There are three topics that I wanted to address in the shiur - all loosely related.  I know that probably the most exciting one is the last one in the title, but, in some ways, the first one is the most important.  Or, put differently: as an individual, the first may or should be the most important; the latter two become more important on a communal level.

I.  The Importance of Physical Activity/Exercise

            The first topic is the issue of physical activity.  There are several possible motivations as to why a בן-תורה would choose to engage in exercise.  First, because it’s enjoyable (for some people - for other people it seems to be painful, which is rather unfortunate.)  Second, because it transforms a person’s body - that is, a person wants to change their body's appearance.  Thus exercise, physical activity, is seen as a means to a very specific end.  And the third possibility is because it keeps a person healthy and what can emerge from that is the enhancement of one’s עבודת השם.

            For a person who chooses to engage in physical activity for the first reason (because it’s enjoyable), the primary question is whether this is ביטול תורה.  Of course, that concern assumes that you would be learning Torah otherwise - if you’re not learning Torah otherwise, if you’re doing other kinds of activities that would not constitute תלמוד תורה, then choosing exercise instead of doing those things is obviously not a question of ביטול תורה.  And it also ignores the fact that most people do need a break: you need a break, otherwise you’re going to burn out.  Outside of the concern of ביטול תורה, exercising for enjoyment is morally/halakhically neutral.

            Motivation number two, is the most problematic - the idea that one wishes to transform one’s body.  To the extent that doing so enhances one’s health and strength and stamina, it really belongs to motivation number three - it’s not really, or at least primarily, about appearances.  If a person is in an unhealthy state and takes steps to become healthier, it happens to be that one of the byproducts may be that their body will look different afterwards.  But, to the extent that the primary focus is on appearances, it becomes more problematic.  Greco-Roman culture that Hazal confronted, involved a large degree of glorification of the physical elements of the human body.  In the modern period, there are aspects of Zionism that have taken on some of this physical element, this warrior culture or what some would term "muscular Judaism".  Not surprisingly, when one looks at how the some of these issues are treated (sports and physical fitness), sometimes the attitudes break down along pro-Zionist/anti-Zionist lines.

            Some of the distinction might also stem from Biblical versus Rabbinic sources.  In Tanakh you have notion of the mighty warrior praised for his physical prowess – חגור חרבך על גבור ירך הודך והדרך.  In the Rabbinic portrayal, חכמים are referred to as קצירי ומריעי, sickly - as opposed to איש גבור חיל.  We are Rabbinic Jews, we are not Biblical Jews (i.e. it is Chazal's tradition of reading Tanakh we follow, not what me might think is peshat) - although it’s not clear to me how much this difference is a function of an ideal versus a reality.  תלמידי חכמים may have been, on average, poorer and less well-nourished - and perhaps by dint of their occupation engaged less frequently in physical activity as a matter of course.  It may be that it is not a desideratum that תלמידי חכמים be קצירי ומריעי.  I don’t know what happened to Reish Lakish after he started attending yeshiva and learning, but clearly beforehand it was (as Rav Yohanan said to him) חיליך לאורייתא.

            But putting aside the historical question, the issue becomes a much bigger one in contemporary culture.  The fetishizing of certain body types has done a lot of damage in contemporary society, and our community is by no means immune.  (It is worth noting that ideal body types have varied from society to society.  In Fiji, eating disorders were virtually unknown before Western television was introduced in 1995, and calling someone skinny was an insult; in the course of a few years, eating disorders had become quite common.)  This fetishizing combined with the complete absence of tznius, male and female, makes this even more problematic.  “I need to exercise so I can look a certain way, even if I am healthy enough as it is.”  This culture has contributed to all sorts of mental health issues - and it also reflects a spiritually vacuous worldview.

            And then finally, the motivation for exercising because a person wishes to be healthier - and ideally, because it will enhance one’s עבודת השם.  This certainly has a strong basis within our tradition.  You will still find those who saw physical activity as a waste of time, but here I think that there is very clear support in our tradition and it is something that I think בני תורה need to think about a lot.  Not all בני תורה, but many.  בני תורה who spend their days in the beis medrash tend not to be the most physically active - unless you’re talking about becoming animated and screaming at your chavrusa when you don’t like his sevara, but real physical activity is something which for many is not so common.

