“New York football success on this field isn’t so old that it’s irrelevant, but it’s just far enough in the past that its absence still sucks the joy out of life.”
Credit: Anthony Quintano via Wikimedia Commons
East Rutherford, New Jersey, January 6 – The five days following the festive marking of the completion of a cycle of daily Talmud study has given MetLife Stadium a chance to contemplate the taste of something it has not known in its capacity as the host of football games: happy people in the stands.
Last Wednesday night tens of thousands of Jews packed into the arena to mark the Siyum HaShas, a Jewish communal event that takes place approximately once every seven-and-a-half years. Each day, participants in the endeavor, which began in the 1920’s, study two sides of a page of the Babylonian Talmud, the core text of the Oral Law in Judaism. Various Jewish organizations teamed up to reserve venues large enough to hold the tens of thousands of excited, joyful attendees, the largest of which, MetLife Stadium, spends most of its autumn and winter weekends hosting gridirons matches involving either the New York Giants or the New York Jets, neither of which has given New Yorkers, Jewish or otherwise, any joy since before their home field can remember.
“There might have been some excitement way back in 2010 when the Jets went pretty far into the playoffs,” the field recalled. “The Giants did pretty well for a while there, too, even won a couple Super Bowls, but that’s ancient history in sports, and memory’s fuzzy. New York football success on this field isn’t so old that it’s irrelevant, but it’s just far enough in the past that its absence still sucks the joy out of life. It was both refreshing and sobering to encounter the happiness of all those people here for the Siyum HaShas. I didn’t realize I could still be the context for something positive. At the same time it’s also served to highlight just how depressing a situation I’m in outside the Daf Yomi framework.” Daf Yomi is Hebrew for “daily page,” the official name of the 2,711-day program.
Redemption for Giants- or Jets-related hopes appear nowhere on the horizon, the stadium acknowledges. “It’s a grim reality I’m going to have to accept,” the arena conceded. “I do have the slight consolation, however remote in time it seems at the moment, that in another seven-and-a-half years the Siyum HaShas will return. So at least I know there’s some possibility I might again experience having people with something to celebrate filling my seats. And as sad as my situation feels, I have to remember others have it arguably worse. Did you know the 2010’s were the first decade in a hundred years without a Yankees championship?”
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