By Dave Gordon
Sam Salz, a Jewish wide receiver for the Texas A&M Aggies men’s football team, wears the Shabbos prohibitions on his jersey.
Salz, 21, who wears a yarmulka and tzitzis, told JNS that he chose the number 39 to symbolize the lamed tes melachot, the 39 “work” categories forbidden on Shabbos.
“When the game is on Shabbat, I’m not there. If the game is after Shabbat, I’m there,” the 5-foot-6 wide, 160-pound receiver from Philadelphia told JNS. “Thankfully, they allowed me to do that.”
The alumnus of Kohelet Yeshiva in Merion, Pa., isn’t afraid to get his hands on some pig skin on the field, even though he keeps kosher and refrains from playing on holidays and fast days—all with the support of his coaches and team.
When a game is scheduled for Shabbos, he drops off a meal and some Torah books at the facility before nightfall on Friday and walks the two miles to the stadium on Shabbos, ready to enter the game after sundown.
The lone game in which Salz played was on Nov. 16, on Motzoei Shabbos, in the Texas A&M Aggies defeat of the New Mexico State Aggies 38-3. At the time, Texas A&M was 8-2 and New Mexico State was 2-8.
“He played on one Texas A&M kickoff in the fourth quarter. The kick was not returned,” the Texas A&M athletics communications department told JNS. “That is his only appearance in a game.”
The game began at 6:55 p.m., nearly an hour after Shabbos ended, and finished at 10:05 p.m.
Footage circulated on social media showing Salz’s teammates appearing to point him across the field where he was supposed to line up before the kickoff.
‘Safe place’
Texas A&M, a public university with 60,000 undergraduate students on a 5,200-acre campus in College Station, has about 500 Jewish students, Salz told JNS.
“It’s probably one of the only campuses in the country where you can go and feel safe as a Jew,” he said. “There is no antisemitism really there.”
Fellow students are often intrigued by his Jewish practices.
“We always have conversations on perspectives. Judaism, especially to them, is such a unique thing,” he said. “Being in the Bible Belt, you’ll get the questions from the Christian guys, who are curious on what we believe.”
“A lot of times, what we believe is not exactly represented accurately in the media. It never comes from a place of malice, but it always comes from a place of curiosity and interest,” he added.
Salz told JNS that he is studying economics, but aspires to become a rabbi.
A rabbinic path might be more plausible than his football journey has been, especially considering he had never played football before and had only attended his first college football game in late 2021. Still, he vowed that he would try out for a position.
Inspirational note
He discovered the Jimbo Fisher Radio Show, hosted by the Aggies football coach, who has since been fired. The show welcomed an audience, who could submit questions.
Salz asked Fisher what he looks for in a walk-on, non-scholarship player. The coach gave a three-minute answer, he told JNS.
After the show, Salz approached Fisher and asked him to sign a yarmulka and an inspirational note he wrote for himself, which read: “I made the Texas A&M football team this year. I became the first Orthodox Jew in college football.” (Salz reread the note several times daily for encouragement.)
As luck would have it, no sooner had Salz left the show when a homeless man asked him for food. Salz entered a store to buy something for the man and ran into Fisher and his assistant again. Salz asked the coach if he could observe tryouts to see what he would need to do to train. Fisher agreed and gave Salz his business card.
Salz contacted members of the team asking for their advice. When he arrived at the tryout, a man guarding the field eyed him suspiciously. He showed the guard the signed yarmulka and inspirational note, and he was allowed to enter.
Notebook in hand, he studiously recorded each training exercise. He found a practice field on the other side of the fence, where each day he would copy the drills he had written down.
“God gave me the wisdom to even go to that field,” he told JNS.
Without professional-grade equipment, Salz trained with everyday objects that he used to simulate football training. He repurposed worn-out shoes as training cones to practice agility drills and footwork. Trash bins stood in for the line of scrimmage.
A member of the Aggies surprised him weeks later when he told Salz that teammates had noticed his training. The determination paid off, and he received a call that he had made the team.
“It is just a level of faith that I had to inherit in order for me to truly achieve that goal,” he told JNS.
As it turned out, the first practice was on Yom Kippur, so the coach’s first exposure to the new Aggie was his religious obligations. He had no problem with Salz passing on that first practice.
“I am lucky, but it’s also determination, and God’s help, that brought me to where I wanted to go,” he told JNS. “I want people to know that they should be proud Jews and that your Jewishness should never stop you from doing what you want to do.” JNS
{Matzav.com}
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