The Super Bowl Narrative | Rabbi Joey Haber

So it's Super Bowl Sunday. Patriots and Seahawks. Super Bowl LX. And everybody cares. Really? Does anybody care about this? Is there anybody who cares about New England? I don’t even know where it is. Does anyone care about Seattle? How do they get everyone to be so excited about a Super Bowl that nobody cares about? So let me explain. Hashem really put us in this world to give us the reward in Olam Haba. So why didn't He put us straight in Olam Haba? Why do we have to go through the detour of this world? I once was sitting in a class of high school, young high school boys, and I gave them this little analogy. The NFL has something called the Super Bowl and the team that wins the Super Bowl wins this trophy, called the Lombardi Trophy. And they go crazy for the trophy. It's all about that trophy. I said: I have a great idea. Why do we have to go through all the hassle and all the games and all the players and all the injuries? Why don't we just take 32 trophies and give it out to every single team in the NFL in August? You’d save a lot of hassle. The answer is because if you got the trophy in August, it wouldn't feel like anything. But instead, if you go through practice after practice and preseason and the first game of the season, week one, week two, and you're playing, and every yard and every pass and every run and every touchdown and every tackle and every interception, it’s intense. And someone gets injured, another person gets fired, another person is out for the season. Game one, game two, and then you lose and you win and you win and you win and you lose and then finally you make the playoffs and some don’t and then some teams get knocked out and other teams get knocked out and there's only two left for the Super Bowl and then one wins, that trophy is wow! We earned the trophy. So Hashem could have put us straight in Olam Haba, but it would be like getting a trophy in August. Instead Hashem says: I want you to go through the season... of life. I want you to take the ups and downs, you take the punches, you have to pay the bills, you have to get married, raise children, do the right thing, not be distracted, eye on the ball, stay focused, stay on the person you need to be, do the right Mitzvot every single day, wake up early, go to sleep late, do what it takes in order to get there and then once a person arrives at Olam Haba, it's earned and it’s the most incredible joy in the world. So what does the Yetzer Hara do? How does the Yetzer Hara distract us from the trophy? What the Yetzer Hara does is it creates narratives. It creates side stories. It tells us today, Get all excited about that new story. Be busy with Greenland. Be busy with Iran. Be busy with something happening in Minnesota. Be obsessed with an extra dollar. Look at that scene. See it again. And today, the Yetzer Hara tells us, care like crazy about Seattle and New England. Three months ago, if I would have told you Seattle-New England, you would have said, Maybe there’s ten guys in Seattle that care. But now, you're, like, obsessed, because somehow the Yetzer Hara gets us to care about narratives that distract us from our goal and our trophy. The first Vayimaen in history, Yosef Hatzaddik was in Egypt and there was a narrative. The narrative was the wife of Potiphar. Wow, this is tempting. Wow, this is a distraction. This is something that could bring him joy. And then he had the self-discipline to say no and that's what made him a king. Every Jew has that test every single day. You’re tempted by the narrative of the day, things that, very often, you couldn’t care less about. Somehow they’re going to convince you to care about commercials. 364 days in the year, if someone tells you there’s a commercial, you’re, like: I’m getting out of here. But somehow tonight, they tell you there’s a commercial, you get glued. Why? You don’t even care. You don’t care about the soda, you don’t care about the beer, you don’t care about the car, but somehow they create a narrative that gets you to care. Somehow they create a narrative that gets you to think like it really matters who wins tonight, yet by tomorrow night, you couldn’t care less. So we, as Jews, need to remember a central message to our existence and that is we go through life, we take its punches, we take its challenges and we take its tests in order to make our portion in the World to Come something that we earn, like a trophy that's earned is so much greater than one that’s just handed to you. So when you go through the challenges of life, have the self-discipline to be Vayimaen and earn your trophy, which is our Neshama’s place with the King.