up. Uh, the, the Rebbe-- the Olympics according to the Rebbe. They then take this event, which is based on Avodah Zarah and is about who can beat each other up better, uh, to serve a foreign god, and they send Bachirim from Eretz Yisrael. And they say, They say that they are

15:13 the representatives of the entire Eretz Yisrael of all the Jewish people, when meanwhile, they are messengers of no one but themselves. They are not the messengers of the Jewish people. Nobody notices what's happening. No one understands, uh, the gravity of what's going on here. And the fact is there's not even any real advantage to it. The Rebbe says especially the kind of activity they do, this isn't like healthy physical activity that people sometimes engage in to make themselves healthier. When a person pushes themself to run that far or to push themself that hard, doctors say that it's damaging for their heart and brain. And by the way, that, that's, that's true, whereas being, uh, being in good shape is something that's very good for the body. It is generally understood in medicine that, uh, that the level of exertion that most athletes put themselves under isn't necessarily healthy, uh, espec-especially when it comes to contact sports, where we now know. The Rebbe says that it can damage their minds. That certainly is the case with, uh, with heavy contact sports like football and like boxing. And the Chiddush this year, the Rebbe says, that they were gonna make it in Germany, and this is a place where six million Yidden were killed. And, uh, it would have made sense to not go at all because this is a place that murdered a bunch of Yidden. Uh, but then they-- so they do this, this Avodah Zarah event, and this year they do it in a

16:22 place that likes to kill Yidden in the first place. The Rebbe's just shocked that we were involved in this thing at all. Then the Rebbe says, It's not-- as if it's not bad enough that they're sending Bachirim from Eretz Yisrael to Germany to participate in an event that reflects Avodah Zarah. They go one further, and they call the Jewish team the Maccabees, and they even call them now in Eretz Yisrael. They have the Ma- the Maccabee Games, the Maccabi Games. They call this-- they call engaging in sporting events being a Maccabee. And the Rebbe says that's the biggest insult of all. Maccabee was the name that was given to the people who fought the Avodah Zarah of the Greeks. And here we're do- what we're doing is we're giving into the Avodah Zarah of the Greeks and naming the people who give into it the Maccabees. The Maccabees succeeded in kicking this out of Eretz Yisrael, and we're now using that name to be people who celebrate and dance with the Greeks. And that is the biggest stir of all. The Rebbe goes on here to discuss a lot of other problems that are going on in Eretz Yisrael at the time, but you really see here a strong pushback against the Olympics for several reasons. Uh, evil countries host the Olympics, and we end up going. The Olympics reflect Avodah Zarah, and the Yidden call-- the Yidden who participate call themselves Maccabees, when in fact that is the opposite of what it is to

17:35 be a Maccabee. Another letter that we saw previously, so I'm not gonna spend too much time on it, is a letter labeled Gimel Tuv Shin Nun Tes. That's from the year Tuv Shin Tes Tav. Somebody wrote to the Rebbe saying that their child was very upset because he wants to wear a yarmulke, but in the sporting events between his school and another school, there's a rule that if he wants to play soccer in the sporting event between the two schools, he'll have to remove his yarmulke. And the Rebbe says down here In this situation where the fact that he wears a yamaka will mean that he can't participate in the sporting event between the two schools. The Rebbe says, "I think this should be explained as a hint from on high that this is meant to prevent him from some disastrous outcome." That something horrible will happen to him if he continues to play soccer. That is, the Rebbe's saying that if he was told that he has to take off his yamaka to play soccer, that's a sign from heaven that if he continues playing soccer, something horrible will happen to him. Now, this is not the Rebbe saying that he's anti-soccer, but this is a statement where, uh, if the, if the any-- if the, if the sport is getting in the way of any practice of Yiddishkeit, that's a sign that we shouldn't be involved in it. Now, is this a shit across the border, is this the Rebbe saying one thing