            Rambam, in הלכות דעות, addresses this issue.  הלכות דעות is a bit of an outlier in משנה תורה.  It is different than almost anything else in the משנה תורה, because there is a block of it (in the middle) where Rambam gives us health advice.  Rambam's decision here is not actually unprecedented.  Think about the תלמוד בבלי: when we think of gemara, many of us think only of the למדות, or halakhah - but when you step back and take a broader view of the Bavli, what you see is that it’s actually a guide to everything in life.  We may choose not to follow (and there is a very long-standing strain of tradition that we don’t accept) the specifics of Hazal's science or medicine just because they say it - (rather, it is measured as right or wrong on its own merits) - but the fact that the gemara chose to include this type of material, all sort of advice about health, about eating, about how one handles one’s bodily functions, tells you that Hazal were looking at a complete picture of the human experience, not just halakhah and למדות (and machshavah).

            If you were to look at the Mishnah you will almost find nothing of that particular kind, but the Bavli (I don’t think it is common in the Yerushalmi) sees the totality of the human experience as part of the domain of a בן תורה, and that includes health and medical advice.

            Rambam in הלכות דעות, is essentially following that tradition.  And I think what I observed before, that the Geonim and many Rishonim say that the gemara’s medical advice is not binding halakhically to the extent that we no longer consider it to be correct, can be said about Rambam in הלכות דעות as well, but I think the larger point still remains - if you were to modify some of the details (and it happens to be that what we are going to look at hasn't changed very much) in the Rambam - the principle still remains.

            (In Shulkhan Arukh, for the most part, you have a small amount of this material.  I don’t think it’s as extensive in the משנה תורה: you have יורה דעה סימן קט"ז addressing matters which potentially entail סכנה; and you have some material in the beginning of אורח חיים regarding hygiene.)

            Rambam in הלכות דעות writes:

המנהיג עצמו על פי הרפואה, אם שם על לבו שיהיה כל גופו ואבריו שלמים בלבד ושיהיו לו בנים עושין מלאכתו ועמלין לצורכו אין זו דרך טובה, אלא ישים על לבו שיהא גופו שלם וחזק כדי שתהיה נפשו ישרה לדעת את ה', שאי אפשר שיבין וישתכל בחכמות והוא רעב וחולה או אחד מאיבריו כואב, וישים על לבו שיהיה לו בן אולי יהיה חכם וגדול בישראל, נמצא המהלך בדרך זו כל ימיו עובד את ה' תמיד, אפילו בשעה שנושא ונותן ואפילו בשעה שבועל, מפני שמחשבתו בכל כדי שימצא צרכיו עד שיהיה גופו שלם לעבוד את ה', ואפילו בשעה שהוא ישן [אם ישן] לדעת כדי שתנוח דעתו עליו וינוח גופו כדי שלא יחלה ולא יוכל לעבוד את ה' והוא חולה, נמצאת שינה שלו עבודה למקום ברוך הוא, [ועל ענין זה צוו חכמים ואמרו וכל מעשיך יהיו לשם שמים, והוא שאמר שלמה בחכמתו בכל דרכיך דעהו והוא יישר אורחותיך.]

            Rambam continues in the next פרק:

הואיל והיות הגוף בריא ושלם מדרכי השם הוא, שהרי אי אפשר שיבין או ידע דבר מידיעת הבורא והוא חולה, לפיכך צריך להרחיק אדם עצמו מדברים המאבדין את הגוף, ולהנהיג עצמו בדברים המברין והמחלימים,

            Finally, I wanted to look at one specific thing that Rambam mentions.  Again, as I stated at the outset: Rambam stating this as a specific detail of health doesn't makes it binding - we should look to contemporary science for specific guidance.  That said, if you read health columns in the media, what you see from year to year (or even month to month) is changing dietary advice - “you should eat this food, not that food; you should eat that food, not this food.” Every day it seems that the advice is changing.  But there’s one thing that never seems to change, that nobody seems to dispute, which is that one of the most central elements for wellness is physical activity - that seems to be a common denominator.  That doesn’t seem to change.

