Scoring a century – Ekev
When a rabbi talks about Rashi, people say that’s what you expect of rabbis. When a rabbi talks about cricket, they get excited: “That’s a real rabbi!”
A friend told me about his interview with the admissions committee at Jews’ College, the seminary where we were students. They didn’t ask him about Rashi but about cricket.
It’s a good job my own application was handled by post because I would surely have been excluded when they found that cricket didn’t interest me.
Yet this week’s portion tells us, if you follow the rabbinic commentary, that we should bless God 100 times a day and presumably this means that if you play a good game of cricket by scoring a century you are entitled to praise the Almighty.
The rule is that whatever you eat or deal with during the day should be marked by a b’rachah. If you eat an orange you should bless God. If you do a good deed you should thank God.
Why does the orange get a b’rachah whereas the good deed doesn’t? Presumably because the orange has a precise quantity whist good deeds can’t be quantified.
If you play cricket energetically and fairly you should thank God for the talents He gave you and for your ability to be a good team member.
