This Shabbat dinner at Hillel (we alternate Friday Nights at Jewish UAlbany between Hillel and Chabad) has a camping theme. A paper-fire as a campfire centerpiece, and related camping decor on the tables and around Campus Center 375 where Hillel dinners are held.
The Torah reading this week is Yitro – the Torah portion of Matan-Torah, when the Jews received the Torah at Sinai. The verse says that the Jews camped at Sinai, it uses the camping-term, and it uses the singular tense, not the plural, which prompts Rashi’s comment: “The Jews camped as one person, with one heart.” They were unified with a shared sense of purpose.
That brings us to Superbowl LX, this coming Sunday. As one alumnus told me, (see it here in our Hakhel-Halftimes messages for Superbowl LX – 2026) this Superbowl LX is especially about the coaches. Both have only coached their teams for only one or two seasons, one of them is the youngest head-coach in the NFL – but both have successfully created a team culture, a shared sense of purpose, that usually takes much longer to build.
So it all comes together: The camping theme recalls the verse in Yitro about the Jews camping around Sinai using a singular tense, and Rashi’s commentary about unity and shared sense of purpose takes us to the Seahawks and Patriots coaches in this year’s Superbowl LX.