A Prayer Ritual Shared in Religion and Football

By COREY KILGANNON

The Martin Greenfield clothing factory on Varet Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is known for turning out sleek suits for presidents, mayors and star athletes.

But in addition to being a clothier for the power elite — customers over the years have had names like Eisenhower, Clinton and Bloomberg — the factory may well be aiding the success of the New York Giants, who face the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday in a National Football League playoff game. At least the factory owners think so.

Jay and Todd Greenfield, the brothers who run the company founded by their father, Martin, made a deal last season with a rabbi in the Chabad Lubavitch movement, and the Giants have been successful ever since.

The rabbi, Israel Shemtov, who runs a rabbinical clothing store on Kingston Street in Crown Heights, visited the factory regularly to buy items for his business. Rabbi Shemtov had been trying to get Jay Greenfield, 50, to become more spiritual.

Mr. Greenfield had been resistant because, while he is Jewish, he does not consider himself observant. He says his real spiritual pursuit is the Giants. He has rooted for the team since age 6, and his family has had season tickets to home games for decades. He attends the games with his son, David, 15 — whose bar mitzvah, of course, had a Giants theme — and a group of friends from his hometown, Roslyn, on Long Island. They do the ritual tailgating at the Meadowlands at every home game, and often travel to see the team’s away games, too.

In the fall of 2007, the Giants’ record was dismal and Mr. Greenfield was a desperate man. His team had gone 1-3 in the preseason. The Giants then lost their first two regular-season games and confidence sagged in their quarterback, Eli Manning.

It was around this time that the rabbi, who acknowledges not watching television, let alone Giants games, visited. With Yom Kippur approaching, Rabbi Shemtov was trying to encourage Mr. Greenfield to do the tefillin prayer — which includes strapping a pair of black leather boxes containing biblical verses around the head and on the arm, hand and fingers and reciting a prayer declaring loyalty to God and a request for blessing. The rabbi told Mr. Greenfield that the ritual would help make it a good new year.

“I told him, ‘You’re talking about a good new year, but if we lose against the Redskins this Sunday, my year is over,’ ” Mr. Greenfield said in his factory on Thursday, recalling the moment.

It was then that Mr. Greenfield, who follows strict game-day rituals including wearing the same jeans, undershirt and jersey, got an idea. None of his rituals seemed to be working, and here was this persistent rabbi telling him that simply saying the tefillin prayer might be just the thing needed to help Mr. Greenfield get what he wanted for his team.

“I was at a weak moment, so I considered it,” Mr. Greenfield said.

“I told the rabbi, ‘I’m not asking for them to win every week — I’m not greedy — I just want them to make the playoffs.’ He said, ‘What’s the playoffs?’ I said, ‘You don’t need to know that now.’ ”

Rabbi Shemtov said in an interview on Friday, “I told him, ‘We know prayer goes a long way, and I can see that this Giants thing means a lot, so let’s go for the prayer.’ ”

Mr. Greenfield did, and he saw immediate results. The Giants beat the Redskins the following Sunday. Soon, Mr. Greenfield began praying three times a week with the rabbi, who in turn began keeping the fan group in his thoughts while praying at the gravesite in Cambria Heights, Queens, of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch movement.

The Giants kept winning in 2007 and Mr. Greenfield kept praying. Soon, his brother, Todd, was also praying. So were many of their friends and relatives who attended the home games — and many games on the road. The tefillin prayers became rituals at the tailgating gatherings before games at the Meadowlands, and when some of the fans traveled to games on the road, the rabbi would contact Chabad rabbis in those cities to help Mr. Greenfield’s group with pregame prayers. One day, Rabbi Shemtov showed up with blue-and-orange yarmulkes bearing the Giants logo, and other ones bearing his name for the group, the New York Giants Tefillin Club.

The Giants went on to qualify for the playoffs and began their playoff run. Mr. Greenfield said he saw divine intervention during the playoffs in a dropped pass by a receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, which changed the tide of the game and allowed the Giants to go on to victory.

“When that happened, about 50 people jumped up and said, ‘Thank you, Rabbi,’ ” he said. “At that point, we really thought God was on our side.”

The Giants went on to win the Super Bowl, but even that did not get Mr. Greenfield to start attending synagogue or reading the Torah regularly — although he did agree to pray with the rabbi in the off-season.

The pregame tefillin prayers have gained momentum, and this season, Mr. Greenfield secured a parking pass for Rabbi Shemtov. Putting on tefillin in the Meadowlands parking lot drew stares and comments, but as the Giants continued to win, other fans — even some non-Jewish rooters — began doing it too.

“He thought he was converting me,” Mr. Greenfield said of the rabbi, “but I got a sector of his community interested in the Giants.

