Basketball Court As Beis Medrash

By Yochanan Gordon

In the airport earlier today, as we were boarding our flight from West Palm Beach, one of my sons told me he’s excited to get back to yeshiva—but not to school.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I’m excited for Rebbi,” he said. “Just not the secular part.”

I told him: “If you see it properly, that part of your day is just as much avodas Hashem. If you think that way, you won’t just be excited for part of the day—you’ll be excited for all of it.”

We spent Pesach in Boynton Beach, at my parents’ home. Each afternoon of Shabbos and yom tov, there were basketball games in the nearby community, young and old, playing for hours.

I sat on the sidelines.

Not to watch, but to learn.

I had brought with me a stack of over 200 pages, along with a bag of seforim. That was my oneg yom tov—learning on a bench while the games carried on.

People noticed.

A teenager came over first. He looked at the papers and asked what I was learning.

“Trying to get through them,” I said.

“Can you share something?”

I hesitated. “I haven’t gotten far yet.”

He walked away disappointed.

A little while later, I called him back.

“I owe you an idea.”

“You do,” he said.

Then he added, simply: “You can’t walk around with all that Torah and keep it to yourself.”

It was mussar—but the kind that’s impossible to resist.

I shared an idea.

The next day he returned, this time with others. A small circle formed, and we spoke—briefly—about Pesach.

Another time, a man walking with his wife stopped and asked what I was learning. It was the seventh day of Pesach, and I had just begun reading about the Baal Shem Tov’s attempted journey to Eretz Yisrael—how he was turned back and returned home on Acharon shel Pesach.

I started explaining, but life pulled him onward.

Still, the moment lingered.

Over yom tov, I was reminded of a story about a Chabad chossid I once learned with. He accepted a ride from an acquaintance, then turned to him and said:

“I usually take the bus and I give a shiur to the passengers. Now I’ve lost that opportunity.”

That stayed with me.

Because sitting there, on the edge of a basketball court, I realized:

The world doesn’t become a Beis Medrash.

It already is one.

A bench.

A passing question.

A kid who won’t let you keep Torah to yourself.

I had come with papers to learn.

I didn’t realize I had come to teach.

But more than that I learned far more than I ever taught. Because the energy on that court—the passion, the intensity, the constant return—was never just about basketball.

It was about Torah. 

Yochanan Gordon can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.