NBA, TIGN and the Purpose of Religion

By now we’ve all heard about the owner of the LA clippers, Donald Sterling. whose unacceptable comments to his girlfriend have engendered the maximum fine the NBA imposes as well as consideration of a lifetime ban from NBA involvement.

You may also know that he’s Jewish.  And whether we think it’s fair or not, his Jewishness has been mentioned in some accounts of what transpired. 

I don’t want to spend much time this morning talking about the unfortunate comments of an NBA team owner. 

What I do want to do is reflect for a bit on how ideally being Jewish needs to lead us to a better ethical place.  Otherwise we’re missing the point.

We can’t control what every Jew says or does, but I believe we can say that when a Jew is dismissive or pejorative toward a racial or ethnic group or socioeconomic group, when a Jew cuts corners in business, when a Jew behaves in ways that are base and undignified, it represents a measure of failure for all of us.

Not because it’s important for us to look good, but because it’s important for us to actually be good.  And while I hope that my colleagues of other religions are delivering similar messages to their communities, I can only start by worrying about my own.

Judaism Should Challenge Us

Jon Stewart did a great routine two years ago, comparing Passover to Easter.  Stewart himself is Jewish.  He went over to his special “camera 3” where he "addresses" the Jews in the audience. He said, "mishpocha, we’re losing the contest with Easter."  He held up a basket and said, "Check this out.  Chocolate bunnies, eggs filled with chocolate."

And then he held up the seder plate and said, “but we have matzah, bitter herbs and eggs filled with – EGG.”

It’s a funny routine, worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet. 

In the aftermath of Passover, it’s hard to deny that sometimes Judaism is challenging.  It’s challenging to prepare a house for Passover.  Parts of the Seder are difficult to understand. 

To be sure, there have always been attempts to make it more user-friendly.  Selling the chametz, for example, allows us to avoid serious waste and financial loss.  (Though the legal fiction, whereby all of the chametz in your house belongs to a non-Jew for the duration of Passover, has sparked its own share of jokes.  One Jew sees another smoking on Shabbat, which is against the rules.  He says, “My friend, what are you doing?  You’re not supposed to smoke on Shabbat.”  And the friend says, “It’s OK.  I sold my lungs to a gentile.” )

Notwithstanding efforts to make Passover more manageable, it’s still a challenge.

If anything, we’ve seen increased effort over the years to make Judaism more user-friendly and to the extent that we are engaging more people in the experience of our tradition, that’s a good thing. 

But I want to urge us, this morning, to consider various ways in which Judaism challenges us and why that’s a good thing.