Should I Care Who Wins?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Nov 9-10, 2024 • 8 Mar Cheshvan 5785 • Lech-lecha (Gen 12-17).

People like to say that competition is good because it pushes people to excel.

The thing about competition is that it creates losers.

Not only that, but there are usually more losers than winners. That's a lot of hard feelings. Is it worth it? 

I cannot recall specifically being aware of "strongman competitions". 

I'm sure that I've heard about them... but it's one of those things that I don't generally pay attention to.

You could try asking this at your table - Can you name one such competition or one champion?

There are many, including: World's Strongest Man, Arnold Strongman Classic, Europe's Strongest Man, Strongman Champions League, World's Ultimate Strongman, World's Strongest Viking, World Muscle Power Classic, Fortissimus, Pure Strength, Rogue Invitational, Shaw Classic, Giants Live, IFSA World Championships, Strongman Super Series and World Strongman Challenge

I'm sure it's entertaining to watch men lifting cars and bending steel bars but it's frankly not something I've ever tuned in. 

But for some reason the death this week of Britain's most famous strongman captured my imagination. This is a guy who at his peak could literally tear phone books in half and bend steel bars.

But what caught my attention was the following detail in his biography:

He supported himself and his young family by working as a police officer. One afternoon, he was sent to arrest a man for not paying a fine. He knocked on his door. When the man opened it, Capes saw dozens of budgerigars — a type of parakeet — chirping about in cages.

“Could I have a look at your birds?” Capes said.

They brought back memories of his childhood, when he tended to injured birds and animals. The man invited him inside and served him a cup of tea. They had a lovely chat about the tiny, chatty budgies. Capes even held some of them in his giant hands.

Alas, after an hour, Capes reminded the man that he was there to arrest him.

“He came quietly and afterwards we kept in touch,” Capes told The Sunday People, a London newspaper, in 1998. “Two weeks later he gave me my first ever pair of breeding budgies.”

Capes began breeding them with the same enthusiasm with which he trained for strongman competitions. He competed in budgerigar shows throughout Europe, winning a world championship in 1995. He was named president of the Budgerigar Society in 2008 and frequently judged competitions.

“There’s something about their color and beauty that fascinates me,” Capes told The Sunday People. “They bring out my gentler side.”

I love that he didn't merely experience the beautiful birds in the zoo like most of us might do.

As in his first career as a strongman, he took his God-given talents and pushed himself towards his potential. He channelled all of that amazing physical power into his art, which was an interaction with the profound beauty of nature, and in so doing, left the world a better place than he found it.

Two questions for your table: Do you think that his success has anything to do with the fact that he grew up in a time before the advent of so many modern distractions and addictions? And as asked above, is competition worth it, given that it creates losers?


Shabbat Shalom 

PS - This week's Table Talk also appears online at http://rabbiseinfeld.blogspot.com.

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