18:45 to one boy? Can't promise you, but I definitely get something from this letter that I think-- I, I, I think what you sense from this letter is that if Yiddishkeit is coming up against, if, if, if the, if the sporting event is making the kid miss Sefer or making the kid take off a yamaka, or making the kid distracted from Yeshiva, this is a sign that they shouldn't be involved in the sporting event at all. That's very clear from this letter. And the Rebbe says if the child's upset that they won't be able to participate in the sporting event because they have to wear a yamaka, switch schools rather than have them participate in the sporting event without a yamaka. One more quick letter that I wanna show you before we go to our final letter is, uh, this is in one of these giant There's a real overemphasis on, uh, on sports w-- in, in a lot of schools, on athletics. Even though this is surprising, that in some places they will, uh, weigh the value of a student's athletic prowess over the value of the student's intellectual prowess. That is, that in some schools you can get an, an athletic scholarship. In some schools, you need to maintain only a very small GPA and otherwise you're able to engage in, uh, in sporting activities, and your value to the school is your value as an athlete. So the Rebbe says there's a real messed up priorities in some schools, that schools are supposed

22:12 to be places where people learn, and yet in some schools, they value people based on their athletic prowess over their intellectual prowess, which the Rebbe considers ridiculous. This is the way that the administrators weigh the students, and certainly this is the way the students start to weigh themselves. Students become-- students understand that there are two ways to be successful at school. I can be really, really good at school, or I can be really good at sports, and good at sports is just as good. So this, this infects the entire academic institution. The damage that is done by this sort of approach where athletics in a school are considered any kind of a priority. And also the terrible damage done by looking up to sports stars. Somebody asked at the beginning of this year if we were going to have any discussion of, uh, of being a fan of a sport. This is really the only hint to that, that we have. There's the, the terrible damage done by looking up to sports icons. This should be self-understood that this is terribly, that this is terribly damaging. The two things the Rebbe's pointing out again as terribly damaging are overemphasis of the importance of athletic prowess in schools and an emphasis on idolizing, uh, idolizing sports stars. The Rebbe in the rest of this letter says that-- I'm sorry, I just wanna read this last sentence here. That everything that I'm saying only applies to regular athletics, you know, game of soccer, game of baseball. But

23:25 there are certain sports that . There are certain sports that raise up the Yetzer Hara for aggression, like wrestling, like boxing, uh, like martial arts, as the Rebbe's gonna say in the rest of this letter, and those the Rebbe is even more opposed to. So when it comes to physical contact sports, the Rebbe is quite opposed. When it comes to more idol sports, where it doesn't necessarily wake up the Yetzer Hara and tell it, "Let's beat something up," but it's more of a-- I would put more idol sports in the categories of things like, uh, racket sports, baseball, soccer perhaps, unless you're playing it at a high enough level that you're smacking each other in the face. Probably not football, at least not tackle football. That's a, that's a contact sport. So less contact sports, the Rebbe says the real concern is overemphasis and idolizing the stars. Contact sports is an initi-- there's an additional, uh, concern, which is that it creates a certain aggression between people as the Yetzer Hara for aggression. So when we look at all these letters together, we go all the way back to the beginning, now that we've knocked sports a lot. Let's not forget how we started. We started off with a letter from the Rebbe, from where the Rebbe says that in Yeshiva, if the boys are all, uh, uh, they, they have the Sidre Limud, they're keeping their star them well, and there's a period of time where everybody's engaged in a physical activity, or everybody's

24:28 engaged in a hike, or everybody's engaged in a sport, not only is it healthy for them to do that, it's a hill for them to do that. It gets, uh, it goes to Rambam's saying that a small injury below causes a big injury in the Neshamah, and that, uh, the parents will be happier and the students will be happier, especially American Bachurim. They absolutely need physical outlets. They need sports. They need sports in their schools. There needs to be set time for sports in their schools that is done in a Torah way, a tznius way, and that doesn't interfere with their studies. That the Rebbe's a big fan of. Uh, that we saw a letter where the Rebbe compliments somebody for strengthening the chinuch of a school when all they'd done was donate a gym to the school where they could be engaged in sports. So sports done within the context of school in a safe way, in a kaddish way, the way the Rebbe describes is, uh, is, is a din in Rambam, is a din in Maggid Mezritch, and is obviously something that we are a fan of. So is the Rebbe a fan of sports? When done like that. However, the way do sports is not like that. They, uh, prioritize it over their Torah learning, and the Rebbe says that's on the list of things that he considers, uh, such an-- such a, such a warped sense of priorities that it could be damaging to Russian Jewry to see how warped

