Canada Is No Longer Safe for Jews
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Vayikra, 26:3: “If you will go in My decrees and observe My commandments and perform them; then I will provide your rains in their time, and the land will give its produce and the tree of the field will give its fruit.”
Vayikra Rabbah, 35:1: “It says, (Psalms, 119:59), ‘I considered my ways and returned my feet to Your testimonies’. King David said, ‘Master of the Universe, every single day I make a calculation and say to myself that I am going to such and such a place or such and such a house, but my feet would bring me to the shuls and study halls.”
The Torah famously instructs us to go in the ways of God’s commandments. The Midrash connects this verse to a verse in Psalms where King David exclaims that he would plan to go to certain places, yet his feet would naturally lead him to shuls and study halls. The Midrash is focusing on the Torah’s words, “Im bechukotai teleichu’ which literally means, if you go in My statutes. The language of ‘go’ is surprising here. It would be more expected to say, ‘if you will observe my statutes. Based on this, the Midrash cites the verse in Psalms that discusses King David referring to his own ‘goings’. The simple understanding of this Midrash is that King David would plan to do certain mundane activities, involving going to houses or other places, yet his feet inexorably led him to learn Torah.
However, the Ktav Sofer cites a version of this Midrash with one slight but very significant difference. In this version, King David says that every morning he wakes up planning to go to the theatres, circuses, and stadiums, but instead his feet took him to the Houses of Prayer and Study. This is difficult to understand. We can understand our version of the Midrash where King David discusses mundane activities that people need to do. However, according to the Ktav Sofer’s version, why would the righteous King David even consider going to places of empty entertainment such as theatres and stadiums?
He gives a number of answers to this question. One, cited by Rabbi Yissachar Frand, is that of course King David did not want to go to stadiums for their own sake. Rather, he wanted to see how athletes act and how sports fans act. He wanted to observe the devotion that an athlete puts into his profession. Rabbi Frand elaborates:
“When we read about people who are superior athletes, it is amazing to see how many hours a day they spend training to perfect their skills. Such swimmers or gymnasts—sometimes young children—who are competing for Olympic medals, spend an incredible amount of time training with intensity before their competition. It is their life! They spend eight or ten hours a day for years at a time! Those are the athletes themselves. But also consider the sports fans: The obsession people have for sports cannot be fully described. I know a little bit about the Orioles and the Ravens. Okay, I can’t say I am such a Tzadik (righteous person) that I am totally aloof from that. Fine. But on the radio, it is incredible what happens on the “sports channels.” People can talk about their teams and analyse all the players 24 hours a day, seven days a week! “Draft Day” is like a “three-day-Yom Tov.” It is not even a game! They spend three days speculating who a franchise MAY take to play on the team in the future. Then there is all the analysis—did they choose right or did they not choose right! Maybe they should have picked someone else!
King David wanted to learn from how people act in the stadiums to understand what constitutes dedication and total involvement in something! “I want to go to the theaters and to the circuses because I know that there, I will see examples of total dedication to an avocation—and from there I want to learn how to apply such dedication to my own learning and my own Service to God!”
Rabbi Frand notes that the Ktav Sofer gives another, seemingly unrelated answer: He brings the Talmud1 that says that in future times, all stadiums and theatres are going to be converted into Houses of Study and Prayer. King David is asking God for that day to happen, when he would be able to learn and pray in converted theatres and stadiums. God answers him that would only happen in the distant future, but in the meantime, he should go to the real houses of study and prayer.
Although this answer is distinct from the previous answer, it is possible to suggest that they are connected. The question arises as to why should the stadiums and theatres in particular, be converted to shuls and study halls? One answer could be that since they are places where people demonstrate great devotion and dedication, that energy could easily be transformed into energy for Torah learning and prayer. It is unclear if the Talmud was referring to the End of Days when it said that stadiums would be converted into study halls, but already in our times, there have been numerous Torah events, such as siyumei haShas (events celebrating the completion of all the Talmud) that have taken place in the biggest stadiums in the world. These events have been incredibly inspiring and spiritual, thus already showing how these places of dedication to sports and entertainment can be easily changed into places of great spirituality.
May we all merit to show dedication to Torah equal to, or even greater than, people’s dedication to sport and entertainment.
