Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Rosh Hashanah Morning 5777

THE AMBIVALENT AMERICAN JEW

ROSH HASHANAH 5777

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

On this first day of the New Year, I’d like to tell you who to vote for.

Only kidding! I wouldn’t do that. I would be in hot water with quite a few congregants, never mind the IRS.

But I would like to look back at one candidate who is no longer in the race, but who caused quite a stir. No, not Ted Cruz. Yes, you guessed it⎯Bernie Sanders.

My interest in talking about Bernie Sanders on the High Holidays is not about his political platform but his Jewish identity. What he revealed about it during the campaign was minimal, but fascinating. It is a provocative case study that speaks to all of us, which is why I think it is worthy of comment… on this High Holiday and before history moves on to a new president.

On the night of his resounding victory in the New Hampshire primary Bernie Sanders became the first Jew to ever win a presidential nominating contest in American history. Sanders, who is known to avoid all personal references, got uncharacteristically personal in his victory speech. “I am the son of a Polish immigrant,” he told his frenzied crowd. That lit up the Jewish social media. “Polish?” posted quite a few writers.

The very fact of the brouhaha is revealing. On one level, Sanders was factually correct. His father was Polish. My paternal grandfather left Poland the same year as Eli Sanders. But did my grandfather consider himself a Polish immigrant? Maybe… but by his own account he was first and foremost a Jewish immigrant. Like Sanders, my grandfather’s family who remained in Poland all perished in the Holocaust. My grandfather reminded me of that.

But note that at this pivotal moment in Bernie’s life, and throughout the campaign, Bernie chose not to speak publicly about his being Jewish.

As journalist Gal Beckerman jokingly observed:

At one level, of course, it would be a redundancy of sorts for Mr. Sanders to assert that he is a Jew. What else could Bernie be? Every time I hear his voice, I am returned to Passover Seders where I’ve often been cornered by one of my uncles pointing a finger at my chest and yelling about something very important I must listen to right now.

Beckerman goes on to note in a more serious vein that,

the breakthrough aspect of his [Jewish] candidacy has been met with silence… [and] this silence has do with Mr. Sanders and the kind of American Jew that he represents⎯one who privileges the universal over the particular, society over tribe.

That’s a very nice way of putting it. But allow me to rephrase, in a slightly more provocative way. I do so in order to establish a thesis for this sermon. Bernie Sanders remained silent about his Jewish identity not because he denies it, not because he is ashamed of it, but because he is ambivalent about it.

Bernie Sanders is the ambivalent American Jew.

And in that regard Bernie Sanders is not alone.

Contrast Sander’s silence with that of another man who made the news in the spring, Merrick Garland. When Garland was nominated by President Obama to the Supreme Court I happened to catch his brief remarks at the White House. You may have missed it, but it was live from the Rose Garden. Garland began by thanking the President and then his wife, and then Garland said: 

My family deserves much of the credit for the path that led me here.  My grandparents left the Pale of Settlement at the border of western Russian and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fleeing anti-Semitism, and hoping to make a better life for their children in America.

Most Americans did not know that Garland was Jewish⎯I didn’t. Garland knew this. And he took the climactic moment of his life, on national TV with the President of the United States by his side, to acknowledge it⎯to affirm it. He didn’t have to. It would have been easier not to. But Merrick Garland chose to express that his Jewish identity is an inseparable part of who he is. He was saying that his Jewish family shaped his life. Not exclusively, but essentially.

To be fair, Bernie Sanders did speak about his Jewish identity once during the campaign. CNN host Anderson Cooper asked Sanders about his Jewishness during a Town Hall meeting. Sanders replied that,

 My spirituality is that we are all in this together and when children go hungry, when veterans sleep out on the street, it impacts me. That’s my strong spiritual feeling.

Cooper nodded but then asked Sanders whether he was intentionally keeping his Judaism under wraps. “No,” answered Sanders: “I am very proud to be Jewish.” Sanders added how his father’s family had been wiped out in the Holocaust, and how as a child he remembered seeing neighbors with concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms. He concluded that being Jewish “is an essential part of who I am as a human being.”

So am I being too hard on Bernie? Well, let’s delve into this. Bernie did say something positive about his Jewish identity… but only when pressed about it. Quite honestly, he looked uncomfortable to me when he said it. He did not say it convincingly, with his usual passion, but almost apologetically. And what he said in his few words was also telling. Sanders spoke about his Jewishness in strictly ethnic terms, in connection to the Holocaust.

