Jonah and the Koufax Curse

Jonah and the Koufax Curse

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Yom Kippur 5783

There is a funny urban legend going around the internet these days—or perhaps I should call it a divine conspiracy theory.  It is called the Sandy Koufax curse, based on the famous story of the great Dodgers pitcher who sat out the first game of the World Series rather than pitch on Yom Kippur.  Koufax got a statue put up of him at Dodgers Stadium this year, although it wasn’t for sitting out on Yom Kippur; maybe it should have been.  In any case, Koufax was following in the tradition of Hank Greenberg, by the way, and Shawn Green later did a similar thing, but every Jewish baseball fan knows the Koufax story, so it’s called the Koufax Curse.

The Koufax Curse says that any Jewish major leaguer who plays on Yom Kippur, either Kol Nidrei Eve or Yom Kippur Day, pitcher or position player, is destined to fail.  That is, God punishes Jewish ballplayers for going to work as usual on Yom Kippur, playing a child’s game for money when they should be repenting their sins.  If you go to the park on Yom Kippur you are going to be the goat, and I don’t mean the Yom Kippur goat sent out to Azazel.  If you are pitcher you will get hit all over the park.  If you are a position player you will strike out or make a crucial error.  You should have followed Koufax’s example!

Well, one enterprising researchers, Howard Wasserman, whose actual job is being a law professor and associate dean of a law school, put in serious time and effort figuring out if this Koufax Curse really exists.  He literally found and studied every Jewish ballplayer since 1965, when Sandy Koufax famously sat out that World Series game, ran the stats and analyzed them at a Talmudic level to see if this curse really exists.

And, lo and behold, at the individual level, the answer appears to be no. As a group, Yom Kippur numbers for position players outstrip their career averages; they hit for higher average, if limited power and run production. Pitcher performances have been mixed, with some poor games balanced by several good starts and a few good relief appearances.  In other words, playing on either Kol Nidrei Eve or Yom Kippur Day or even that Ne’ilah time at the end doesn’t seem to impact the individual statistics for Jewish players.

Ah, but at the team level, however, something strange happens. All the teams with Jewish players on them that play on Yom Kippur are 12 games under .500 in Yom Kippur games, projecting to a worse record than they have in their non-Yom Kippur games.  And when a Jewish player plays?  It’s much worse.  Their teams are the equivalent of a 73-89 team, a seriously losing ballclub.

In other words, any Koufax curse appears to target not Jewish players, but their non-Jewish teammates, with consequences that befall the team as a whole. Perhaps this warrants a new approach to Yom Kippur — teams should welcome and encourage Jewish players to sit these games out. The media can retire the historic narrative of a Koufax dilemma between team and faith, or of a player letting his teammates down by missing one game that could decide the season. The story would be that the Jewish player helps his team and supports his teammates by not playing, at least for one or two games. The player becomes a hero to Jewish fans, offers the team an ironically better chance at victory—proven by statistical analysis—and appeases God.

This revised narrative should remind us all of the story of Jonah, which, fittingly, we will read on Yom Kippur—in fact, in just a moment this afternoon. Facing a storm certain to wreck the ship and kill all on board, Jonah urges his shipmates to throw him overboard, because God’s anger at Jonah caused the storm. The crew refuses at first, insisting that he play—re, pray—and try to get his God to end the storm.  But finally, the team—er, crew—of the ship reluctantly throws Jonah overboard, after which the “sea ceased its raging.”  By casting their Jewish teammates into the sea of a day off, the storm of defeat will cease from raging that day, and all will again be well.

But you know, in this fascinating story of Jonah, it isn’t as simple as that.  My friends, you are here on this Yom Kippur afternoon.  You are not playing in major league game, or at work, or preparing for your break-the-fast, or insisting that it is against your tradition to go to temple Yom Kippur afternoon.  You are committed to your teshuvah—unlike Jonah.  And of course, unlike many others.  It is hard to stay all through Yom Kippur.  It is challenging to fast, and to spend the entire day dedicated to atonement.  As one of our newer Religious School students said, “Yom Kippur doesn’t sound so great.” 

That’s kind of what Jonah thought when given the thankless task of going to Nineveh, the capital of the evil empire of Assyria, to demand that everyone change their ways and suddenly be good, of God would destroy the whole place.  That’s worse than losing a ballgame on Yom Kippur…  Here’s how it looked to Jonah: either the people of Nineveh would attack and kill him immediately.  Of they would repent, and not be destroyed, and he would look like a false prophet.  It was a no-win scenario.  So Jonah invented a third option: he would simply avoid the whole scenario and, um, run away.

That’s not like sitting out on Yom Kippur.  That’s pretending Yom Kippur, and God, don’t exist.

So what do we learn from this book, whose entire story we read here on Yom Kippur afternoon?  What does Jonah teach us?

Perhaps only this.  That we may, indeed, feel just like Jonah, and want to avoid our responsibility to do Teshuvah.  We may not wish to apologize to those we have harmed.  We probably don’t want to forgive those who have wronged us.  And we may not have a ship’s crew to throw us overboard to a conveniently large-mouthed fish.

What we do have instead is an indication that if we persist, if we stay with our dedication to improve and change, to make things right with God and our family and friends and even our antagonists, if we make the choice to observe Yom Kippur fully—and not, um, play ball, as it were—there is hope.  And that hope is not only for return and repair, but even for redemption.

So may it be, on this Yom Kippur afternoon.