            The Rambam writes in הלכה י”ד:

ועוד כלל אחר אמרו בבריאות הגוף, כל זמן שאדם מתעמל ויגע הרבה ואינו שבע ומעיו רפין אין חולי בא עליו וכחו מתחזק, ואפילו אוכל מאכלות הרעים.

            I think that this advice would still be considered accurate.  The current scientific consensus (if we can use such a term in this context) is that the health of the digestive system and the gut microbiome are one of the central elements of human health; and physical activity is a basic requirement.

            Rambam continues:

וכל מי שהוא יושב לבטח ואינו מתעמל, או מי שמשהא נקביו, או מי שמעיו קשין, אפילו אכל מאכלות טובים ושמר עצמו על פי הרפואה, כל ימיו יהיו מכאובים וכחו תשש ...

            I would like to say that it is halakhically obligatory to exercise, but one of the challenges that this statement presents is that halakhah typically relates to a specific, momentary act: you do it, or you don’t do it.  Cumulative acts are a little more complicated.

            For example suppose that you are drinking soda.  Soda is extremely unhealthy by any measure.  Is it prohibited to drink just one can of soda?  Most likely not.  It is אסור to adopt a lifestyle that over the course of a lifetime you drink enough of it - and eat the wrong kinds of foods - that it leaves you unhealthy and sickly.

            So, often, activities that done once, or done twice, or done occasionally, are not problematic - you enjoy it and it’s perfectly fine - but done over the long term, cumulatively, they become problematic.

            So, it’s hard to say “you’re מחוייב to do this, you’re מחוייב to do that” the way halakhah typically relates to behaviors, because it’s not a specific act.  Skipping one night of exercise in the week because you have a בחינה, or you have a college test coming up - nobody is going to tell you that that is אסור to skip your exercise session, because you are מחוייב to exercise tonight.  It is the habit and the cumulative impact that is problematic - which is why it belongs to הלכות דעות.  It is not like the Shulkhan Arukh saying "you can’t eat meat with fish”.  That is a specific act; the issues of which we speak are advice for enjoying a healthy life as a product of habit, but it’s not a singular act.

            There is, of course, the challenge that the people in the בית מדרש will present “yes, but it’s going to take a lot of time out of my learning.”  There is a really amazing passage in an article published many years ago (“Physical Culture in Rabbinic Literature”, Korot v.15, 2001), by Dr. Aharon Ahrend.  He notes that there really is not a lot written about these issues in Rabbinic literature, but in that article he unearths some fascinating comments of the The Hafetz Haim.

Quoting The Hafetz Haim:

"Do not study overmuch.  Man must preserve the body so that it is not weakened, so that it does not fall ill, and for that it is crucial to rest and relax, to breathe fresh air.  A walk should be taken towards evening, or sit at home and rest.  When possible, a swim in the river is good for strengthening the body.  Overindulgence in study is the advice of the evil inclination, which counsels working too hard in order to weaken the body, after which the person will be obliged to refrain entirely from Torah study so that in the end his reward is his loss.” (pp. 62-63)

Ahrend continues:

“The Hafetz Haim himself explains the background to his approach in the discussion: he related that during his youth he studied more than his strength would allow and weakened his eyes, subsequently the doctors ordered him to not read for two years, so that his reward was his loss.” (p. 63)

            If I were to tell you, you should take out five hours of your week to engage in exercise (granted that it would be challenging for you with your schedules to actually find such time),   you might ask me whether you could justify sacrificing so much time from learning.  Do some simple arithmetic.  If you spend five hours a week, assuming that you get fifteen hours per day of productive time, time when you are not sleeping, not taking care of basic needs - you essentially give up the equivalent of one day out of every three weeks to exercise.  And that means that every year you have given up, approximately, the equivalent of seventeen days for exercise.  That sounds really terrible.  And then every twenty or twenty-one years you have given up one year of those twenty one for exercise.  And then, assuming that you start from this day forward, and you work with your average life expectancy (sixty plus years from your current age), you will spend the equivalent of three years of your life exercising.  It seems like a lot of time, doesn’t it?

