What do you do when the biggest social event of the year at Yale (the Harvard-Yale football game) happens to fall on Shabbat? Every single year.

JLIC Yale co-director Rabbi Dr. Alex Ozar joins Rabbi Don Cantor to talk through a question that comes up constantly on college campuses: How do you actually guide students who genuinely care about Shabbat but also really want to be part of their college community?

Alex isn’t interested in just saying “don’t go” and leaving it at that. He walks through the sources, from the Shulchan Aruch on weekday speech to debates about studying secular subjects on Shabbat, to show that halacha itself grapples with the messiness of being human. The real question isn’t just “is this allowed?” It’s: When you know students are going to go anyway, what’s your job as their rabbi?

Alex shares his approach: Be clear about what you actually think is best. But then help students think seriously about what they’re doing and why. Push them to ask whether they’re really experiencing oneg Shabbat or just giving in to FOMO. And maybe, just maybe, that kind of honest wrestling with the question becomes the path to real growth.

This conversation goes way beyond football. It’s about how we meet people where they are while still holding up ideals worth striving for.

Key Topics:

• Why the Yale-Harvard game is such a big deal (and why it’s always on Shabbat)
• Three types of students and how to talk to each one
• What the sources actually say about enjoying yourself on Shabbat
• Can attending a football game ever be oneg Shabbat? (Spoiler: it’s complicated)
• Meeting students where they are without just rubber-stamping everything
• How this applies way beyond college campuses