Q:
What’s the Torah opinion about joining in the excitement about the Super Bowl?
A:
The Torah opinion on the Super Bowl. Well, I’ll tell you my opinion. When you invest your enthusiasm in a football game to that extent, you’re robbing the important things of life from the excitement due to them.
That’s an important principle you’re hearing now. We don’t have enough enthusiasm in ourselves to share it with anyone or anything else. And if a person invests his enthusiasm in anything else, it detracts from his excitement about Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
And therefore, when people go to a football game and get excited; they’re all heated up and they see how they’re fighting over the football and one is running, he makes a touchdown and they start shouting, בקהלם על תחד כבודי – a Jew shouldn’t be among them. Excited over what?! Over לא כלום!
Yes, Simchas Torah, when they’re taking a Sefer Torah into the aron kodesh, everybody is leaping and shouting in honor of the Torah. Yes. As much as you have, you should put into it. But other things, to leap and shout about a touchdown? You’re robbing the Torah when you express enthusiasm for anything else.
It’s an important lesson. Not only a football game. Let’s say you have a stamp collection and a guest comes to your house and you want to show him your stamp collection and the guest looks at it but he doesn’t say anything. So you think, “He doesn’t appreciate it. He doesn’t have a taste in good things.” No. Be dan l’kaf zchus. He’s not excited over zero. Why should he waste excitement over zero?
And if you say, “Let’s have music appreciation; let’s appreciate the various kinds of fine music,” and your guest sits deadpan and doesn’t show any interest in the music, don’t think he’s lacking in intellectual development. On the contrary, he’s superdeveloped. He doesn’t waste his time on לא כלום.
Don’t enjoy the things that make the nations excited. אל תשמח ישראל אל גיל כל עמים. The whole world is engaged in לא כלום. They’re lives are hevel varik. They’re excited over nothing.
And so if you’re asking me the Torah opinion about the Super Bowl, you have to ask people bigger than me. But if you want my little opinion, I say that if someone shows too much enthusiasm for something that means nothing, then Hakodosh Boruch Hu says, “You’re taking away from Me.” That’s what the Rambam says, ואהבת את ה’ אלקיך בכככככככל לבבך – to love Hashem with all your thoughts.
(January 1994)
