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Can a Jewish fan watch the Super Bowl with a clean conscience? The rabbis had thoughts.
(JTA) — In January, 24-year-old Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills collapsed on the field after experiencing cardiac arrest. His team and the entire NFL community rallied around him. His first words upon awakening: “Who won?”
Although Hamlin’s medical crisis was a rare on-field occurrence, the trauma surrounding his collapse stirred up age-old questions for me, and for many of us, about the toll football takes on the bodies of its players. What are we allowing to happen to these young men, in the name of sportsmanship, entertainment and national identity? When the Super Bowl airs on Sunday, what is our responsibility as spectators?
While still a newcomer to football, I turned to Jewish texts to help me find answers, and fascinatingly, I found a striking parallel between the rabbis of old and two contemporary journalists.
In 2009, in a scathing critique in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell denounced the game for the serious and long-lasting damage it does to players — especially traumatic brain injuries and debilitating neurological disorders resulting from repeated blows to the head — and placed the blame squarely on the fans. “There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer,” he wrote. “We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else — neither considerations of science nor those of morality — can compete with the destructive power of that love.”
William C. Rhoden wrote a heartfelt piece after Hamlin’s collapse, where he reflected on his own experience as a professional sports reporter of over 40 years. “We’re used to ferocious collisions and mostly happy endings. We applaud the player as he walks off the field, then sit back down in our seats, in our suites, in our press boxes and focus on the next play,” he wrote. “I realized, with sadness, the extent to which I had become desensitized to the real-life violence of our national pastime.”
Gladwell and Rhoden both recognize that football has inherent violence, and that as spectators we have an obligation to contend with it. Gladwell is pointing to the fans’ desire for violence, which makes them culpable in the destructive nature of the sport. Rhoden asks fans to notice their own callousness as they behold the effects of that violence.
This same dichotomy is reflected in the rabbis’ understanding as well. Indeed, many of the rabbis of the Talmud lived in the Greco-Roman world, when gladiators would battle with one another to the death, for thousands of people to watch. One of the most extolled rabbinic figures, Rabbi Shimon Ben Lakish, is said to have himself been a mighty gladiator who eventually escaped that life to become a great sage.
In the Tosefta, an ancient Jewish legal code contemporaneous to the Talmud, a question is raised about whether one is allowed to attend Roman amphitheaters and stadiums. For some of these venues, the concerns center around viewing and possibly participating in forbidden idol worship, or associating with foolishness and taking time away from more serious pursuits.
However, by far the greatest concern is that of attending events in stadiums where violence is prevalent. Indeed, the text goes as far as to say that “one who sits in a Stadium, is one who sheds blood.” (Tosefta Avoda Zarah 2.2) Here we see the same concerns that Gladwell raised, that by being a spectator of this violence, you are yourself more than a bystander. Indeed, if there were no fans, there would be no audience for these violent spectacles — making fans directly culpable in these acts of bloodshed.
The Tosefta then quotes another perspective: “Rabbi Natan permits [going to Roman stadiums] because of two things: because of crying and saving a life and because of testifying for a woman that would remarry.”
Rabbi Natan here desires to find justifications for why one could attend these events. He refers to the idea that during a gladiator event, the crowd could cheer for the losing fighter, and beg for mercy so that he would not be killed. A Jew is therefore permitted to attend because they could potentially save a life. An additional reason: They could also provide eyewitness testimony to a person’s death, thus causing the victim’s wife to become free to remarry.
Recently, while learning this text with my colleagues at The Jewish Education Project, we understood Rabbi Natan as showing a keen understanding of the reality of his time. People will attend these games, and these games are a part of the Jewish community’s life. Rather than forbidding them from going, he explains that there are positive motivations for their attendance.
In many ways, this matches the Rhoden position as well. He assumes we will continue to watch sports, report on games and enter fantasy football leagues. Yet, what should our motivations be as we watch these games? Do we voyeuristically cheer for the violence, enjoying the hard hits? Or can we re-sensitize ourselves and remind ourselves that these are human beings with families, and futures after their playing days are over?
I am still thinking about those awful moments in Buffalo, when Hamlin fell to the ground. All that time he spent training, the myriad ways he has broken his body for our viewing pleasure, and the lengthy rehabilitation ahead of him.