            But consider what the likely benefits of those "three years of exercise" are - true, if you would have lived until eighty, you’re probably not going to live until a hundred even if you keep a healthy lifestyle.  (Although statistically speaking, you probably will live at least a few years more).  But, even more crucial, you see people who get older, and you see their decline.  And you see that many times, at the end of life, those years are of certainly far lesser quality, less vigor - and that means that the productive activities, including spiritual activities, including talmud torah, that one is able to do because they are in a physically diminished state, are extremely reduced if not totally eliminated.  It seems that physical activity is the most powerful weapon against that decline.  So I believe that if you were to do the arithmetic, the three years of your life that you would spend exercising, would actually pay themselves back - possibly many times over.

            So I think that if your biggest concern is that it’s taking away time from your תלמוד תורה, I would think that you will end up (statistically speaking - there are always outliers) with more time for תלמוד תורה on this earth.  Before you have to answer the question of קבעת עתים לתורה, and if you are concerned with אשרי מי שבא לכאן ותלמודו בידו, you will probably have a lot more time to prepare if you choose to set aside a meaningful amount of time to engage in physical activity.

            And, of course, there are two other considerations (even in the short-term), which are, number one, for people who are exercising, the rest of their day may actually be more productive in terms of their focus and their concentration - which means they may get the same out of their day, including their learning, as they would if they hadn’t exercised.  And, number two (especially in light of the contemporary situation), the mental health benefits from physical activity are enormous.  There might be very few things that are greater stress and anxiety relievers than vigorous physical activity - and that too will enhance everything else.

II. Organized Sports

            Physical activity can take many, many different forms.  It could be walking, and it could be jogging, and it could be hiking or swimming - but it could also be organized sports.  And many in our community choose to engage in organized sports.  There is an extensive range of forms that comprise these organized sports.  It could just be a group of people getting together to play basketball or something similar on an ad hoc basis.  You might have something a little more organized, such as intramurals.  (I don’t know if they still exist here.)  Then, you take a step up from there to league sports, which is a much greater commitment and demands a much greater focus.  And then, of course, this leads to a related issue, but not one of actual physical activity, and that is watching sports.

            To the extent that these activities serve to enhance one’s mental health and עבודת השם - that is wonderful.  Certainly when you get together with friends, to play ball, ערב שבת in yeshiva, that’s a healthy thing to do, and it probably does enhance one’s עבודת השם.  And, the truth is, even something like intramurals are nice - as they are not a terribly large investment, and they typically don't become the focus of your life.

            When you get the question of organized sports leagues - it starts to become potentially more problematic.  It’s not that it’s inherently אסור; but there is a question of how much time and resources are invested.  And perhaps even more problematic, it often becomes the obsessive focus of people’s lives (especially in yeshiva high schools) - a colossal waste of time and energy which is antithetical to any kind of serious spiritual growth. 

            As to the question of watching sports - the energy invested and the התלהבות shown are deeply troubling.  Rav Moshe has a תשובה arguing that attending a sporting event in a stadium is אסור because of ביטול תורה and because it is a מושב לצים.  I don’t think this is the accepted position in many parts of the frum community, that is, to treat attending a sporting event on an occasional basis as being technically אסור.  But when this becomes the organizing principle of your life, it is profoundly troubling – it's not even as if it entails any physical activity that produces benefits, which, at least, one gets from playing sports (in almost any venue).

            It is particularly disturbing in our community, in the Modern Orthodox community, the level of התלהבות for sports.  In yeshiva high schools (at least, in the New York area), hockey is קרוב לעבודה זרה.  And there’s nothing wrong with having a hockey league, but the obsessive focus on it - you go to high school open houses and it's a major selling point – is absurd, at least from the vantage point of the mission of our yeshiva high schools (or at least what that mission should be.)   And when it comes to watching professional sports, the amount of energy people spend arranging their lives around watching sports (and attending sporting events) is astounding and troubling.