The rabbi said that he would probably never wind up watching a Giants game — although he plans on being in the parking lot Sunday morning at the Meadowlands — but “this means a lot to Jay, and each one should pray according to what he needs.”

“I may hear the score, but I still really couldn’t tell you if the Jets were playing the Mets — I don’t know the difference. But if it makes him happy, only good things will come out of it.”

Jewish Superbowler speaks on NFL

HANDLING PIGSKIN WAS NO PROBLEM FOR ALAN VEINGRAD

BY ROBERT A. COHN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF EMERITUS

What does it take for a "nice Jewish boy" to have a successful career in the rough-and-tumble of the National Football League? For Alan Veingrad, former NFL offensive lineman and Super Bowl champ, it helps being six-foot-five, 240 pounds, having a very "thick skin" and a sense of humor. All of those qualities were on full display last Saturday evening after Shabbas, when Veingrad, who now sports a full beard in addition to his Super Bowl ring from the 1992 Dallas Cowboys championship, and who also answers to the name Shlomo, spoke to 126 enthusiastic fans at the Sheraton Clayton Plaza, at an event sponsored by Chabad of St. Louis.

The self-described "skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn" who remembers "often skipping Hebrew school which I really hated," regaled his appreciative audience with the story of his remarkable football career, which evolved from attaining athletic prowess in high school, and accepting a football scholarship at East Texas University, where he recalls "being the only Jew at the school and within a 75-mile radius," to a successful NFL career with the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, where he helped his teammates win the Super Bowl in 1992. He also described his journey from Jewish pro football player to fully observant supporter and follower of the Chabad Hasidic movement.

"When I was first talked into coming to a discussion of the Torah Portion of the week, I had no idea what a "parsha" or portion was, and was surprised at the second discussion that there was a different Torah portion each week. Now I really look forward to studying the Torah seriously, and at home, my daughters and I have come to look forward to our new weekends of observing and celebrating Shabbat together. I had been nervous about telling them we would have to give up our weekend camping trips, but the next morning they were all dresssed up and ready for shul," Veingrad said.

Veingrad's wide-ranging talk and the discussion that followed, alternated and blended his colorful football anecdotes with his spiritual journey. Drawing a comparison to the hard training of "bench-pressing 400 pounds, getting eight hours of sleep and maintaining a healthy diet" to his "spiritual journey," Veingrad said, "The key word to both is preparation. There is no way you can be a serious foootball player, especially at the NFL level without serious preparation, and there is no way you can be a serious Jew without preparation. After while, what seems hard and challenging at first becomes a joyful experience," he said.

"I had to take some giant steps to make it in college and pro football," Veinegrad said. "We all have to take a giant step spiritually as well as physically. I had heard all of the great motivational speakers, including Zig Zigler, but nothing can compare to the power of the Chabad rabbis I have met who have helped me become a baal teshuvah, a Jew who has returned to his spiritual roots."

Veingrad said that during his college football career at East Texas University under Coach Ernest Hawkins, "I really did not experience any anti-Semitism at all. I guess it helped being the biggest guy on the team at 6-foot-5 and then 200 pounds, but my Christian teammates were very positive about Judaism and the Jewish people."

Only once in the NFL, while training for the Green Bay Packers, did a teammate say, "Okay, Jewboy, show me what you've got," Veingrad recalls. "Well, I used full force in blocking him as hard as I could, and I guess that showed him what I've got. I asked how he figured out I was Jewish since my name is not for sure a Jewish name. He said it was the name on my helmet and he really didn't mean anything by it, and I chose to let it go."

Veingrad said that Jewish newspapers have kept track of the few Jewish football players in the NFL. Reminded that comedian Jerry Lewis once said that the "Jewish Pro Football Hall of Fame could be listed on the edge of a Super Bowl score card," Veingrad laughed and said, "It was the Jewish Press in Brooklyn, where I was born, which first interviewed me about being Jewish. In my seven years as an NFL player, I counted five other Jewish NFL players in all. They were all great guys, including Bret Novostelsky on our team, Harris Barton of the 49ers and Ariel Solomon of the Steelers. After the games, we would usually seek each other out and shake hands as fellow Jews who were proud to have made it in the violent sport of pro football." Asked jokingly if it was a problem for an observant Jewish player to "handle a pigskin," Veingrad smiled broadly and said, "As an offesive linebacker, I did not have to come in contact with the ball that often, but I would not hesitate to pounce on it as needed. Now I'm proud to go into the record books as the first Sabbath-observant, Shomer Shabbas NFL player to wear a Super Bowl ring, who looks forward to coming to shul early in order to be as prepared for Judaism as I tried to be for pro football."