What Makes Someone a Role Model?
Posted Sep 07, 2007 by Brett KuglerI would like to start this column by saying that I am an avid sports fan. Growing up in the D.C. metropolitan area, I have always held close ties to all of the major sports teams in the area. With that said, I will now tell you that yesterday was a scary day for me personally. I found myself reading an article in a local Jewish newspaper that was talking about a major league baseball player by the name of Ryan Braun. The article was ranting about how great it was that a Jewish baseball player in the major leagues that could be the national league rookie of the year might take off for Yom Kippur. They also brought up the past greats such as Hank Greenberg, Sandy Kofax, and more recently Shawn Green who plays on Yom Kippur some years and doesn't play other years (depending on his teams playoff situation).
After reading this article, I was not exactly thrilled with the more recent Jewish role models in sports due to their flimsy arguments as to what determines whether or not they will play ball on Yom Kippur . However, I went about the rest of my day and continued on to my graduate school class at Johns Hopkins University. When I got to class, I had the daunting task of telling my professor that I would not be attending three of the next four classes because Rosh Hashana, Sukkot, and Shemini Atzeret all fell out on Thursdays this year. After briefly thanking G-d that Yom Kippur wasn't on a Thursday as well, I started to try to explain that these other holidays were important as well. The teacher looked puzzled and exclaimed that she thought that Yom Kippur was the only day that was really important to miss class for but that I could get the notes if I was going to miss the classes. "Fair enough" I thought, until I started to remember that article that I had read earlier in the day.
That article was supposed to be commending these men for thinking about taking off for Yom Kippur but in turn it has just proven to be one more problem for todays youth. We are telling children to look up to these people for "thinking" about taking off for Yom Kippur. However, these players have made it so much harder for the Jewish people that are observant of all of the Yomim Tovim to prove that our other holidays are legit.
As the Jewish new year approaches, I have two major wishes for all of Klal Yisroel. My first wish is that we can all take an extra moment to look at the every day people that take off for all of the holidays as our Jewish role models. My second wish is to see these people that devote their life to torah and its practices be rewarded with big articles so that they get the publicity that they deserve. If I ever make it as a big writer for a newspaper, my first article for this time of year will state as its headline, " Manicurist, Esther Bloomensteinowitz declares "I will not paint nails on Shemini Atzeret!"
You should have seen what my Husband has had to go through to get off of work for Yom Tov this year. He is on probation for the first 6 months, which means he does not get any vacation time. He happens to work in the one Lab at NYU hospital that is not full of religious Jews. While he did not hide who he was at the interview, and one of his supervisors went to Einstein for Med school, they are still surprised that he has to take so many days off. It really shows the true colors of a person when they are faced with religious people, to see how they treat them. One would think that in New York people would not think you were trying to dupe them when you tell them the days you have to take off. Whatever the case may be, I also agree that it might help if some high profile Jews said "no, I WONT work on my Holidays, and thats just something the world will need to except".
I don't know if it's just about high profile Jews deciding to take off on the holidays. I have worked for non Jewish companies that have been very understanding about my sabbath and holiday requirements and by the same token I have worked for a company run by an orthodox Jew who didn't give me enough vacation and sick days to get through yom tov. When I asked him about it he said that observance is a personal choice and I would need to take absences for the days I missed beyond my allotment. I know of a lot of other people that have said that non Jewish employers are much better at being understanding of these circumstances then Jewish ones. So maybe its not about the high profile Jews, it's about the Jews poised in a position to actually make a change?