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APRIL 3, 2020 | The|Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 The Jewish Home
FINDING THE ULTIMATE
FREEDOM BEHIND BARS By Shawn Balva
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rowing up, my family wasn’t religious. G-d was rarely, almost never, mentioned. We ate like everyone else, we dressed like everyone else, we lived like everyone else, but rarely any mention of “G-d.” I knew that I was a Jew, and I’m sad to say that I wasn’t proud of it, but something inside of me always told me that I was different. This “different” was the candle inside, the Jewish soul, trapped, waiting to ignite. It all started with my dad. My dad, Israeli-born, was always very spiritual and a huge believer in Hashem but not religious. He was my first messenger from Hashem. He pounded in my head over and over that I was a Jew and that I must marry a Jewish girl. When he would talk about a future event or I would tell him something that I was going to do, he always said, “b’ezrat
Hashem, with the help of Hashem.” When I turned 13 years old, the time of bar mitzvah, having a bar mitzvah wasn’t something that crossed my mind. I grew up playing sports and that was how my life would be. Anything Jewish didn’t matter to me and, in fact, I was turned off by it. I saw how the other Jewish kids dressed and acted, and with my distorted/selfish/ childish mind, I didn’t want any part of them. I remember my dad arguing with my mom that it was important for me to have a bar mitzvah. This was such a big thing, and he did such a big mitzvah to ensure that I would get bar mitzvahed. My mom agreed. I prepared begrudgingly with a Chabad rabbi, Rabbi Oz, and one morning before school, I quickly had a bar mitzvah. After my bar mitzvah, I went back to my “normal” life. We didn’t eat kosher, we didn’t do Shabbat, we didn’t do anything Jewish, but still, I knew who I was.
I eventually became very good at football.
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e lived in Las Vegas at the time. A lot of coaches were telling me that I could make football a profession. At 14 years old, the next step was to choose a high school that would give me the best chance to reach this goal. That school would be Bishop Gorman High School, a Catholic private school. My dad was enraged and argued heavily with my mom not to send me to this school. My Chabad rabbi asked my mom, “What place does a Jewish boy have in a Catholic school?” But I wanted to go there because of the opportunity it presented to get me into the professional football leagues, so my mom agreed. My freshman year at Bishop Gorman I was required, like everyone else, to wear a uniform that had the Christian cross on it. I was also required to go to Catholic services and a Catholic
class once a week. They preached that “Yashkah” was the messiah. It’s amazing that these teachings never penetrated my soul. This is a prime example of Hashem being a magen, a shield. I still felt this “difference,” that I was different from all the other kids, and that caused me to feel anguish. Looking back, this anguish was the cause of me making decisions to lead me down a path of destruction – a path of destruction orchestrated by Hashem to lead me to my true purpose: to be a Jew. The next three years in high school, I attended Faith Lutheran High School, a Christian high school. Bishop Gorman didn’t work out, and the only other high school that would give me a chance to go pro was this Christian school. But football was all that mattered, so that’s where I decided to go to school. At Faith Lutheran, I was also required to wear a uniform with a cross on it, go to services, and take a class on Christianity, always feeling
