The Stanley Cup and the Torah

If I wasn’t a rabbi, I’d seriously consider having Phil Pritchard’s job.

Pritchard is the longtime guardian of hockey’s championship trophy, the Stanley Cup. Unlike other sports championships, there is only one Cup. The winning team celebrates with it for a season and then gives it back. Nobody owns it permanently.

The Cup has traveled the world, visited soldiers overseas, appeared at family celebrations, and famously been used to cradle newborn babies - sometimes only hours after birth. Yet despite all the joy surrounding it, the keepers of the Cup constantly remind players to treat it carefully. Because the Cup ultimately belongs to something larger than any one team or player. It belongs to the game itself. Each generation enjoys it but must also preserve it for those who come next.

In that way, I believe the Stanley Cup is a powerful parable for Torah.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik famously explained that the Torah is not merely a yerusha, an inheritance, but a morasha, a heritage. An inheritance becomes your possession. A heritage is entrusted to you. You are not its owner; you are its guardian.

The Torah does not belong to any one Jew or even any one generation. “Morasha kehillat Yaakov.” The Torah belongs to the entire Jewish people across time. Our task is not to remake Torah according to our preferences, but to preserve it, live it, and pass it forward.

And ultimately, Torah is all about the future and passing the tradition to the next generation.

Henryk was very young in 1945, when World War Two ended.  

He had spent what seemed to be most of his life with his nanny, who had hidden him away from the Nazis at his father's request and at great personal risk. She loved the boy but figured Henryk’s father did not survive the war. If he had survived the Vilna Ghetto, he surely was murdered in Auschwitz. She therefore decided to adopt the boy, baptized him, and had him taught Christianity by the local priest.

But the father, Joseph, returned.

It was Simchat Torah when Joseph came to retrieve his son. The heartbroken nanny had packed all his clothing and his small catechism book. She told Joseph that Henryk had become a good Catholic. The father took his son by the hand and led him directly to the Great Synagogue of Vilna. On the way, he told him that he was a Jew and that his name was really Avraham.

Along the way, they passed the church and the boy dutifully crossed himself, causing his father great anguish. Just then, a priest emerged, and the boy rushed over to kiss his hand. Joseph wanted to drag his son away from the priest and from the church, but he knew that this was not the way to do things. He nodded to the priest politely an continued walking. After all, these people had taken in and saved the child's life.

Joseph knew he had to show his son Judaism, living Judaism, and in this way all these foreign beliefs would be left behind and forgotten.

They entered what remained of the Great Synagogue of Vilna. There they found some Jewish survivors who had made their way back to Vilna and were now trying to rebuild their lives. Amid their suffering and terrible loss, they were singing and dancing to do their best to celebrate Simchat Torah.

Henryk stared wide-eyed around him and picked up an old, torn prayer book with curiosity and a touch of affection. Something deep inside of him responded to the atmosphere, and he was happy to be there with the father he hardly knew.

A Jewish man wearing a Soviet Army uniform stared intently at the boy, and he came over to the father. "Is this child...Jewish?" he asked, a touch of wonder in his voice.

The father answered that the boy was Jewish and introduced his son. As the soldier stared at Henryk, he fought back tears. "Over these four terrible years, I have traveled thousands of miles, and this is the first live Jewish child I have come across in all this time. Would you like to dance with me on my shoulders?" he asked the boy, who was staring back at him, fascinated.

The soldier raised the boy high onto his shoulders. With tears now running down his cheeks, the soldier jubilantly joined in the dancing. "This is my Torah scroll!" he cried.

Henryk-Avraham grew up to become, Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish communal leader, who passed away just over a week ago. He recounted this story as his first conscious feeling of a connection with Judaism and of being a Jew. The Russian soldier, Leo Goldman, became a rabbi in Detroit.

Two Jews who almost disappeared transported into the story of Jewish continuity.

That image of a child as a Torah scroll may capture the essence of Judaism more than anything else. The Torah is not only parchment resting inside an Ark. Torah lives in people, in children, and in the ability of the Jewish people to carry our story, our faith, and our covenant into the future.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks famously wrote we are all letters in the scroll. Every Jewish child is a living Sefer Torah entrusted to us. Like the Stanley Cup, Torah is not meant to sit untouched behind glass. It must live in our homes, at our Shabbat tables, in our conversations, values, and relationships. We hold it only briefly before handing it to the next generation. We are not the owners of Torah; we are its custodians.

Anyone who chooses to learn Torah, live it, protect it, or pass it forward becomes part of that sacred chain stretching back to the revelation at Mount Sinai and forward to generations we may never meet. On Shavuot, we celebrate not only that the Torah was given, but that it continues to be entrusted to us.

Our task is simple and sacred: to hold it tightly, live it passionately, and ensure that when our turn comes to pass it forward, the chain remains unbroken.