Julian Rauch kicks winning Appalachian State field goal against Michigan, 2007. Photo courtesy Marshall Rauch.
Jews live by two calendars, our Jewish one with its cycle of holidays and a secular one with its own national commemorations. The Hebrew month of Elul anticipates a season of self-reflection as we approach the High Holidays. September also brings the start of the public-school year and football season.
The football calendar particularly conflicts with Shabbat. The pigskin rituals are observed on Friday nights for high schools and on Saturday for colleges. The two calendars grind at each other, with Jews sometimes ground between them.
Not that Jews absent themselves from football fields. Arthur Bluethenthal of Wilmington was an All-American on Princeton’s undefeated team of 1910 and later coached at Chapel Hill. Harry Schwartz, a star at Charlotte’s Central High School, captained UNC-Chapel Hill’s football team in 1928, receiving all-American honors. Linemen Ed Newman of Duke and Harris Barton of UNC-CH were both All-Americans who had distinguished pro careers. Barton was nicknamed “Bar Mitzvah” while Newman credited his gridiron grit to his “kishkes.” Archie Israel, who played football in the 1930s for the Elon College Fighting Christians (as they were then known), earned the sobriquet “Yom” after he absented himself from practice for the Day of Atonement. Perhaps the pinnacle of North Carolina Jewish gridiron glory was when Julian Rauch of Gastonia kicked the winning field goal as Appalachian State upset mighty Michigan in 2007.
That the pigskin was not categorically treyf is suggested by a story told by Stan Fox of Oxford, a merchant who served as a long-time state legislator. His two daughters were well brought up in the football culture of the small-town South, one a cheerleader and the other on the team’s host committee for the visiting team. One Friday night found them not in the stadium but in a car with their parents and brother on the way to the High Holiday services at Beth Meyer Congregation in Raleigh. They listened to the game on the radio, only to hear the announcer broadcast over the loudspeaker the message that “Susan and Debra won’t be at the game today. They’re observing a Jewish holiday. Let’s give them a cheer.” The stadium roared with the rhythmic chanting: “Rosh Ha-Shana! Rosh Ha-Shana! Rosh Ha-Shana!”