For those of us who will watch the hard hits this Sunday, I offer a charge: Do not allow yourself to ignore the pain and violence you see. Actively re-sensitize yourself to the humanity of these players. Commit to understanding what the policies are that will make this sport safer, and demand their implementation. Watch this game as Rabbi Natan teaches: with the intention to call out for justice wherever you can.
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This Orthodox filmmaker strove to find common ground between Jews and non-Jews
Menachem Daum (1946-2024) was not your typical Orthodox Jewish filmmaker. In his work, the late director often strove to find common ground between Jews and non-Jews, Orthodox and secular Jews, Polish Catholics and Jews (which he wrote about in these pages) and even between Palestinians and Holocaust survivors.
Fordham University is hosting a free retrospective of his films at Lincoln Center in New York. Called “Hidden Sparks,” the retrospective kicks off with Daum’s 1997 work A Life Apart: Hasidism in America — the first in-depth documentary portrait of Hasidim in New York City, produced and directed by an insider who knew the community intimately. The film is narrated by Leonard Nimoy.
In the documentary, we see a grandfather chatting in Yiddish with his children and grandchildren at home on Purim; a lively scene at the local butcher’s, and a young African-American’s unexpected reaction to a group of Hasidic men engaged in the tashlikh ritual in Brooklyn.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion that includes anthropologist Ayala Fader; filmmaker Oren Rudawsky (Daum’s frequent co-producer and co-director) and Daum’s wife, Rifke Daum.
On Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, Fordham will also host a screening and discussion of Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust — a documentary that follows Daum as he travels with his two grown sons to the Polish village of Dzialoszyce to track down the Christian farmers who hid their family from the Nazis.
What’s fascinating about the film is the obvious reluctance of his sons, married yeshiva students, to go on the trip at all, poking fun at their father’s liberal attitude towards the Poles — and then seeing their reaction when they finally meet the now-aging children of those farmers.
As Oren Rudavsky put it: “A Life Apart was our attempt to humanize Haredim for outsiders. Hiding and Seeking is our attempt to humanize outsiders to the Haredim.”
The post-screening discussion for Hiding and Seeking will include the Polish-born historian Natalia Aleksiun, filmmaker Oren Rudavsky, and Daum’s son, Tzvi Dovid Daum. To register for the film, go here.
The retrospective also includes the 2026 film The Ruins of Lifta (2016), a documentary centered around the only Arab village abandoned in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that wasn’t destroyed or repopulated. It will be followed a week later by a conversation with Israeli historian Hillel Cohen about the legacy of The Ruins of Lifta.
There will also be a screening of portions of Menachem Daum’s unfinished film Memory Keepers, about a group of non-Jews — mostly Christian Poles — working to restore and preserve Jewish cemeteries in Poland.
The film retrospective, which takes place at the McNally Amphitheater in Manhattan, runs from Jan. 27 — Feb. 17. For more information and to register, go here.
The post This Orthodox filmmaker strove to find common ground between Jews and non-Jews appeared first on The Forward.
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Could a video game help combat antisemitism on college campuses?
At a time of escalating antisemitism in the online gaming community, Julia Sebastien’s upcoming PC game, StrangeLand, which explores the difficulties of Jewish life at an Ivy League college, offers an alternative: the digital game not as an agent of antisemitism, but as a bulwark against it.
“What I want players to experience with this game,” Sebastien told me over Zoom, “is the sequence of choices and trade-offs a Jewish student in a really rigorous institution has to make.”
Yet she also has a longer-term, and perhaps loftier, aim for StrangeLand: That college educators and administrators use it as a guide of sorts to Jewish student life in general, and in particular, to “antisemitism on campuses,” she said.
Still, its target audience is one you might expect — current and former Jewish students at North American colleges, who, Sebastien believes, need help communicating “to family and friends when they’re feeling too tired or burnt out by everything that’s been going on.”
Sebastien has made digital games before. Indeed, she’s had a couple, both also academic in tone, published in digital journals. (One explored the effects of burnout in academia.) But thanks to a grant from the nonprofit Maimonides Fund, StrangeLand is her most ambitious, well-funded effort yet.
It’s also a little more personal.
Sebastien grew up in what she described as a “pretty religious Jewish suburb,” a modern orthodox community in Toronto. She attended Jewish day school and was fluent in Hebrew. But she never really took to prayer, she told me, and even as a teenager she had begun to see her Jewishness as an intellectual pursuit more so than a religious one.
She stayed in Toronto for her BA at York University, but then ventured south to Cambridge, Mass., where in 2022 she got a Master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology from Harvard, before starting a PhD in media psychology at Cornell (she’s partway through).
