Q:
What is the Rav’s opinion about a father who takes his children to an arena to watch basketball games or even just to follow the team’s progress?
A:
What’s our opinion about taking children to a basketball game? He’s taking children and teaching them to be dumbbells. Because the basketball game is nothing but stupidity.
It’s a very great non-approval of the gentiles when you see a newspaper heading. Headlines: The Knicks gained this man as a player for them. Headlines! Tremendous news! A bum who never went to class—he stayed outside in the yard all day long throwing a ball into a hoop—and they’re so happy that they were able to steal him from another team!
There’s nothing more stupid than interest in sports. We don’t care for sports at all. Yes, we believe in exercise, we believe in fresh air. It’s a good idea for yourself to walk fast in the street for a half hour every day. Very good! By all means! But sports in itself is a stupidity invented by the u’mos ha’olam.
Now once upon a time, they had different sports. They had sports of throwing human beings to wild animals. And thousands of Romans came together and enjoyed it tremendously. And when they saw that the lion took a man’s head in his mouth, and he cracked the man’s skull with the lion’s teeth, they roared with happiness. The wickedness of umos ha’olam was once terrible. Even today, there’s punching in the boxing ring. It’s a terrible thing. Hitting each other. Jews hate that kind of thing.
So at least these things have been substituted by basketball. Basketball is a harmless thing compared to the sports they played in the hippodromes. But it’s just as stupid. A black fellow gets up and he blocks the ball from going into the hoop and everybody starts cheering; they become wild with excitement. Just to excite the nerves? It’s meshugaim. It’s a wild meshugeneh civilization.
Every basketball stadium is like a big sign, “Here’s the place, where leitzim, fools get together.” Who comes there? Only dopes come there.
And therefore, to evince an interest in such things means you’re teaching children to admire and participate in enthusiasm over nothing; to be excited over nothing. That’s a very bad training—excited over nothing. We’re excited over good things. We’re excited over righteousness, over decency, but not over lo klum.
And therefore, there are so many other things to take children to see. If you want to, take children to look at beautiful plants and show them the niflaos haBorei, show them how out of the earth, המוציא לחם מן הארץ, how food comes out of the earth. You could show them bechina, niflaos haBorei. Wonderful things to show your children. Yes, many things to show your children.
At worst, you can take them to the zoo. המשנה את הבריות. You could take them to the zoo at least. But to be interested in gentiles playing basketball is nothing at all. It’s just a waste of time and it causes the minds to deteriorate.
June 1999