25:25 our priorities are in the fact that people are engaged in sports at that level. We see that, uh, when children get very excited about a soccer ball as a toy, the Rebbe is upset about that. We see when it comes to the Olympic Games, professional sports at that level, specifically when it comes to the Olympics, the Rebbe is upset that Eretz Yisrael participates at all, mainly probably because it's involved in Avodah Zarah. But beyond that, because of the, uh... The Rebbe says it's not just the Avodah Zarah concern. He also says that there's not even really a, uh, a health, uh, advantage to this, because when they push themselves to that level where they're becoming professional athletes, they're probably causing more damage than, uh, than good to their bodies. You can't really justify it the way you did according to Rama and Hilchot Stei as prior to that. We saw that if Yiddishkeit is at all sacrificed by the-- by the-- by the sport, for example, if you can't, uh, play soccer while wearing a yamaka, that this is a sign according to the Rebbe that you should stop playing the sport and that the sport will be damaging to you. So, uh, the Rebbe is not willing to tolerate any sort of religious problems with sports. If it's sports or religion, obviously, obviously, Yiddishkeit is going to win over the sporting event. So while the Rebbe supports sports, that's only within the context of it not getting in the way, in the way of

26:23 Sidrei Limud. As the Rebbe does say near the bottom of this letter, "Kimu van be'hetem l'sidraatera ki etzebeza." This has to be sports played be'hetem that line up with Sidraatera, with the Starm of the Torah, and of course, with Halakha. When it comes to contact sports, you really see the Rebbe push back very hard. Somebody told the Rebbe that they wanted to become a professional boxer, and the Rebbe said, "No, not even to donate money to the Chabad House, and I'm sad you would even mention such a thing." It's possible this boxing letter and the Olympic letter are coming at the same time to have a-- to have the Rebbe pushing away the idea of pursuing a career in, uh, in professional sports, although I don't know that for sure. Tzadik Ian. This last letter that we looked at explains that, uh, the Rebbe is very concerned when schools do sports wrong. So we saw in our first letter, we said-- we kind of said that if the-- if the sports are in the school, it's sort of safe. Lavdaket, safe if the school has its priorities straight. If the school knows that what matters most is learning and that sports are just a way of blowing off some steam and keeping the body healthy, then the Rebbe is very happy with sports in schools. But some schools, the Rebbe says, they emphasize athletics over academics. And, uh, not only that, they champ-- they, they, they congratulate students for their athletic prowess, even if they're

27:22 not doing particularly well academically. And the Rebbe says this is incredibly harmful, uh, in addition to the fact that it's incredibly harmful for them to idolize sports stars. And this becomes twice as harmful when the sports that they are playing are sports that are contact sports, aggressive sports, that raise the yetzer hara of somebody and make them aggressive. So if I had to put it all in one sentence, big conclusion for a, what I, what I hope is something like a comprehensive shit of the Rebbe when it comes to sports, specifically among kids and in schools. If they're in Yeshiva and the Yeshiva has its priorities straight and it has time for sports, the Rebbe is not only, uh, okay with it, the Rebbe seems to be a fan of it. And if it becomes a priority over Torah learning, if it's something that gets in the way of the practice of religion, if it involved a v-- if it involves a Avodah Zarah, if it is the most important thing in the school, if it's more important than academics, and especially if it involves physical violence or any sort of strong contact, the Rebbe does not seem to be a fan at all. Okay, that's it.