Faithful Fans

Flickering flames cut through dark thoughts of the struggle ahead. The sweet smell of spices mix with the acrid smell of sweat. Prayers drown out trash talk.

It was one of the most incongruous scenes ever witnessed in a sports venue, men preparing to engage in a brutal boxing match pausing to watch Judaism’s serene havdalah service. In a locker room at the Mandalay Bay Events Center before a recent fight show, Rabbi Israel Liberow conducted the traditional weekly farewell to the Sabbath, complete with prayer books, candles, a cup of wine and a spice box.

Liberow was there in his capacity as a consultant to junior-welterweight Dmitriy Salita, the orthodox Jew who would enter the ring later that night and improve his record to 10-0.

Salita, who will be back in the Mandalay Bay ring tonight, is comfortable in both the secular and religious worlds, his devotion to Judaism matched by his devotion to boxing. With his trim figure, quick hands and dancing feet, he looks as though he belongs in a ring.

On the other hand, Liberow, with his flowing red beard and an ever-present yarmulke, appears out of place seated ringside, madly rooting for his fighter.

Rabbis and sports might seem an odd mix to some, but not to George Kalinsky, the chief photographer at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Kalinsky has just produced a book titled, “Rabbis: The Many Faces of Judaism.” It contains photographs and personal accounts of nearly 100 rabbis, male and female, across the philosophical spectrum from orthodox to reform, living everywhere from Israel to Europe to the United States. Kalinsky has a rabbi on a surfboard, a rabbi on a motorcycle and a rabbi in a gondola.

“Rabbis come in all sizes and costumes,” Kalinsky said. “At their core is a humanity and a spirituality which is ultimately more important than any religious differences they might have. But a commonality I found among so many of them is sports.”

Among those profiled in the book is Yisrael Haber, director of a Chabad synagogue in the Golan Heights.

“When I called him about the book,” Kalinsky said, “I heard shooting in the background. I asked him what was going on there and he said, matter-of-factly, ‘This is Israel.’ Then he starts telling me he was a [New York] Knick fan in the ‘60s and ‘70s and he’s got all this memorabilia from back then. I asked him where he kept it and he said, ‘Right here in the Golan Heights.’ There’s all this shooting going on and this guy is holding on to his Knick memorabilia.”

Another rabbi featured in the book is Norman Lamm, president of New York’s Yeshiva University.

“When I was making a date to get together with him,” Kalinsky said, “he had heard already about my position at the Garden. So, the first thing he said to me was, ‘Hey, how do I get on the Garden court to shoot some hoops?’ And this is one of the most respected rabbis in the world.”

Kalinsky’s rabbinical gallery also includes Panamanian-born Eliezer Brooks, head of New York’s Congregation Boneh Y’rushalayim.

“He’s always asking me how he can get into the Knicks’ locker room to talk to the players because he says he knows he can help them,” Kalinsky said. “He tells me this player needs to bend his knees at the free-throw line and that player needs more confidence. He’ll say the arch of a shot was right, but the knees weren’t.”

Such devotion to sports shouldn’t be misinterpreted as a lack of devotion to a rabbi’s faith, said a rabbi who is not in the book, Eli Schochet, who had a congregation in the San Fernando Valley for nearly four decades.

“Especially in the orthodox world, a lot of activities are discouraged,” Schochet said. “People frown on co-mingling of the sexes. If they closely follow music or movies or dancing, there are certain aspects which would be off limits.

“So what does one do with one’s energy? Jewish students play and follow sports. They have to have a legitimate outlet. If they identify with sports, no one can say it is unseemly or unbecoming. There is nothing in terms of halacha [Jewish law] that is wrong with sports.

“Most Jews live in urban centers where there are plenty of teams to root for. There are plenty of academics in sports for the students -- statistics, standings, strategy. Also, to a certain degree, it serves as part of the Americanization process. It’s one of the ways for students, who are deeply involved in rabbinical studies, to remain in touch with everyday life.

