Veingrad Bio

Veingrad, Alan ( Speaker , Entertainer ) Professional Football Player and lecturer

Offensive Lineman with the Dallas Cowboys & Green Bay Packers, and a member of the Super Bowl XXVII World Champion Dallas Cowboy Team in 1992, Alan Veingrad uses sports metaphors to characterize his Teshuvah journey, and vividly relates the discipline of being a professional football player, to the process of becoming an observant Jew.

An outstanding speaker and storyteller, Veingrad describes how his retirement from professional football left open a void that unwittingly lead him to Torah and mitzvos. With remarkable candor and alacrity, Veingrad’s keeps his audiences spellbound with his accounts of the intense training and performance requirements of professional football life, relaying his personal breakthroughs and accomplishments during his five years with the Green Bay Packers and two years playing for coach Jimmy Johnson in the Dallas Cowboys, with the legendary quarterback Troy Aikman, and alongside Emmitt Smith.

Recognized as a highly versatile and consistent player, Veingrad played every position on the line, except center, and now holds tightly to his position in the daily Hollywood, FL, minyan. “In the rough and tumble environment of an NFL team, a Jew is an outsider,” says Veingrad, telling how he learned about Jews reaching out to Jews from the Green Bay Jewish community that sustained him during his football years. “It all has purpose now,” he says, “I can reach other Jews with my story,” which he does with complete authenticity, bringing in humor and warmth, and a commanding presence.

Veingrad’s experiences and insights “shine a light on Judaism in a way that no Rabbi, scholar, or secular Jew can,” said one audience member after hearing Veingrad speak in Dallas, TX, while Rabbi Menachem Fellig called the Veingrad Shabbaton “one of the most memorable Shabbosim we have had at Chabad at the University of Miami.”