[Avodah] The Superbowl Maariv

[Micha Berger]

R' Emanuel Feldman posted the following in Cross-Currents. I found the
question he raises very AishDas-y:

    The Super Bowl Maariv
    from Cross-Currents by Emanuel Feldman
    http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2012/02/24/the-super-bowl-maariv/

    On the morning of the recent Super Bowl football game, a shul in
    New Jersey sent out this e-mail to its membership:

        There will be a minyan for Maariv at __________ Synagogue (name
        deliberately omitted) at ten minutes after the beginning of the
        Super Bowl halftime.

    How should one react to this? One could be benevolent, in the spirit
    of the Berditchever Rebbe who, paraphrasing himself, might have said:
    "O L-rd, how wondrous is Thy people. Even in the midst of the Super
    Bowl, they think of Thee!"

    Or one could be severe and paraphrase Isaiah 1:12: "Mi bikesh zos
    miyedchem -- who asks this of you, saith the Lo-d, to trample on My
    holy ground and daven with trivialities in your heart!"

    Or one could simply laugh, in the spirit of Shakespeare's A Midsummer
    Night's Dream: "L-rd, what fools these mortals be."

    This is one multiple choice where one could choose all three and
    still not be entirely wrong.

    To be benevolent: This is a praiseworthy attempt to assure a minyan
    for Maariv. The membership is watching the football game (together
    with 111 million other people) and unless an accommodation is made,
    there will be no minyan. ...

    The severe view: The Super Bowl Maariv subtly suggests that while
    davening is always primary, on this day the game is primary and
    the davening secondary. The shul is in effect saying: Sorry, G-d,
    you will have to wait for Your Maariv until they finish the first
    half of the game.

    This stringent approach would point to an obvious misunderstanding
    of the nature of prayer. Prayer is not simply a matter of reciting
    the proper words; it is a conversation with our Creator. Such
    a conversation cannot be conducted with hurried, unintelligible
    mumblings, and certainly not with minds cluttered by images of
    forward passes, interceptions, downfield blocks, and sacking the
    quarterback. ...

    Super Bowl Maariv involves an even deeper issue. The perennial
    challenge of the Jew is to be a child of Avraham HaIvri -- Ivri
    meaning "the other side" -- while living within the world, on
    "this side." We live in two worlds but we are bidden to know that
    our essence -- made up of our values and mitzvos -- is on the
    "other side."...

    Even within Orthodoxy there is a divide as to how best to address
    the challenge, ranging from a) those who totally reject "this side"
    and strive for total isolation, to b) those who attempt valiantly to
    maintain the primacy of the "other side" while participating fully
    in "this side." These brave souls traverse a narrow ridge between
    the abyss of assimilation on the one hand and the mountain of total
    separation on the other. This is a noble effort, but it comes with a
    warning sign: "This side" is very attractive and enticing, and if one
    is not careful with his footing, ludicrous consequences await -- such
    as davening Maariv with a minyan without sacrificing the Super Bowl.

    The Berditchever might say: this is a commendable attempt to create a
    living synthesis. But someone pretending to be Isaiah might counter:
    such attempts can create modern observant Jews who are hybrids of
    two irreconcilable worlds, a fusion that becomes confusion.
    ...

RSRH would echo (b).

RYBS would say there is no synthesis. Halakhah gives us a way to live
with the resulting dialectic tension, but there is no resolution. The
conflict is part of what fuels bekhirah.

But I think this essay gets to the essence of what I was trying to write
about when I raised the topic of whether Halakhic Man is a sound ideal for
a community. My argument was that it is not. That halakhah as a creative
process is something only felt by rabbanim; to the masses, nearly all
performance is following instructions. And this notion of a dialectic,
if poorly followed, becomes justification for compromise. Unlike, say,
Chassidus, which when poorly followed still produces a more observant and
loyal Jew than if had no ideal; HM if given to the masses will produce
many weaker Jews. If you forgot this conversation (it's been almost 4
years), see <http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2008/07/halakhic-community.shtml>.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
micha at aishdas.org        but it is my chief duty to accomplish small
http://www.aishdas.org   tasks as if they were great and noble.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                              - Helen Keller