Retirement

Soon after I retired from football, my cousin who is a radiologist here in South Florida, invited me to his house for Shabbat. I was newly married and I had an eight-month-old baby. He called and said, “Will you come for Shabbat dinner?” “Sure,” I said, although I accepted with a sense of obligation more than anything else, to be polite.

I went to his house and it was my first time sitting at a table for Shabbat dinner. He has four children, and it’s customary that during the meal the children speak about the week’s Torah portion. So my cousin was talking to his kids and the whole family was interacting, and there I was eating salmon. I was eating more and more salmon and lauding the salmon to his wife, “This salmon is fantastic. Can I have another piece? Can I have another piece?” I didn’t feel any connection to the talk around the table. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I didn’t appreciate what they knew. I was immersed in the food, that was all.

After the meal, my cousin asked me, “Would you be interested in going to a Torah class?” Again, I felt obligated. I had just eaten six pieces of salmon. I accepted the invitation without thinking really. Then my cousin told me about a Rabbi that gives a class on the Parsha – I had no idea what that meant. “The who? The what? What’s the Parsha?” So he explained to me that the Parsha is the week’s section of the Torah that we read in the synagogue.

The following Monday, the Rabbi called me and said, “I’ll be in your neighborhood this Thursday for the class. Here’s the address. Here’s the time. I look forward to seeing you there.” I went to the Torah class but I was so overwhelmed by the magnitude of the house we were in, a wealthy doctor’s house, that I couldn’t focus on anything else. Again, I could not connect to the talk of Torah, I couldn’t get inside the class; I was too busy with everything external around me.

Then, 59½ minutes into the class, the Rabbi started talking about materialism and envy, as if he was picking up on the things that I was thinking. All of a sudden, just as he was finishing the class, I started “seeing” my thoughts, and how it’s not good to be so focused on materialism and envy.

Right there and then, I decided that I would start attending the class and begin educating myself, and become richer in my life in more meaningful ways. Everything was about “stuff” all the time, and the Rabbi’s talk about the ways of the Torah made a big impression on me.

Gradually, I began learning. We started having friends over for the high holidays and to break the fast, but it was mostly about tradition and customs, nothing that tapped into the spirituality of Judaism. Then we began meeting different kinds of Rabbis, in different places. We met a few Chabad Rabbis, and eventually I got past the black hats, and the beards, and saw a glimpse of what is both behind the customs that are the force of Chabad, and also a bit beyond, to where it is leading.

Rabbi Spalter, in Weston, FL, invited me to his house for Shabbos. He had four or five children at the time, and there we were with my three children. We sat around the Shabbos table and talked, about meaningful, spiritual things. The kids were yelling and screaming and the Rabbi’s looking at me, not batting an eyelash. “Alan,” he said, “don’t worry about the kids. It’s music to us. Don’t worry about that.” And I thought, “This is comforting.”

After that we started going more, and the Rabbi would always invite me to sit with him. “Alan, come sit next to me.” Or, “Alan, I have a guest speaker coming. Come, sit, sit, sit, listen to this guy.” I was never happier. I really enjoyed it.