The esteemed conservative columnist Charles Krauthhammer wrote an entire article on Sander’s response:

What a strange reply⎯yet it doesn’t seem so to us because it has become increasingly common for American Jews to locate their identity in the Holocaust.

Krauthhammer continues, 

The Holocaust forms an ineradicable element of my own Jewish consciousness. But I worry about the balance. As Jewish practice, learning and knowledge diminish over time, my concern is that Holocaust memory is emerging as the dominant feature of Jewishness in America.... We must of course remain dedicated to keeping alive the memory and the truth of the Holocaust, particularly when they are under assault from so many quarters....

Nonetheless, there must be balance. It would be a tragedy for American Jews to make the Holocaust the principle legacy bequeathed to their children. After all, the Jewish people are living through a miraculous age: the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty, the revival of Hebrew... [and] the flowering of a new Hebraic culture radiating throughout the Jewish world. 

Memory is sacred, but victimhood cannot be the foundation stone of Jewish identity.

Krauthhammer argues, and I certainly agree, that Sanders missed an opportunity to connect his passion for social justice with his Jewish identity. “I was sure his answer would be some variation of tikkun [olam (repairing the world)]”, he wrote. “On the stump, he plays the Old Testament prophet railing against the powerful and denouncing their treatment of the widow and the orphan.” Maybe Sanders was alluding to this when he talked about his social justice spirituality, but he never made the connection explicit.

Being Jewish is ethnic. Peoplehood is a key part of who we are. Being Jewish is ethical. After all, the Bible itself says that we are called to be a light to the nations, a moral exemplar. For me, prophetic Judaism and its mandate, Justice, justice shall you pursue is our highest calling.

I have no quarrel with Sanders's link to the Holocaust. I have nothing but respect for Sanders commitment to social justice. I even largely accept his criticism of Israel, although I wish he had balanced his critique during the campaign with some words of warmth toward the Jewish state. For a Jewish politician, who himself had spent time on a kibbutz, one would of thought this would be, as they say, a no-brainer.

But I think Bernie’s ambivalence got in the way of his public support for Israel in the same way that it got in the way of his public acknowledgement of the Jewish roots of his social activism. And I think Bernie’s ambivalence has gotten in the way of any meaningful connection to the American Jewish community.

Does it matter that Sanders was not in synagogue last Rosh Hashanah? After all, when Sandy Koufax sat out the World Series, contrary to rumor he did not go to synagogue. But he sat out the game he was due to start as the Dodger’s ace, and that was huge. Bernie did not sit out a day on the campaign trail. He gave a speech, at Liberty University, no less, a Christian school. That hurts.

The major study of Jewish identity by the Pew Research Center that made waves two years ago showed that most American Jews are proud of their identity. That’s good news.

When asked what it means to be Jewish, the single largest response, by far (more than 2/3) was leading an ethical life. That’s good news too, and the world will be a better place for it.

But only 19 percent said that observing Jewish law was important. That’s not good news. Not even half belong to a synagogue. That’s not good news. An alarming number of interfaith families are not raising their children as Jews. That’s not good news. A third of millennials say they are Jewish, but have no religion. That’s not good news.

Obviously I’m speaking as a rabbi, but wherever you put yourself on the Jewish spectrum, ask yourself honestly:

Is ethnic identity enough? Is ethical identity enough? What about faith? What about ritual? Can you really be Jewish without religion? Will you stay Jewish without religion? What about the Judaism in Jewishness?

It distressed me to learn, from someone who has been very close to Bernie Sanders his entire adult life, that neither Bernie’s son nor his grandchildren were raised as Jews. I am enormously proud of Bernie Sanders and his contribution to America. I really mean that. But I am truly sad that the Jewish line that has run though the Sanders family is coming to an end with Bernie. Is that what his forebears in the Pale of Settlement had in mind? Is that what his Polish immigrant father had in mind? Is that what Bernie himself had in mind?

The ambivalent American Jew will become the disappearing American Jew in the next generation. Bernie Sanders as a Jewish American is a tale of triumph. Bernie Sanders as an American Jew is a tale of tragedy.

Which tale are we writing for ourselves and our children?

I believe that the ambivalent center will not hold. Either we are all in. Or we are all out. Either we embrace our birthright, or scorn it. Either we bequeath our heritage or squander it.

