Yonah Rosenfield and friends watch football outside under a tarp. (Courtesy of Rosenfield)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
More recently, the NFL has drawn criticism for its handling of two sensitive issues: racial justice protests and domestic violence by its players. In the eyes of many observers and fans, the NFL penalized too lightly several players convicted of physical domestic abuse against their spouses and children, including Tyreek Hill, the star wide receiver of the Kansas City Chiefs, playing in the Super Bowl against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.<\/p>\n
Then there is Colin Kaepernick. After kneeling during the national anthem before games in the 2016 season to protest police brutality against Black men, the star quarterback was effectively blacklisted by the league\u2019s owners, prematurely ending his career. He and a teammate sued the NFL for unfairly colluding to keep them from playing (they settled the case in 2019 under undisclosed terms). Kaepernick became a symbol of anti-patriotic sentiment for some \u2014 including Donald Trump \u2014 and almost a prophet for others who see his protest as predicting the wave of racial justice protests that swept America in 2020.<\/p>\n
NBA agent Danielle Cantor Jeweler said the difference between how the NFL and the NBA, the basketball league, handled racial justice protests was one factor that undercut her love for football. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd last year, the NBA encouraged its players to speak out and allowed them to wear Black Lives Matter slogans on their jerseys.<\/p>\n
Jeweler, who is one of few women in her field and says her Jewish values guide her career choices, grew up a self-proclaimed \u201cdiehard\u201d Washington Redskins fan in the D.C. area (the team is now temporarily called Washington Football Team as it works toward changing its name after decades of criticism for using a racial epithet). Her family had season tickets and went to \u201cevery home game my whole life,\u201d often tailgating before games. She knew the players\u2019 individual statistics.<\/p>\n
But these days, she finds herself watching football much less. <\/p>\n
\u201cI still watch somewhat, although way less than I used to, and there\u2019s sort of this dissonance when I watch. And I\u2019ve talked to a bunch of people and gotten sort of a range of views on that,\u201d Jeweler said. \u201cIs there a higher Jewish value system that we can hold ourselves to?\u201d<\/p>\n
For Rabbanit Leah Sarna, an education director at Drisha, a center for Jewish learning in New York City, the solution to these anxieties is clear-cut: fully stop watching and supporting the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to see the Jewish community completely divest from football,\u201d she said. \u201cSport gives us a way to relax and helps us to feel pride in our localities\u2026 But the minute you have people getting permanently injured, for my pleasure, that just stops making sense. And the minute it stops making sense, it doesn\u2019t just become, \u2018Oh, you shouldn\u2019t do this.\u2019 It becomes, in my opinion, prohibited by Jewish law.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Judaism, the concept of pikuach nefesh prohibits actions that endangers a human life. Sarna said that abandoning football can fall into that category.<\/p>\n
Feigelson brought up the analogy of hunting for sport, saying that rabbis have written that that concept connotes senseless violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cA sport centered around violence, is really \u2014 there\u2019s something that doesn\u2019t sit right about that. It\u2019s not peaceful, it\u2019s not in keeping with the notion that the ways of Torah are peaceful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But not everyone feels that way. After Sarna recently posted on Facebook that she considers tackle football \u201cassur,\u201d the Hebrew word for forbidden, she garnered nearly 200 responses, many of them to counter her assertion. Some argued that other sports are just as dangerous and also cause concussions; others argued that she doesn\u2019t understand the game or its fans. One commenter wrote: \u201cit\u2019s important to acknowledge that there is also a lot of beautiful skill and strategy in the sport. I don\u2019t think many people who love the sport would agree with you that it\u2019s centrally about enjoying violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rabbi Stephen Slater is one of those who sees football as beautiful. He leads the Conservative Temple Beth-El synagogue in Birmingham, Alabama, where many locals end conversations with the phrase \u201cRoll Tide,\u201d an indication of support for the University of Alabama\u2019s Crimson Tide football team. (Slater said he was advised to end his Beth-El interview that way if he wanted to get the job.) <\/p>\n
\u201cThe feats of athleticism are just stunning. The sort of total physical engagement it requires. You know, speed, strength, skill, teamwork\u2026 I think we see many of the very best athletes in America are attracted to it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Slater added that he thinks the sport\u2019s intensity \u2014 and the intensity with which fans watch it \u2014 is actually a useful outlet.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerican football really looks like a battle, you draw lines, and then you know, charge at each other\u2026 And I think that feeds something in a peaceful way that\u2019s really crucial for society,\u201d he said. \u201cI was captain of my soccer team and that was this massive outlet for all this youthful energy that we had. It was a place to kind of try out our contest of the ego in a sustainable, healthy way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yonah Rosenfield, an 18-year-old high school senior, watches \u201cNFL RedZone\u201d \u2014 an NFL Network show designed for fantasy league players that rapidly switches between scoring plays of all the league\u2019s different games \u2014 every Sunday with his friends from the Orthodox SAR school in New York. It\u2019s the main way he stays in close contact with those friends after switching schools, and even during the pandemic, they constructed outdoor setups with a projector so they could watch together in a socially distanced way.<\/p>\n
On Sundays, Rosenfield doesn\u2019t think twice about his love for the game. But during the week, when he sees \u201ccompletely degrading\u201d comments about football players on online forums, he feels the weight of the game\u2019s moral conundrum.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to preface my answer with \u2014 I am more morally and ideologically pure than my actual practice. But ideologically, I think that, you know, I would agree with the statement that it\u2019s a brutal sport. And I think that is definitely intertwined with the racial component of the issues. Because the NFL is majority Black,\u201d he said, \u201cand you have a lot of fans who can kind of feel a disconnect from their humanity, in some ways, and can kind of root for them to be gladiators, and to put themselves in harm\u2019s way and have a disconnect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tensions inherent in the sport will be very much on Schiowitz\u2019s mind as she watches the Super Bowl. She remains a devoted football fan, last year participating in three different fantasy leagues and winning two of them. She said she likes drawing connections between the sport and her Jewishness in social media posts. In 2018, for example, she compared all of the players on the Eagles to Passover foods in an amusing Twitter thread.<\/p>\n
But the 31-year-old mental health therapist has been speaking out against what she sees as the NFL\u2019s mistakes, especially on social media, where she interacts with a large community of fellow Eagles fans. She\u2019s especially distressed by the fact that Hill is still playing despite admitting to assaulting his pregnant girlfriend in 2014. (He was also later accused of breaking his 3-year-old son\u2019s arm, but police never amassed evidence to prove that.) <\/p>\n
\u201cCertain events that have played out that just don\u2019t align with what my values are as a Jewish person. So that has been a little bit difficult to reconcile,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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