At a wedding, Rabbi Yisrael Gettinger, Rav of Congregation Bnei Torah of Indianapolis, related the following story to Rabbi Hillel Goldberg. Between dances, he leaned over the salad and asked, “Do you follow football? Let me tell you a story.”
It is a story of how the sport of football founded a Torah community. The storyline is winding, moving backward from the chasan’s place of residence, South Bend, Indiana, to the cleverest stunt in football history. Many people are unaware that the Midwest city of South Bend, Indiana, is blessed with a strong Jewish community, with over 50 percent of its entire Jewish student population enrolled in its Orthodox day school. It was founded and is still supported in large part by the Lerman family, which originated in Rock Island, Illinois, and came to South Bend via the Notre Dame football team.
The beginning of the story really goes back further, to Lithuania, in which a certain Mr. Lerman, a shochet, a kosher slaughterer by trade, decided to come to America. He settled in Rock Island, Illinois, and he died when his children were young, in the 1920s. One of his children was short and strong. He was not more than 11 years old when his father died. Somehow, he had mastered the Jewish basics – most notably, his father’s strong religious commitment. But as a young American, he loved football, too. He was a strong and athletic, and so football was his natural choice.
In larger cities in the United States in the 1920s, the student body at any given public high school could be almost entirely Jewish, because Jewish neighborhoods were strong and vibrant. In one public school in Chicago, for example, almost the entire student body was Jewish, and the school football team was entirely Jewish, too. So much so, that they called their signals in Yiddish. Clever, if you think about it. Which opposing team would ever figure that out?
Due to the vagaries of high school football schedules long lost to history, one fine day the Chicago Jewish football team showed up in Rock Island, Illinois, to play an inter-school game. On the local Rock Island team was young Lerman, the orphan and strictly religious Jew. And he, too, was fluent in Yiddish. The Chicago team was calling its plays in Yiddish, yelling them out audibly, since they assumed that no one other than their team members could understand. Unfortunately for them, the Chicago team had a lot of trouble with the Rock Island team that day, since the Lerman boy never let on that he knew Yiddish and understood every play that they called. Chicago would call its signals in Yiddish and Lerman knew exactly what those big tough city boys were saying. He positioned himself before every play and stopped the Chicago team dead in its tracks. The Rock Island boys went on to defeat the bigger, stronger, “badder” Chicago team, in epic upset fashion.
The Chicago team did not know that young Lerman knew Yiddish and, apparently, by a twist of Providential fate, neither did the college scout in the stands! A scout from Notre Dame – one of the biggest football programs in the country till this day – was watching Lerman play and was mightily impressed. He filed this report: “Never in my history of scouting have I seen a football player who has a better sense of the play, who knows where it is heading, who knows where to go and what to do, than the boy Lerman in Rock Island, Illinois.” Yiddish-speaking, Orthodox Jewish Lerman won a football scholarship to Notre Dame, a Catholic university located in the sleepy town of South Bend, Indiana. Lerman accepted the scholarship. He was dirt poor, and this scholarship was his salvation. However, his football career never got off the ground, as early in his first year, he injured his knee and could not play football anymore. His scholarship was canceled. His financial security was gone. He could not go home as he didn’t have the money to travel. With no other choice, he settled down in South Bend.
Eventually, he met a traditional Jewish girl there, married, and they had ten children. They reinvigorated their religious traditions and dedicated themselves to preserving the small Orthodox Jewish community of South Bend, even when the local synagogue burned down. Today, it is the children of young Lerman, the Yiddish-deciphering, Notre Dame-footballing orphan who pick up the slack in the budget for the local Jewish day school in South Bend – the school reflecting the community with the highest per-capita enrollment in a day school in the broader United States.
(Adapted from The Unexpected Road, by Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, Feldheim Publishers)
Rabbi Dovid Hoffman is the author of the popular “Torah Tavlin” book series, filled with stories, wit and hundreds of divrei Torah, including the brand new “Torah Tavlin Yamim Noraim” in stores everywhere. You’ll love this popular series. Also look for his book, “Heroes of Spirit,” containing one hundred fascinating stories on the Holocaust. They are fantastic gifts, available in all Judaica bookstores and online at http://israelbookshoppublications.com . To receive Rabbi Hoffman’s weekly “Torah Tavlin” sheet on the parsha, e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