We need not be zealots or fanatics. We need not be Orthodox. We can be proud Reform Jews, who affirm our ethnic identity, our ethical identity and our religious identity. We can view God theistically, atheistically, or vote agnostic. But there is a basic level of Jewish observance that comes with the territory. There is a basic expression of Jewish life that says, I am a member of the tribe.

On this Rosh Hashanah, it is time to vote. Not for Hillary or Donald, Democrat or Republican. It is time to cast our ballot for Am Yisrael. And it’s time to say, Hineni. Here I am! Count me in!

Sports Talk Sunday December 6th

Join us on Sunday, December 6th at 10AM in the Social Hall when the Congregation welcomes guest speaker, Dr. David Kristol, who will speak on “Jews in Sports.” 

Lite refreshments served

Sponsored by the Adult Education Committee

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Kol Nidre 5776

LEGACIES

EREV YOM KIPPUR 5776

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s iconic career records for home runs on August 7th, 2007. Do you know what happened to the ball? It was put up for sale on an on-line auction. On Sept. 15th of that year the fashion designer and billion dollar lifestyle company head Marc Ecko payed $752,467 for it.

Then Ecko, who, by the way, is Jewish and was born, raised, and lives here in New Jersey, did something quite interesting. He created a website to let fans decide what to do with the ball. He gave them three options to vote for: donating it to the Baseball Hall of Fame untouched, donating it to the Hall of Fame with an asterisk branded on its surface, or launching it into space forever.

Well, 19% favored chucking it into space, 34% preferred to see it donated to the Hall as is, and 47% voted to brand it before donating.

So, majority wins, that’s exactly what Ecko did. Home run ball #756 sits in Cooperstown with a permanent asterisk.

Some applauded the stunt; others decried it. Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins said, “Why brand it? It’s an accomplishment of 21, 22 years. It hasn’t been proven that Bonds used steroids. It’s a cruel world we live in.”

But fellow Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer said, “I think time will sort out how you want to view it. The fans have a pretty good sense of what has gone on.”

Ecko himself said, in a bit of an understatement, that the poll results prove that fans believe Bond’s feat was “shrouded in a chapter of baseball history that wasn’t necessarily the clearest it could be.”

When I do a unit on integrity and cheating with my confirmation class, I have my students debate what should have been done with the ball. It makes for an interesting exercise. What intrigues me most is the issue of legacy. How should Bonds be remembered?

As a sports fan I find myself thinking about this question a lot, maybe more than I should, but there are so many provocative cases.

But before I share several of them, I must note that today marks the 50th anniversary of perhaps the greatest Jewish legacy sports event of all-time. Yes, it was on this Yom Kippur in 1965 that Sandy Koufax refused to pitch in the World Series.

As Koufax wrote in his autobiography: “There was never any decision to make, because there was never any possibility that I would pitch. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish religion. The club knows that I don’t work that day.”

The writer Zev Chafets reported twenty years later, while doing research for a book: “I was told by hundreds of Jewish men across the United States that their most important Jewish memory was of Sandy sitting out the Series.”

Rabbi Daniel Pernick wrote recently: “Two specific events produced more Jewish pride than anything else in the turbulent decade of the 1960s—Sandy Koufax’s refusal to pitch on Yom Kippur in 1965, and not quite two years later, the Six Day War in June 1967. To this day, the name Sandy Koufax is uttered with awe-both because of his athletic prowess and his courage to stand true to his values.”

Now to the flip side:

Lance Armstrong was once a hero of mine. I read his book and actually gave a sermon about why he was a genuine hero. All the good work he did in the fight against cancer—how does that measure up against the lying and deception we now know went on for years?

What will be the ultimate legacy of all those players who confessed to using performance enhancing drugs or did not confess but are strongly suspected of doing so?

What will be the ultimate legacy of athletes who came to great achievement legitimately, but then broke other rules, like Pete Rose?

What will be the ultimate legacy of athletes who came to great achievement legitimately, but then broke social mores, like Tiger Woods?

Or consider the cautionary tale of Joe Paterno. In the course of three months, three years ago, the legendary coach lost his job, his reputation and his life. The NCAA initially punished both him and his team not because they did anything wrong, but evidently because they did not do enough right—in taking stronger steps to stop Jerry Sandusky’s abusive behavior. They stripped Penn State of 111 victories. This past January they reversed themselves and restored the wins. Sports Illustrated wrote a piece about it entitles, “It’s Complicated” with the tag line, “Joe Pa got his wins back, and his statue may follow. But legacies aren’t so easily restored—or defined.”

