The Pained Father at the Soccer Semifinals
Last week I took my 8-year-old, Yoni, to the Jerusalem Soccer Championship. He was able to participate in the all-Jerusalem championship after winning second place for his age group at our neighborhood soccer championship (full disclosure: he came in 2nd place out of 2 competitors:)
On the day of the Jerusalem championship, the younger kids, like Yoni, competed first. Yoni lost:(
And then the big kids, the 6th graders, started their semi-final match.
It was 2 neighborhood teams playing against each other, and one of them, I discovered, was my neighborhood team. Yoni really wanted to stay, so I busied myself with making a supermarket order on my phone.
I didn’t pay any attention to the game until I heard yelling, at which point I looked up and saw that the players from both teams were yelling at each other, typical name-calling and put-downs.
And then something happened that I can’t get out of my head, and heart.
I should explain first that in my neighborhood team, all the boys were wearing kippot. And in the other team, the boys didn’t.
A father from the other team, a dignified man, said to our team, “You boys have KIPPOT on your heads. You need to speak with derech eretz!”
His voice was thick with respect for these religious boys, but also pain. And disappointment. And indignation that a boy wearing a kippah should speak in a hurtful manner to another person.
One of the religious mothers pointed out that his boy’s team was bating our team. And I guess she was right.
But this father’s pain was still a wake-up call for me.
A reminder that I can have all sorts of excuses:
He provoked me.
I was in a terrible mood.
I’m religious, but I’m also human!
That father reminded me that as a visibly religious person, eyes are upon me, and I need to carry myself with more dignity.
Because I’m not just representing myself. I’m representing Hashem. I’m representing the Torah. I’m representing the entire colorful continuum of religious society. So even at challenging moments, I need to be better. To rise above.
