April 17, 2008
The children of Israel wandered the desert for 40 years. Rabbi Jonah Pesner hopes to complete the 112th running of the Boston Marathon in considerably less time.
What’s the connection?
The 112th running of the famous race takes place April 21 — the second day of Passover. So much for the traditional pre-race pasta dinner.
Where others might see problems, Pesner sees opportunities: to run his first marathon and engage in tzedaka at the same time.
“I knew what I was getting into,” said Pesner, the spiritual leader of Boston’s Temple Israel, in a telephone interview with NJ Jewish News. “[If it was] the first day of Passover, I obviously wouldn’t run it. I don’t feel halachically bound to observe it because I’m from a Reform movement. Some Conservatives would even feel it would be acceptable to run. Is it unfortunate that Orthodox runners can’t do it? Of course.”
“I live in the world,” Pesner said, acknowledging that rescheduling the race — which occurs on Patriot’s Day, a Massachusetts state holiday — would be impractical, if not impossible.
Although he doesn’t know the number of Jews running the Marathon — “I’ve got a ton of friends going” — he hasn’t heard many complaints about the situation.
News of the unfortunate timing was reported by the Associated Press. “The only thing I saw was that when the …story hit, it made it onto a lot of Web sites and I was concerned about the blogging that might happen as a reaction.” He saw one blog entry he described as “fairly intolerant” in which the poster cited the rabbi’s participation as symbolic of the reason he hated Conservative and Reform Judaism. “I wouldn’t judge that person, so I would ask him not to judge,” the rabbi said.
This race is especially meaningful for Pesner and his wife, Dana Gershon, who are running for an autism charity, a fact he regrets was omitted from the AP story. “I explained that tzedaka is one of the mitzvot related to the hagim and that the race for tzedaka combined with the ritual we were observing the night before and the day before were all part of the package,” said Pesner, the founding director of Just Congregations, an initiative of the Union for Reform Judaism that trains constituent synagogues in congregation-based community organizing.
Pesner — who has run several half-marathons — said he had done a few practice runs, substituting matza for the traditional pasta dishes. “I didn’t find too much of a difference,” he said.
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