How Dat

Saint coach Sean Payton wanted to win badly enough to take a pay cut to facilitate the hiring of Greg Williams.

Williams preaches aggressiveness, but not mindlessly so. He teaches players not to simply roll the dice, but to take advantage of being prepared -- "believe in what you see". On his game sealing interception -- the Saints' second in two games -- Tracy Porter said: "All week, we watched it on film... They went to it a lot. And when that route came, it was just like I was watching it on film."

This approach rubbed off on Payton. His signature call, the aptly named Ambush, was pure preparation-driven aggression.

Earlier in the season I contrasted one approach -- attributed to Belicheck's supporters -- of making coaching descisions according to a logic deaf to effect on players, with one that is first of all concerned with player and team development.

The former camp would have supported Jim Caldwell's choice to throw the last two games of the season. But that descision sent a clear message to his team that they were good enough to be champions without giving their best through every minute of every game. In some way it was also the message Bill Polian sent the team when he replaced a Hall of Fame coach with an unproven one.

There is justice, then, in the Saints victory. The tragedy is that Peyton Manning, who unlike the organization he plays for, takes nothing for granted, was not able to impose his values on his team.

J-Street @ PENN


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Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 9:46 PM
Subject: FW: Hillel and JStreet

Dear Rabbis Alpert and Brochin,

While I have a great deal of respect and affinity for yourselves and PENN Hillel generally, I have to stand on my own principles and will not be donating to PENN Hillel this calendar year.

The principles at stake, for me, are two-fold. The first is, as, Gabe describes, J- Street does not, to my mind, conform to the criteria Hillel itself has laid out. I am not aware of any position that J-Street has staked out to differentiate itself as being more supportive than Fatah of Israel.

The second is more fundamental. Your stated “concern is keeping college students around the Jewish table, engaged in the Jewish conversation.” I have to stand for the principle that Jewish-ness is not completely devoid of content. If there is to be any minimal boundary to “Jewish conversation” then Hillel is not the place for J-Street.

Finally, it would be very disheartening to me were it true that the only way to not Jewishly alienate these many students is to give platform to these “morally deficient” views. These students are surely no more one dimensional than is our heritage. Would it really not be possible, or effective, to communicate respectful, sympathetic, but firm disagreement with these sort of views, while finding other, authentically and richly Jewish avenues to engage and embrace these students?

Respectfully,

Marc

If there is a comment to make here, it is regarding the tragedy of today's leaders, having experienced, in the 60s, the communal costs of being too insecure to allow meaningful diversity of opinion, leading, instead, towards a community too insecure to minimally stand up for its values. What is it that makes the common-sense middle ground so difficult to uphold?