            When these activities are done to enhance one’s עבודת השם, that’s one thing; but when these things become a focus of life, and where one places one's energies - it contributes to and reflects a spiritual emptiness.  If you would ask many of the young men in our community (I know not every young man is into sports, but there are very large numbers who are quite focused on sports) they could probably name you every team in the NFL, and they could probably list for you the statistics of the starting quarterback for every team, and all of the teams in the NBA, and probably in major league baseball, etc.  They could share with you reams of statistics, and players names and so on.  If you were to go around and give a בחינה to high school kids in our community in, how many of them could name the twenty-four books in תנ"ך (not knowing their contents, just name them), twelve books of תרי עשר and the sixty-three מסכתות in ש"ס, what would you find?  If you compare this knowledge to their sports בקיאות, you will realize that they are not lacking in their capacity to memorize.

            For a serious בן תורה, physical activity (in whatever form it takes) is an absolute necessity, but should fundamentally be means to an end, not the end itself.

III. The YU Basketball Team

There is something problematic about the publicity surrounding the Macs – and it's not about the players, but rather about an attitude that seems to be commonplace in our institution and community.

It should be clear– being good at putting a round object into a cylinder, being really good at it, is not a קידוש השם; winning fifty or however many games in a row is not a קידוש השם.  And this is so even if outsiders think that it's really cool – other people's admiring the truly unimportant does not make it a קידוש השם.  (And I respect that the members of the team and students might be really excited – but from the larger perspective of the search for real meaning in life and in comparison to most of what happens in our institution, it is of trivial importance.)  The Jewish army being victorious in battle may be a קידוש השם (as in יחזקאל ל"ו) but a Jew winning an Olympic medal or a Super Bowl ring or a World Series ring is not a קידוש השם.  And make no mistake – nobody would make a big deal of the comradery, sportsmanship, communication, working hard if the Macs were a .500 team, even though any meaningful spiritual accomplishment would not change based upon their record.

Welcoming a non-frum young man to our institution because he is genuinely interested in/open to exploring Judaism and Torah as part of his program here, even if he is not committed to becoming frum, is arguably good; but recruiting someone who is not frum just to play basketball (even as they think everybody needs to respect other people's choices; please note the deep confusion as to what our mission is supposed to be, even as we welcome students of all different backgrounds and perspectives) is deeply troubling - not on the part of the student, but on the part of the institution.

And unrelated to our institution - but related to the Orthodox community in general - in light of a number of relatively recent newspaper articles, there is a need to set something clear for the halakhic record:

Playing ball/exercise on Shabbos for purely recreational (not professional or health-oriented) purposes inside an eruv while wearing bigdei shabbos entails a serious and nuanced discussion of how far afoul of שבתון, of אם תשיב משבת רגלך, it might run.  Exercise done primarily for health reasons violates גזירת רפואה .  But playing ball professionally on Shabbos even if you don't drive to the park or engage in any specific melakhah is unquestionably חילול שבת – more specifically חילול שבת מדברי קבלה and חילול השם דאורייתא.  On the other hand, someone who is playing professionally, but will not show up under any guise on Shabbos and Yom Tov - that is a tremendous קידוש השם.  Choosing YU over Division I because continuing to study Torah or being in a more Torah-friendly atmosphere is more important – that is a huge קידוש השם, but it doesn't depend on how well or poorly you play.

It is in this context that I find the celebration of the importance of the truly unimportant to be deeply troubling – for example, in the video advertising our institution on its website (in all, about 100 seconds), I count three appearances of the men's basketball (note, by the way, that we have many other sports teams that could have shared the limelight – our cross-country team has been rather successful year in and year out; we have sports teams at Stern College that could have gotten a cameo) – three appearances, one more than the inside of the Beis Midrash, and certainly more airtime.  If I were to be מלמד זכות I would say that someone has decided that this will bring in more money and students.  Even if this were an accurate assessment, I think that the message conveyed – of what is important in our institution - is rather unfortunate.

There are many things displayed in that video that are wonderful and central to the mission of an institution dedicated to Torah and its values: The Beis Midrash and religious-spiritual pursuits; College classes – science, humanities, business; The Innocence Project (an enormous קידוש השם).  The basketball team?  Not so much.  We should be careful about making the עיקר into a טפל and a טפל into the עיקר.