We came across the following headline on one of the many news feeds that we receive each day. In our naive fashion, we always assumed that an item that is “breaking news” is something important. Apparently we were wrong. This is the text of the alert:
“The Celtics and guard Marcus Smart have agreed on a four-year, $52 million contract, a league source confirmed.”
We don’t know if any of you can conceive of what a $52 million dollar, four-year contract could possibly entail. We certainly cannot even envision such a thing. Our heads just shook and we wondered if we were crazy, until a day or so later when we heard even more totally crazy news. LeBron James made a deal with the LA Lakers for a mere $153.3 million dollars over a period of four years. Poor Marcus Smart obviously has a long way to go.
The numbers are beyond our conception. The absurdity of it all finds us in a total state of disbelief. Imagine perusing a headline in the Jewish Press (sorry, Moshe!) that reads: “Rabbi Dovid Goldberg Signs $35 Million Dollar Contract With Yeshiva Torah Torah Torah Over Four-Year Period.” (Hopefully there is no such yeshiva and certainly not one affiliated with Rabbi Dovid Goldberg. If there is, our apologies.) You can be sure that heads would spin and people would be busy emailing, tweeting and calling each other. What is wrong with us in this day and age that we spend so much time adoring and worshipping these sports stars and supporting the ridiculous salaries that they make? We know that we will get flak for this but, honestly, why is it that a large strong body, great dexterity and, in many cases, the ability to use language that we would never allow our children to repeat is who many kids and their parents are worshipping?
By spending the ridiculous amounts of money that it costs to get “prime location” seats near the basketball court, or right behind home plate at a baseball game, we are supporting the amount of money that these players receive.
Perhaps we are coming up with a good idea for day schools: “Your child can sit directly in front of the rebbe for an additional $50,000 per year.” How many do you think would sign up? “For another $50,000 your child can have lunch with their teacher one day a week for four months.” If families would take the amount of money that they spend on sports activities each year (we know not all families) and would direct it instead to the salaries of teachers in our schools, many more of us would encourage our children to go into chinuch. Whoop dee doo that some schools provide a reduced tuition for the children of their faculty. We are sure that there is not one faculty member who would not prefer to have an increased salary of at least $50,000 instead of the tuition reduction that is offered to them.
Should we not be rethinking who our “heroes” are? Our heroes are those who sit in the classroom each day with our children, certainly not the “pride” of the Knicks or the Lakers. And for sure not the best pitchers that the Yanks and the Mets have on the mound this season.
By Rabbi Mordechai and Nina Glick
