I'm one who feels quite conflicted about sports today. I love athletics, I love moving and competing and I enjoy watching healthy competition. But today, I'm hardly interested in professional sports. I'm turned off by the denigration of sportsmanship caused by showboating and how personal gains often overshadow self-sacrifice and team success. The rampant drug use in cycling has left me mostly uninterested in a once July morning ritual of watching the Tour de France. And the NFL's questionable response to domestic violence, in comparison to drug and alcohol use, leaves me perplexed.
The NFL season begins this weekend. While the events throughout the league are meaningless to me, I haven't yet given up my loyalty to the Denver Broncos. I still follow the team. By doing so, I keep my bonds with family and friends who share in this camaraderie. The start of the football season brings me back to some of my dearest memories of walking to the stadium with my dad and grandfather, and later attending home games with one of my dearest friends. I also respect the organization and take pride in seeing how these young men can brighten a sick child's day when visiting Denver area hospitals, or doing the many other good deeds that these players do in the community. But, while the team as a whole has enjoyed tremendous success and its share of heartbreak over the past 30 years, I seem to remember more of the individual stories. I love the heartwarming stories.
This year, Peyton Manning continues to pursue a Super Bowl championship as a Bronco - a remarkable display of not only talent, but shear will to overcome multiple neck surgeries and the critics who would have sidelined him. And with Manning are numerous young men who have fought through adversity. Look up a few of the stories: Sylvester Williams, Chris Harris and Ben Garland to mention a few.
One of my favorite stories from years past is of Kenny Walker, a deaf defensive lineman who played for the broncos in the early 1990's. When Walker made a sack, or when his name was called, more than 70,000 football fans would stand up and sign "thank you." I went to every game that Walker played in Denver and each time we thanked him, tears would come to my eyes. I'm still moved by what this man overcame, being profoundly deaf since the age of two.
And yet, literally as I write these words, I've learned that the second Bronco in the past few weeks has been suspended. First, Denver's star kicker, Matt Prater was suspended for alcohol violations and now Wes Welker, one of Denver's star receivers has been suspended for drug use.
Each year, on every NFL team many of the men who make up a team roster have persevered through personal and physical challenges. What enables these young men to overcome their obstacles? What gives one young man the grit and determination to set a goal and do his best to accomplish it? And what leads another young man astray, undermining his own abilities, and even accomplishments, by his lapse in judgment, or deeper vices.
This week's Torah portion, Parashat Ki Tetse, provides as example a most extreme case of a young man astray. Deuteronomy 21.18-21 states:
18 If a man has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community. 20 They shall say to the elder of his town, "This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and drunkard." 21 Thereupon the men of his town shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst: all Israel will hear and be afraid.
Regarding this "wayward and rebellious son", ben sorayr u'moreh, Rashi teaches that sorar, "wayward," means sar myn ha'derech, "turning from the way." And that u'moreh, "rebellious" relates to the word mamrim, "rebels," implying that the son refuses to obey the words of his father [and mother].
Regarding the matter of capital punishment, Rashi, and others, explain that the legal requirements in such a case are so extensive - providing warnings to the son in front of three judges, flogging him if a transgression is committed after the warning, etc. - that it's unlikely that any son was ever subjected to such capital punishment.
From a place of compassion, we should all be concerned about how the wayward son is cared for and, ideally brought back to a moral and responsible life. But my interest here pertains to the guidance a young man receives to keep him from turning away.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, in his commentary on the above passage explains, as derived from Sanhedrein 69a, that this law of capital punishment pertains to a son during the three months following his Bar Mitzvah, a time period in which various sensual interests and moral sensibilities are simultaneously being aroused. Setting aside the narrow parameter of three months, the greater point remains for us today - a young man is subject to many internal and external influences, which, without guidance, mentorship, education and experience, leave him vulnerable to many wrong paths.
Michael Gurian, a therapist and educator who writes extensively on boys and their moral development, notes in The Good Son: Shaping the Moral Development of our Boys and Young Men,
- We have the most violent non-war population of children in the world. More people in the U.S. per capita commit violent acts every day than anywhere else, and 90 percent of them are male.
- More of our children per capita get arrested for crimes than in any other country. Ninety percent of arrestees are boys.
- After Russia, more of our citizens are in prison than any other country in the world. Ninety percent of these incarcerated individuals are males.
- Our young males make up 80 percent of drug-addicted and alcoholic youth.
- Our boys constitute the majority of children who are homeless, murdered, in foster care, neglected and institutionalized.
As a father of a soon-to-be 13 year old son, these issues are of great concern to me. But shouldn't we all be concerned with the health and well-being of our youth - of our future? These concerns clearly impact all of society.
Returning to our Torah portion, what strikes me is how the "wayward" son is "brought before the elders, at the public place of the community" and described by his parents as "disloyal and defiant..." While we don't know what led to such circumstances, the events beg the questions: What was the make-up of the boy's character? What was the dynamic between parents? Between parents and son? What were the expectations, disappointments, perceptions in the home? Where were the "elders" during the boy's upbringing?
Gurian writes that our pre-pubescent sons (ages 9-13) "are desperate for admiration and respect. They need us to be present at their accomplishments ... The whole extended family needs to form a clan environment of admiration..." And H. Pereira Mendes states in Bar Mitzvah, For Boyhood, Youth and Manhood, a thoughtful book written in 1956, that a young man "can be helped only by education, through study, precept, example and association."
From our Torah portion I ask, what can be done by parents and a community to raise up young men - not for the NFL, there is far too much emphasis on that already - girded by strong morals and character enabling them to contribute to the betterment of society? Who are the people that can help guide a young man when so many families are fractured and dispersed geographically? What are our schools, Jewish and secular, doing to shape the moral character of our boys and young men? How do we help our sons on their journeys to manhood?
I'm sure that each of you has a boy, or young man, in your life who would be bolstered by your presence, interest and encouragement. Help keep him from turning away...