Rav Avigdor Miller on Identifying with Gentile Sports

We must understand that the ideal of following sports is imported from the gentile world.  Jews have no interest in sports.  Jews have an interest in maintaining their health.  They have an interest in maintaining their livelihood.  They have an interest also in maintaining their happiness.

Now I added the last one because it could be that in order to make yourself more happy you play ball; you engage in some sport.  But to be a follower of sports means that you’re a follower of the gentile nations.  There’s no such ideal as ‘sports’ among Jews.  There never was.  Even the common people in the days of Rashi didn’t know of sports.  Yes, children played.  And I’m sure there were adults who wasted some time too. But the idea of sports as it was practiced among the gentiles was entirely alien to Jews.  Whether the sport consists of seeing two people punch each other in a ring or seeing horses running in a race or people trying to hit a ball with a club, whatever it is, all these ideals are imported from the gentile world.

Football and basketball, if you play it yourself it’s good exercise.  But if you go someplace and you pay admission, or you go in for free to witness it, it’s a sign that you’re identified with the outside world – the world that used to have gladiators, arenas where men fought each other to the death.  The world that saw men cast to the lions in the Roman arenas.  Chariot races.  Hippodromes.  Theaters.  Military contests.  All these are the inheritance of the nations of the world.

Now the Jews have plenty of good times.  There’s a lot of fun.  Children can play and even adults if they wish can play.  But not as an ideal.  אל תשמח ישראל אל גיל כעמים – Yisroel, do not rejoice in the fun of the nation! (Hoshea 9:1). Rejoice but not the way the nations rejoice.  You are a separate nation and don’t emulate them.  And when Jews identify with goyim then they have cut off their identity with the Klal Yisrael, the Am Kadosh.

July 1988