The Super Bowl and The Trophy of Life - Rabbi Joey Haber

[music] So, it's Super Bowl Sunday. Patriots and Seahawks Super Bowl 60 and everybody cares. Really? Does anybody care about this? Is there anybody who cares about New England? I don't even know where it is. Does anyone care about Seattle? How do they get everyone to be so excited about a SUPER BOWL THAT NOBODY CARES ABOUT? SO, let me explain. Hashem really put us in this world to give us the reward in Allah habah. So why don't he put us straight in haba? Why do we have to go through the detour [music] of this world? I once was sitting in a class of high school young high school boys and I gave them this little analogy. The NFL has something called the Super Bowl. And [music] the team that wins a Super Bowl wins this trophy called the Lombardi Trophy. And they go crazy for the trophy. It's all about that trophy. I said, I have a great idea. Why do we have to go through all the hassle and all the games and all the players and all the injuries? Why don't we just take 32 trophies and give it out to every single team in the NFL in August? You'd save a lot of hassle. The answer is because [music] if you got the trophy in August, it wouldn't feel like anything. But instead, if you go through practice after practice and preseason and the first game of the season, week one, week two, and you're playing and every yard and every pass and every run and every touchdown and every tackle and every interception, it's intense. And someone gets injured, another person gets fired, another person's out for the season, game one, game two, and then you lose and you win and you win and you win and you lose and then you finally make the playoffs and some don't. And then some teams get knocked out and other teams get knocked out, another get knocked down. There's only two left for the Super Bowl and then one wins. That trophy is wow. We earned the trophy. [clears throat] So, Hashem could have put a straight on, but it would be like getting a trophy in August. Instead, Hashem says, "I want you to go through the season of life. I want you to take the ups and downs. You take the punches. You have to pay the bills. You have to get married, raise children, do the right thing, not be distracted, eye on the ball, stay focused, stay on the person you need to be, do the right mort every single day, wake up early, go to sleep late, do what it takes in order to get there. And then once a person arrives at Allah Habah, it's earned and this most incredible joy in the world. So what does the Sahara do? How does the Sahara distract us from the trophy? What the Sahara does is [music] it creates narratives. It creates side stories. It tells us today, get all excited about that news story. Be busy with Greenland. Be busy with Iraq. Be busy with something happening in Minnesota. Be obsessed with an extra dollar. Look at that scene. See it again. And today the side tells us care like crazy about Seattle and New England. 3 months ago if I would have told you Seattle New England you would have said [music] maybe there's 10 guys in Seattle that care. But now you're like obsessed because somehow the Yets gets us to care about narratives that distracts [music] us from our goal and our trophy. The first Bayan in history yadik was in Egypt [music] and there was a narrative. Their narrative was the wife of Portifi. Wow, this is tempting. Wow, there's a distraction. This is something that could bring him joy. And then he had the self-discipline to say [music] no. And that's what made him a king. Every Jew has that test every single day. You're tempted by the narrative of the day. Things that very often you couldn't care less about. Somehow they're going to convince you to care about commercials. 364 days in the year and someone tells you there's a commercial, YOU'RE LIKE, "I'M GETTING OUT OF HERE." But somehow tonight they tell you there's a commercial, you get glued. WHY? YOU DON'T EVEN CARE. YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT THE SODA. You don't care about the beer. You don't care about the car. But somehow they create a narrative that gets you to care. Somehow they create a narrative that gets you to think like it really matters who wins tonight. Yet by tomorrow night, you couldn't care less. So we [music] as Jews need to remember a central message to our existence and that is we go through life, we take its punches, [music] we take its challenges and we take its tests in order to make our portion in the world to come something that we earn [clears throat] like a trophy that's earned is so much greater than one that just handed to you. So when you go through the challenges of life, have the self-discipline to be by your mind and earn your trophy [music] which is our nama's place with the king.