StrangeLand is loosely based on her own experiences in the academy, though it also comprises anecdotes from dozens of other Jewish undergraduates, graduates and alumni, whom Sebastien consulted via a survey. Players will “inhabit the life of a Jewish student who has just left home to start graduate school at an Ivy League university, sometime in the 2010s,” she said. There, they’ll be presented with a series of scenarios, organized thematically.
These scenarios will be “evergreen” Jewish student dilemmas: negotiating obligations around Jewish holidays alongside the traditional academic calendar; staying late at a laboratory on a Friday night versus leaving to meet other Jewish students for Shabbat dinner. And some will have a grain of antisemitism, at least according to Sebastien: how to respond to an off-color remark in a social setting, say, or whether or not to wear a Magen David necklace in public.
There’s no winning or losing, per se. Rather, StrangeLand will aim to illustrate the “impossibility of satisfying the demands of these two worlds; that, really, is the crux of the gameplay,” Sebastien said.
Notably absent from StrangeLand, however, are Zionism and Israel, the very topics that have elevated the Jewish collegiate experience to something of a national issue. Their omission is no accident. “I’m not trying to shine a light on what’s happening now,” Sebastien said. “I’m trying to educate people about antisemitism.”
And to include such divisive subjects wouldn’t help Sebastien fulfill this aim, she feels. “As a designer, I need to consider the very real possibility that for some players, StrangeLand might be their first exposure to antisemitism as a distinct concept,” she said. “And I feel that the best way to bring antisemitism awareness to diverse audiences is to use examples that are clear, universal, and evergreen.”
These hot-button issues, moreover, would seriously upset the vibe Sebastien is going for. “I actually don’t want characters in the game shouting horrific things,” she said. “I don’t want to jar the player. I want to explore concepts in a safe way that can still be emotionally poignant and meaningful and educational.”
The game will have a retro feel, then, a lo-fi aesthetic — the heavily-pixelated, Game Boy-style gameplay that Sebastien adored as a child — which she’s confident will reinforce these feelings of comfort and safety. (She cited Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin’s best-selling 2022 novel about a pair of Jewish, Harvard-educated video game developers in the ‘90s, as one of the game’s inspirations.)
In short, Sebastien wants StrangeLand to be a respite from the pressures of campus life, while at the same time illuminating, especially for those non-Jewish players, the complexities of the Jewish student experience.
How it can accomplish this without meaningfully discussing Zionism is an open question. To my mind, StrangeLand seems to be as much a work of history as anything else. The antisemitism Sebastien repeatedly referenced during our conversation was of the classical U.S. variety, the WASP-y strain of the 1960s and 1970s often found in Roth and Bellow novels. Nowadays, of course, discussions about campus antisemitism are typically focused on something else entirely. So it’s a little hard to square Sebastien’s broader goal for StrangeLand, that it eventually be part of DEI curricula, with its lack of contemporary examples.
But Sebastien is confident players will leave StrangeLand with a more complete understanding of Jewish student life. “I want this to speak to and for Jewish students now and in the past,” she said. “That’s what this game is to me.”
The post Could a video game help combat antisemitism on college campuses? appeared first on The Forward.
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People are enchanted with this 12-year old singer of Yiddish songs
דאָס איז איינער פֿון אַ סעריע קורצע אַרטיקלען אָנגעשריבן אױף אַ רעלאַטיװ גרינגן ייִדיש און געצילעװעט אױף סטודענטן. די מחברטע איז אַלײן אַ ייִדיש־סטודענטקע. דאָ קען מען לײענען די פֿריִערדיקע אַרטיקלען אין דער סעריע.
אין זומער 2020, בעת די װעלט איז געװען פֿאַרשפּאַרט צוליב קאָװיד־19, האָב איך געקוקט נאָך אַ מאָל און װידער אַ מאָל אױף אַ װידעאָ װאָס האָט זיך באַװיזן אױף דער סאָציאַלער מעדיע. דאָרטן האָבן צװײ קינדערלעך — דינה סלעפּאָװיטש און פּיניע מינקין — געזונגען אַ ייִדיש פֿאָלקסליד װעגן די בולבעס װאָס אָרעמע ייִדן האָבן געגעסן אין מיזרח־אײראָפּע.