Paterno himself said in 2011: “This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight I wish I had done more.“

Respected sportswriter Tim Layden concluded his piece, “Stripping the victories was a punitive act with no connection to the crime. But the wins don’t exonerate Paterno. They add a thin layer atop an already complex legacy, comprised of the very good and the very bad.”

There’s that word again—legacy. And today, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is really about this—what do I want my legacy to be?

How can I make amends for the bad, and elevate the good?

How can I tip the scales of justice and compassion in my favor?

How I can I add a fresh chapter to the Book of Life that will be to my merit?

The most perplexing and problematic portion of our prayers… is also the most powerful and provocative. Why? Because it deals with our legacies.

It came earlier in our service and its worth delving a little deeper. When we started the U’netaneh Tokef section we said, “On Rosh Hashanah we reflect, and on Yom Kippur we consider: Who shall live for the sake of others; who, dying, shall leave a heritage of life.”

The traditional “Who Shall Live, Who Shall Die” prayers mince no words. “You write and You seal, You record and recount. You open the book of our days.” But then later, “and what is written there proclaims itself, for it bears the signature of every human being.” God may inscribe the Book of Life, but we generate the content. We sign off, as it were, on what is written. Our tradition argues that there is a Judge and there is judgement. But it also makes clear that we supply the facts—the evidence.

And there is more: the liturgy continues, “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: who shall live and who shall die… who shall be secure and who shall be driven… who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled… who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted,” and then the punchline, maybe the most important line of the entire High Holidays: “But repentance, prayer, and charity temper judgment’s sever decree.”

There are acts that we can do to actually reverse, or at least mitigate, our misdeeds. There are steps we can take to address a tarnished legacy. They are three in number and endless in potential: teshuva—repentance; tefilah—prayer; tzedakah—charity.

I could, and should, give a separate sermon on each of the three. Maybe next year. For now, I emphasize one basic point: Legacies are earned, not given. Legacies are an open book, not closed. Legacies are a life-long endeavor, not instant.

It’s not too late to temper the decree. It’s not too late to make repairs by making amends. It’s not too late to add a new chapter.

Besides Yom Kippur, when is another time that we speak about legacies? At funerals, during eulogies. Many, many times I have officiated at the funeral of an ordinary person, who achieved neither fame nor fortune. After all, how many will do that? And some times there is not a great deal for me to say, though I try very hard to listen to the family, and encourage them to speak as well. But other times, I do have a great deal that I can say. And I may need to limit myself because there a line of others who want to talk as well. Again, the person led an ordinary life, career-wise, wealth-wise, accomplishment wise. But the eulogies come pouring forth. You say to yourself: there is something extraordinary happening here. What is it that separates the ordinary from the extraordinary in these modest lives?

Our tradition has a word for it, or rather a phrase: keter shem tov—the crown of a good name.

The one who gave and asked nothing in return. The one who would give the shirt off their back. The one who loved freely and unconditionally.

The one who offered before being asked. The one who stood loyal and tall. The one we called a true mensch.

The one who made mistakes but admitted them. The one whose scowl ended in a smile. The one who laughed not at you but with you.

The full Talmudic teaching says, “There is the crown of royalty; there is the crown of the priesthood; there is the crown of scholarship… but the crown of a good name exceeds them all.”

It’s an extraordinary statement about legacy. Judaism has deep respect for royalty, for clergy, and certainly for scholars. We applaud those who devote themselves to leadership and to learning. The just ruler, the gifted healer, the inspired teacher… these are legacy makers.

But the accumulation of power, prestige, and even scholarship for its own sake—divorced from their ethical moorings—that’s a blot on one’s legacy, whatever the achievement.

Some will merit many crowns, but the one within reach of all exceeds them all. The greatest crown can be worn by the common man. The crown that will make all the difference in how we are remembered. The crown of a good name.

On this Yom Kippur we pause and reflect on the legacy we are already creating and will one day leave behind.

Few of us will be elected to any Hall of Fame save one, the circle of our family and friends.

Swing for the fences; hit a home run. Just make sure there is no asterisk on it.

