In the early years of the last century, Solomon Schechter is famously said to have told the then-young Louis Finkelstein (who eventually became his successor as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and who remains, indisputably, the greatest leader our movement has ever had, but who, at the time, was a fledgling rabbinical student devoting every hour of the day and night to studying Talmud) to take some time from his "real" studies to master the ins and outs of baseball, because, as the great Cambridge-educated scholar who was JTS' first chancellor knew (and this, even in the years before the First World War) that "you can't succeed as a rabbi in America unless you know baseball." Is that still true? Probably, it is. And even if not, then Schechter's real point-that to be a successful rabbi you have to live in the real world and understand the culture of the world outside your study-is surely as correct today as it ever was...and possibly even more so.

I found myself recalling that line-it's actually part of a longer story that features Finkelstein and Schechter walking along Broadway and the former being stunned when the latter stops at a newsstand to peruse the baseball scores posted there-this week as the Mets came to the incredible end of their tragic saga and, no less fatefully than had they actually been actors in a Greek tragedy, paid for their hubris with whatever their chances otherwise might have been to play in the World Series. Nor was I the only one thinking about this in Greek terms-Clyde Haberman wrote in yesterday's Times that, if Euripides were alive today, he would have concluded that "those whom the gods would destroy, they first make Mets." I couldn't agree more. As late as Sunday morning, the Mets' website was still reminding fans how to go about ordering tickets for the World Series....

There's more than a bit of paradox at work here. Generally speaking, we Americans valorize confidence as a highly desirable character trait. And even if all those advertisements for mutual funds do note, and not always in minuscule letters, that "past performance is no guarantee of future earnings," the whole point, generally, is to know that there are no guarantees...and then to wade in anyway, and confidently to hope for the best. So, if that is the case, then where exactly is the line between hubris-the kind of overweening, presumptuous arrogance that generally precipitates a great fall-and the kind of brash, self-reliant confidence that is Americanism itself? In the wake of the Mets' debacle, it seems like a reasonable question to go into yontif pondering.

It's not as simple a question as it seems at first. That the line exists somewhere seems easy enough to assert. But actually to find it and to know precisely when you step over it-that's the hard part. I've seen this play itself out a million times, in the lives of others and in my own life as well. Knowing your own limits sounds like sound policy, except that you can never quite be certain that you haven't sold yourself short, that you haven't allowed your own timorous nature cloud your sense of your true ability...or potential ability. Being prepared to accept the possibility of defeat sounds like a reasonable way to live, except that you never really know-not really-if you really mean it, or if you are simply manipulating the data to make yourself feel good about bailing out of a project undertaken or a commitment freely given that now feels daunting and formidable. (Kol Nidre, after all, is about promises made rashly or foolishly, or without reference to reasonableness...and yet, for all we consider Kol Nidre to be the most sacred of all prayers, which of us actually advises his or her children never to promise to do better, or reach further, than they are absolutely certain they can manage?)

The good news is that there will be a 2008 baseball season and that the Mets will play in it. (Or is that the bad news? I suppose we'll all find out soon enough!) In the meantime, though, we can profitably contemplate the end of this season by asking ourselves how we personally define arrogance...and how exactly it is we know when we are behaving nobly by accepting the poet's counsel and allowing our reach to exceed our grasp, and when we are behaving rationally by accepting our own limits and bowing gracefully to them.

I wish you all a chag sameach and Shabbat shalom. Please remember that we will recite Yizkor during the service on Thursday morning. I hope to see you all there...and also Thursday evening (and Friday morning) for Simchat Torah. Thursday evening especially it would be great to see the shul filled with children as we prepare to conclude a full year's worth of Torah reading by singing, dancing, and marching around the shul in the traditional hakkafot. There will also be flags, apples and chocolate for all the kids! I'd love to see you all there.

Sincerely,

Rabbi Martin S. Cohen