“And ultimately, the habits you pick up in your youth, you retain in adulthood. I would say that, among my rabbinical colleagues, the majority are not just mildly involved in sports, but really committed. The first section of the paper I pick up is the sports section.”

Rabbi Shea Harlig, who grew up in New York and is now head of Chabad of Southern Nevada, makes the same argument.

“Sports is the only kosher outlet for students after 12 to 15 hours a day of study,” he said. “Orthodox households may not even have a television set. But students will listen to a radio or sneak away to a neighbor’s house.... Growing up in New York, the Mets and the Jets were my outlet.”

Schochet still shakes his head at a lost moment from the early 1960s. A yeshiva student in New York, he was approached by a fellow student with a wild proposition. Sandy Koufax was pitching against Juan Marichal that night on the other side of the country at the Coliseum. What if the two of them immediately booked a flight, went to the game, and then took a red-eye home in time for class at 9 the following morning? They talked, they laughed, but, ultimately, they didn’t do it.

“It’s the one regret I have about my interest in sports,” Schochet said. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I will never have a chance to do again.”

Harlig’s involvement in sports went beyond the spectator stage in an unexpected manner.

Although he was never a boxing fan, Harlig was the matchmaker between Liberow and Salita. Liberow, who was born and raised in England, became such a boxing fanatic that he remembers sneaking out of yeshiva to watch the 1987 Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvin Hagler fight on the BBC. He would devour boxing magazines when he wasn’t studying to become a rabbi.

After emigrating from Ukraine with his parents and settling in Brooklyn, Salita gravitated to boxing. At 13, he took up the sport near his home at the Starret City Boxing Club. At 17, Salita began attending services at Chabad of Flatbush, where the rabbi is Liberow’s brother, Zalman.

When Israel found out there was a bona fide boxer in his brother’s congregation, he was thrilled.

When Israel visited the Starret gym and saw that Salita was not only a fighter, but a good one, he leaped into a world he had viewed only from afar.

What to do with Salita?

Two years earlier, Liberow had spotted Harlig in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn with promoter Bob Arum, taking Arum on a tour of the neighborhood in which both had grown up.

Liberow called Harlig. “I have this fighter who goes to my brother’s shul,” he told Harlig. “He’s good. Can you go to Bob Arum and tell him about Dmitriy?”

Harlig was hesitant.

“I’m going to go to Bob Arum,” Harlig said, “ and tell him I know of a fighter, a fighter who keeps kosher and doesn’t fight on the Sabbath, and he should sign him? He’ll think I’m a meshugener [crazy man]. He’ll laugh me out of his office. First, send me tapes and clippings of Dmitriy.”

Liberow shipped out documentation, and, evidence in hand, Harlig cautiously approached Arum. “Do me a favor,” Harlig said. “Look at this material. Maybe this fighter is good and maybe he’s not.”

A few days later, Harlig got a call from Arum.

“We may have something here,” the promoter told him.

While Jews today embrace organized sports, their interest in physical activity goes back centuries, according Rabbi Richard Camras of Shomrei Torah Synagogue in West Hills.

“Maimonides, the 12th century philosopher/scholar, talks about the importance of taking care of the body,” Camras said. “It is a mitzvah [commandment] to exercise the body, to treat with proper respect this gift from God. You have to take care of body and soul.”

Rabbi Nachum Shifren feels he satisfies that mitzvah by surfing.

“I have maintained my dual life as a rabbi and surfer,” he said, “but there is no great divide between these two aspects of my world.

“When you are a surfer, you are very close to God, very close to the forces of creation.”

Mike Comins, a Wyoming rabbi, conducts camping trips he calls TorahTrek.

“It’s the optimal educational environment,” he said, “to teach about God.”

Towering waves, towering mountains or a locker room at Mandalay Bay, none, it seems, are beyond a rabbi’s reach.