Wednesday the Rabbi Played Ping Pong

Some of you may recognize that the title of this post alludes to the mystery fiction series introduced by author Harry Kemelman in 1964, with the character of Rabbi David Small in the lead role as detective. If you are unfamiliar with his novels, here are the first seven, in order of publication:

But it is no mystery nor at all a fiction that on Wednesdays, rain or shine, our Rabbi Schwartz heads over to the Leonia Recreational Center as a member of the Leonia Table Tennis Club. And he was instrumental in getting the Jewish Standard to feature an article on Sol Epstein, head of the club, in an article in their May 2nd issue entitled Table Tennis Anyone? The article, written by Lois Goldrich, naturally enough emphasizes the Jewish connection to the sport, and begins with the following:

Ping pong is what you play in the basement. It’s table tennis when you bring it upstairs. That’s what you call it “when you’re serious,” says Sol Epstein of Englewood Cliffs, head of the Leonia Table Tennis Club.

Mr. Epstein figures that he’s probably among the top 15 players in the group, which has more than 100 members.

That’s pretty good for a man who’s about to turn 90.

“I’ve been playing since my bar mitzvah,” said Mr. Epstein, who grew up on Norfolk Street on New York’s Lower East Side.

“It was a Jewish neighborhood,” he said, noting that he honed his skills at the Jewish settlement house on Stanton Street, challenging not only other locals but players from other Jewish venues, such as the Educational Alliance and the Henry Street settlement house.

In those days, Mr. Epstein said, players lived in cold-water flats. But today, “table tennis is not a poor man’s game. You can pay up to $300 for a racket.”

The table tennis maven — who, among other victories, won a tournament at New York’s Seward Park High School, and when he was in the Army came in second at a tournament in Fort Knox, Kentucky — said he always carries his paddle, in case he finds an opportunity to play. (He recalled that such a random opportunity arose once in Budapest.)

It is clear from Mr. Epstein’s many stories that table tennis is no laughing matter.

“I once won a tournament, beating the top-seeded player,” he said. “Later I went into the restroom, and he was in there crying.”

It it also clear that both the nature of the game and the equipment it demands have changed over the years. A 1902 postcard in Mr. Epstein’s voluminous collection of ping-pong-related items shows a man and woman — he in tails, she gowned — playing the game at the Waldorf Astoria. Their paddles — similar to a vintage set Mr. Epstein owns — are covered over with sheepskin, and the balls they used are smaller than today’s.

According to Mr. Epstein, the balls were enlarged to make the sport is easier to follow on television.

Leonia’s is not the only table tennis club in Bergen County. Fair Lawn has had one for many years, and Mr. Epstein, who used to live there, won a trophy there in the 1960s. Some 25 years ago, he helped former Leonia athletic director and table tennis player Eli Krackower create the club in Leonia.

Now, the 12 tables at the Leonia Recreation Center host 75 to 80 men and women every Wednesday night, and 50 to 60 players on Saturday mornings. While the players’ ages range widely, no one is under 18. Not surprising, Mr. Epstein is the club’s oldest member. What is surprising is his vitality, trim build, and exuberant personality. This he attributes to playing twice a week for two hours — a practice that also burns off two pounds every Wednesday and Saturday.

The games played at the club are both athletic and competitive, Mr. Epstein said, although everyone has his or her own style of play. And while the group now has a waiting list, casual players who always thought they were “pretty good” at basement ping pong soon find out what it means to play a serious game.

The Leonia team is a lot like the United Nations, he said, noting that players hail from — among other places — Russia, China, Peru, South Korea, India, Japan, and the Philippines. One regular, Rey Domingo, has been U.S champion among table tennis players over 40.

Marty Reisman

Many of the players are Jewish, Mr. Epstein said, pointing out that some of the greatest players in the country have been Jews. He cited, for example, the late Marty Reisman, the 1958 and 1960 U.S. Men’s Singles champion and the 1997 U.S. hardbat champion. (Hardbat rackets do not use sponge rubber, so the style of play is different.)

Like Mr. Epstein, Mr. Reisman honed his skills on the Lower East Side. In addition, he became the oldest player to win an open national competition in a racket sport by winning the 1997 United States National Hardbat Championship when he was 67.

For Mr. Epstein’s 85th birthday, the Leonia club brought Mr. Reisman to play against him.

“I won one game, although I don’t know if he was just being nice,” Mr. Epstein said.

Mr. Epstein, who worked in men’s clothing for 31 years, has proved his mettle in other areas as well. He joined the Army when he was18, fighting as part of the 104th Infantry Division, “which had some kind of record for 195 days of continuous combat.”

Mr. Epstein has as many war stories as he has tales of table tennis games won and lost. For example, he said, after climbing into a bed in a German tenement — which, he noted, resembled the tenements he remembered from the Lower East Side — he caught German measles. Yes, he smiled, German measles in Germany. He also recalled the time he recoiled from a particular meal and advised his fellow soldiers not to eat it. As it happened, those who did came down with dysentery.