איך בין פֿאַרכּישופֿט געװאָרן. אַ פּנים בין איך נישט געװען די אײנציקע, װײַל באַלד נאָך דעם איז אַן אַרטיקל װעגן דעם װידעאָ אַרױס אינעם פֿאָרװערטס.
דעמאָלט האָב איך אָבער נישט געװוּסט אַז דינה סלעפּאָװיטש, נישט געקוקט אױף איר צאַרטן עלטער, איז שױן געװען אַ געניטע זינגערין פֿון ייִדישע לידער. דאָ זעט מען װי זי האָט צו פֿיר יאָר אויף אַ חנוכּה־פֿאָרשטעלונג אין דער ניו־יאָרקער אַרבעטער־רינג שולע געזונגען פֿון אױסנװײניק דאָס קינדער־לידל „האָב איך מיר אַ מאַנטל“. איר טאַטע, דער כּלי־זמר און כּלי־זמר־מוזיק פֿאָרשער זיסל סלעפּאָװיטש האָט זי אַקאָמפּאַנירט אױף דער קלאַװיאַטור. מען הערט אינעם װידעאָ װי דער עולם זינגט מיט מיט איר דעם רעפֿרען.
דינה און איר טאַטע האָבן רעקאָרדירט אַ היפּשע צאָל װידעאָס פֿון ייִדישע לידער במשך פֿון די לעצטע פֿינעף יאָר. אָט איז אַ שפּיל־רשימה װוּ מען קען קוקן אױף זײ. איך האָב ספּעציעל ליב „שנירעלע פּערעלע“, װאָס דינה זינגט מיט אַ בעכער אין דער רעכטער האַנט, װי דאָס ליד באַשרײַבט. „דײנו“, װאָס זי זינגט מיטן טאַטן, איז מונטער און אָפּטימיסטיש. „דאָס עלנטע קינד“, קאָמפּאָנירט אין דער װאַרשעװער געטאָ מיט װערטער פֿון שמערקע קאַטשערגינסקי, זינגט זי װײך און מיט טרױער.
אין 2025 האָט דינה צו צװעלף יאָר אָפּגעהאַלטן אין אַ ניו־יאָרקער טעאַטער די װעלט־פּרעמיערע פֿון איר טאַטנס ליד „אױפֿן טײַכל שלום“. די קאָמפּאָזיציע איז באַזירט אױף אַ ליד פֿונעם פּאָעט און שרײַבער באָריס סאַנדלער, װעמענס 75סטן געבוירן־טאָג האָט דער קאָנצערט אָפּגעמערקט. זי האָט אױך דעבוטירט װי אַ סאָליסטקע מיט דער נאַציאָנאַלער ייִדישער טעאַטער־פֿאָלקסבינע בעת זײער חנוכּה־פּראָגראַם אין היברו־יוניאָן קאָלעדזש. זי פֿיגורירט אויך אין װידעאָס, אַרײַננעמעננדיק „זאָל שױן קומען די גאולה“, קאָמפּאָנירט נאָכן חורבן מיט װערטער פֿון שמערקע קאַטשערגינסקי.
לעצטנס האָב איך געשמועסט (אױף ענגליש) מיט דינה און איר טאַטן װעגן איר באַציִונג צו ייִדישע לידער — אַמאָל, הײַנט צו טאָג און האָפֿנטלעך אין דער צוקונפֿט.
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שטערן׃ װי אַזױ האָט דינה אָנגעהױבן צו זינגען לידער אױף ייִדיש?
זיסל סלעפּאָװיטש: זינט זי איז געבױרן געװאָרן האָב איך איר געזונגען אױף ייִדיש. זי האָט נאַטירלעך אָנגעהױבן נאָכצוזינגען די ייִדישע לידער. מיר רעדן רוסיש בײַ אונדז אין דער הײם, װײַל איך און מײַן פֿרױ זענען אױפֿגעװאַקסן אין בעלאַרוס. אַװדאי רעדט דינה ענגליש אין שול, און ענגליש און רוסיש מיט די חבֿרים. ייִדיש און ייִדישע לידער זענען אָבער געװען אַ טײל פֿון אונדזער משפּחה־לעבן, און זי האָט זײ אײַנגעזאַפּט אין זיך במשך פֿון איר טאָגטעגלעך לעבן. כאָטש זי האָט זיך נאָך נישט געלערנט ייִדיש סיסטעמאַטיש — גראַמאַטיק אאַז״װ — הערט מען װי נאַטירלעך זי זינגט אױף ייִדיש.
