Question: when was the last time that the Winter Olympics overlapped with the Super Bowl? Answer: never. Question: what does fire and a cloud have to do with the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl? Answer: read the rest of the Drashele.
Traditionally the Winter Olympics begins a few days after the Super Bowl, since no other sport wants to go head-to-head for viewership with the Super Bowl, arguably the biggest spectacle in pro sports. So, what happened this year? According to at least one source, NBC pushed for the winter Olympics to begin almost a week earlier so that they could package Super Bowl and Olympic advertising together. The Super Bowl usually ends around 11 pm EST, which this year will lead right into the Olympic competition in Beijing China, some 13 hours ahead.
Clearly such an overlap is a gift to increase NBC advertising revenue, but it’s also a gift to all who are watching both the Super Bowl and the Olympics. Imagine if the team you’re rooting wins the Super Bowl (some might suggest that would be Burrow and the underdog Bengals), and then the country you’re rooting for brings home some gold medals in Monday’s competition, just how good are you going to feel? Pretty much on top of the world. And if you indulged too much during your Super Bowl party, or stayed up too late watching the Olympics, you can be one of the 16 million employees who stay home on Super Sick Monday.
But what if your team doesn’t win, or your country falls on the slopes? Sure, your self-esteem takes a hit, and you feel a little down, but a 2019 study in Science Daily says that watching with friends eases the pain of the loss.
Mood swings between euphoria and despair are often inseparable from watching professional sports. One day our team is a hero and the next day a goat. One day we’re on top of the world and the next day we’re questioning the lineage of our team’s coach. What happens with sports often happens in life itself. It’s a struggle to maintain a balance between the highs and lows of everyday life.
Rabbi Moshe Yechiel HaLevi Epstein (the Ozhorover Rebbe) in his commentary on Chumash known as the Be’er Moshe suggests that maintaining the balance between the various emotions of life is a lesson taught to us by Hashem Himself. He notes that during the daytime it was a cloud that led Bnei Yisrael, whereas as night it was a pillar of fire. Daytime doesn’t only refer to a particular time period within a window of 24 hours. It can also refer to a mood, to a feeling. During the day we often feel upbeat and positive, and most things are looking good. Night, on the other hand can also refer to a time of darkness and despair when the world around us looks bleak and stark. During the day Hashem chose to lead us by a cloud, sending us a reminder that there should be a counterbalance to our feelings of euphoria. At night there was a pillar of fire, fire always going up, to serve as a counterbalance to the darkness.
Parshat Tetzaveh concludes with the instructions for the incense altar, the mizbeach hazahav. Twice a day, morning and evening, the ketoret – incense – would be sprinkled over a fire and would create a cloud of smoke within the kodesh. The kohanim themselves needed to be reminded of both the fire and the cloud and of the importance of not climbing too high or sinking too low.
Balancing our emotions in the face of wins and losses by the teams we root for is only the beginning of the challenge. Balancing our emotions in the face of the inevitable wins and losses in life, whether uplifted by our successes and brought down by our failures, is the real challenge. Mastering the fire and the cloud enables us to keep going, day after day.
Shabbat shalom.