Still, most of his stories revolve around table tennis, and after his wife, Molly, the sport is the great passion of his life.

Sol Epstein, about to turn 90, never leaves home without his ping pong paddle.

The veteran player, whose prowess has been profiled on NBC’s “Today Show,” among other places, said he took up the game because “I had an overprotective Jewish mother. She said I should pick a sport where if you get hit by the ball, it shouldn’t hurt. So I picked table tennis. It’s the greatest thing in the world.

“I love the sport.”

At this point, the article turns to our own Rabbi Schwartz:

Barry Schwartz, rabbi of Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia — whom Epstein describes as an “excellent” player — says he has been playing avidly for 30 years.

Rabbi Schwartz joked that his regular Wednesday night games “help keep me sane.

“They enable me and others to venture out from our circle and the little world we inhabit to interact with people from all walks of life, and from all over the world,” he said.

Rabbi Schwartz said that when he goes to the recreation center, he particularly enjoys chatting with other players. He has become friendly not only with Mr. Epstein but with a number of Russian players.

“You start off with a simple thing in common, but while you’re waiting around for games to begin, you start to chat,” he said. “I’ve had interesting discussions with a Jordanian player who works with the U.N., with another Muslim player from Pakistan, and one from Syria. It shows that people have common interests and it doesn’t matter that I’m a rabbi and he’s a Muslim diplomat. We enjoy playing together and discovering what we have in common.”

Rabbi Schwartz said that another player, a Chinese woman, has a daughter who attends Duke University. When he told her that he too had gone to Duke, they started to talk.

“She works in the food service business and is employed by a kosher caterer,” he said. “That was an interesting connection.

“She was surprised that I was talking to her and would play with her. The people she works with are strictly Orthodox. She said I don’t look like a rabbi. Her conception of a rabbi was clearly changed.”

Rabbi Schwartz said that ping pong — one of the most popular sports in the world in terms of active players — was introduced as an Olympic sport about 20 years ago.

“Everywhere I’ve lived I’ve sought out a club,” he said. “When I moved to Leonia, I found that the Leonia Recreation Center had a wonderful club that’s been there for decades. I play every Wednesday night.”

Noting that the club has a sizeable contingent of Jews, he pointed out that in Europe before the war, “many European champs were Jews, some of the greatest players of all time. [The sport] was very much identified with Jews in Europe.”

His fellow players in Leonia belonged to clubs in their own countries, he added, noting that in Europe, “there are table tennis clubs in every city and major town.” He likened its popularity to that of bowling in the United States, when the sport was in its heyday. “All over the world it’s taken much more seriously as an organized league sport. We’re playing catch-up, just like with soccer.

“The beauty of table tennis is that you can continue to play at a high level at an advanced age,” he continued. And you can find pick-up games all over the world.

“My wife Debby and I were in Nepal,” he said. “Debby had a conference in India and we decided to go to Mt. Everest. We had landed in a little village outside Katmandu way up in the mountains. We were passing through the village to get to the trail.”

Suddenly, he said, he heard a familiar sound. Turning the corner, he looked up.

“On the side of the mountain, teenagers were playing ping pong. I told the guide we had to stop.

“I unloaded my backpack and played with the Nepalese teens for 20 minutes at an altitude of 14,000 feet. It’s the highest I ever played tennis.

“They started laughing. They thought I was just some tourist.” As might be expected, the rabbi won the game.

While Rabbi Schwartz does not have an official table tennis ranking — he never has played in a sanctioned tournament because they take place on Shabbat — he believes his approximate ranking would be about 1,700.

“Really advanced players start at 2,000, and world champions range from 2,600 to 2,800,” he said. “I’m a respectable player, but not top tier. The average person has a ranking of 900 to 1,000.” He said that at the Leonia club, there are only a handful of players ranked over 2,000.

He noted that on any given table tennis night in Leonia the tables are filled, with five to 10 people waiting.

“Northern New Jersey is a hotbed for table tennis, one of the most active regions in the country,” he said. “Westfield has a longstanding club, there’s a group in Fair Lawn, and one in an Asian church in Palisades Park. That’s nice to know.”

He said that although some people in the Leonia club register for tournaments, “the majority come just for fun and recreation.”

And that brings us to the end of the article. 




So, the next time someone asks you if ping pong is kosher, you'll know that the answer is yes!