שטערן׃ דינה, װי לערנסטו זיך אַזױ גוט אױס די לידער?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: קודם־כּל זינגט מײַן טאַטע פֿאַר מיר אַ נײַ ליד, אַזױ פֿיל מאָל װי איך דאַרף. כ’האָב אַ גוטן זכּרון, הײב איך גיך אָן צו געדענקען די מעלאָדיע. דערנאָך דיסקוטירן מיר די װערטער, זעצנדיק זײ איבער אױף רוסיש און אַ מאָל אױף ענגליש. װײַל איך קען אַ סך ייִדישע לידער זענען עטלעכע װערטער מיר שױן באַקאַנט — מער און מער װערטער מיט דער צײַט.
שטערן: װאָס זענען דײַנע באַליבטסטע ייִדישע לידער?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: איך פֿיל זיך פֿאַרבונדן מיט „שנירעלע פּערעלע“, װײַל איך האָב דאָס געזונגען אין מײַן ערשטן װידעאָ בעת קאָװיד־19. און אַװדאי איז דאָס ליד װעגן בולבעס נאָענט צום האַרצן, װײַל אַ סך מענטשן האָבן געקוקט אױפֿן דאָזיקן װידעאָ און הנאה געהאַט פֿון אים. „אַרום דעם פֿײַער“ האָב איך אױך זײער ליב. װען איך זינג דאָס ליד פֿיל איך זיך רויִק און פֿאַרבונדן מיט אַנדערע מענטשן.
שטערן: װאָסער מין רעאַקציע באַקומט איר אױף די װידעאָס?
זיסל סלעפּאָװיטש: מיר באַקומען זײער אַ פּאָזיטיװע רעאַקציע. איך פֿאָר איבער דער װעלט צוליב מײַן מוזיק־אַרבעט, הער איך אָפֿט אַז מוזיקערס און ליבהאָבערס פֿון ייִדיש אין אַנדערע לענדער קוקן אױף די װידעאָס, אָפֿט מאָל מיט זײערע קינדער. לערערס פֿון ייִדיש און פֿון ייִדישער מוזיק װײַזן זײ אין די קלאַסן.
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: מײַנע חבֿרים קוקן אױף די װידעאָס, און איך מײן אַז זײ האָבן זײ ליב!
שטערן: דינה, װי פֿילסטו זיך װען דו זינגסט פֿאַר אַן עולם, ספּעציעל אין אַ טעאַטער אָדער אױדיטאָריע?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: נערװעז. מײַן מאַמע העלפֿט מיר אָבער אַ סך. זי איז אַלע מאָל בײַ דער זײַט װען איך האַלט בײַ זינגען. מיט איר הילף באַרויִק איך זיך און מאַך זיך גרײט צו גײן אױף דער בינע.
שטערן: צי װילסטו זיך לערנען ייִדיש סיסטעמאַטיש, אפֿשר מיט ייִדיש פּאָפּ?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: יאָ, דעם קומעדיקן זומער, װען איך װעל נישט האָבן אַזױ פֿיל שולאַרבעט צו טאָן. האָפֿנטלעך װעל איך זיך לערנען רעלאַטיװ גרינג, װײַל כ’האָב געהאַט ייִדיש אין די אױערן לעבנסלאַנג. און איך קען שױן אַ סך װערטער.
שטערן: צי װעסטו װײַטער זינגען ייִדישע לידער פֿאַר אַן עולם און רעקאָרדירן װידעאָס?
דינה סלעפּאָװיטש: יאָ. נאָך דעם װי איך װעל זיך לערנען ייִדיש מער סיסטעמאַטיש װעל איך קענען זינגען װײַטערדיקע לידער. איך זינג מיטן ניו־יאָרקער פֿיליאַל פֿונעם נאַציאָנאַלן קינדער־כאָר, װאָס העלפֿט מיט געזאַנג־טעכניק. מיר זינגען אױף ענגליש, שפּאַניש, יאַפּאַניש, העברעיִש, האַװאַייִש…די דיריגענטן העלפֿן אונדז מיטן גוט אַרױסרעדן די װערטער בעת מיר זינגען. איך האָב ליב דאָס זינגען אױף פֿאַרשײדענע שפּראַכן. ייִדישע לידער װעלן מיר אָבער בלײַבן ספּעציעל װיכטיק, װײַל ייִדיש איז אַזאַ גרױסער טײל פֿון מײַן לעבן.
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