Why Bowling Together Might Save Our Society | 10@9 | 2026.10.13

Good morning. Today is Tuesday, October 13, 2026. About 25 years ago, just over 25 years ago, Robert Putnam published a groundbreaking book titled Bowling Alone, The Collapse and Revival of American Community. I've shared some of his work with some of you before. This is a very important work and it's extremely well written. It's fascinating and though it was written over 25 years ago, it is more relevant than ever before. I urge you to read it. I'm just going to be sharing a little piece of it. Putnam spent most of his career as a political scientist at Harvard and in this book, which has just overwhelming research and data to back up every point that he makes. So for his title, he uses the example of bowling. For a number of decades in the United States, I don't know about Canada. You'll have to tell me about Canada. I don't know. But for a number of decades in the United States, bowling teams were very popular. I remember as a young child, my grandparents, my grandparents each had their own bowling ball. They owned bowling balls and they played with a group once every week. They were part of a bowling team. They also had a group at their home once a week to play cards and that was representative of so many in the 50s and the early 60s, all kinds of groups and clubs and gatherings. Maybe here was curling clubs were very popular at that time and starting in the 1970s, that began to drop off and hence the title bowling alone. Where fewer people were bowling as a group and more people if they were bowling, they were bowling by themselves or maybe with one friend. Now that may seem trivial, but it is far from trivial. It is crucial and in an interview about two years ago, Putnam addressed what's happening now 25 years later and he writes what we've seen over the last 25 years is a deepening and intensifying of that trend. We've become more socially isolated and we can see it in every facet in our lives. We can see it in this is a couple years ago, the United States Surgeon General's talk about loneliness as an epidemic. He's been talking recently about the psychological state of being lonely. Social isolation leads to lots of bad things. So if you're doing things in a group like we are right now, it's tremendously helpful for each one of us and I'll describe some of the ways it is. But we could be doing the same thing each one of us alone and that leads to isolation. And social isolation leads to lots of bad things. It's bad for your health. It's bad for the country. It's bad for democracy. It's bad because people who are isolated and especially young men who are isolated are vulnerable to the appeals of some false community because people need community. Aristotle, humans are social beings. And so if we don't have a community, we find a community. And sometimes those are false or very, very negative communities. And he has copious data on this. For example, eager recruits to the Nazi party in the 1930s were lonely German men, young German men. And it's not an accident that the people who are attracted today to white nationalist groups are lonely young white men. Loneliness. It's bad for your health, but it's also bad for the health of the people around you. Excuse me. And so he says in this interview, my work is designed to show you how it is that joining a club, doing anything in some kind of group, even a trivial pinocchio pinocchio club, I would add mahjong helps. It helps by connecting us with other people that we can generalize from our experience. I don't only look at life through the lens of my own single individual lens. I have a wider lens. Other people have a different approach, a different opinion, a different view, a different lens. For example, also if you join a running club or a walking club, you learn that you can trust other people and you learn what you need to do to maintain that trust. And this is what Putnam calls social capital. The more social capital there is in a society, the more people are doing things together, whatever it is, the more people come to trust each other, the more people come to rely on each other. The less loneliness there is, the less isolation there is. And everyone in society does better when that happens. And he says it doesn't matter what kind of club you join. It's got to be fun. He says I'm famous as an advocate of bowling clubs, but you don't bowl so you can build a better community, you bowl because it's fun. But when you're doing this bowling as a group, it is fundamentally different than when you bowl alone because you are creating social capital, you're creating stronger relationships, you're learning to trust each other, you're learning to rely on each other, and you build social capital which leads to trustworthiness and stronger communities. Now this is just a brief snippet of his work. There's much more wisdom and again I urge you to read his work Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam. But what I shared with you, I shared in order to be able to apply it to this week's total portion. Because what Putnam is showing us, again with copious data from every area of life, is that if we work together, we could have better outcomes for each of us. If people cooperate, and I know I've said this before in other contexts, but it's so, so important, if people cooperate and work together, it's not just nice, it's not just moral, but people learn to trust and cooperate, each of us can do better for ourselves. I could make it better for myself. I can make better decisions when I'm not looking at something through my own lonely single lens, but I'm within a group that bounces ideas off of each other. And I hear what other people are thinking, and maybe someone has a better idea, or maybe I have a better idea for somebody else. All of us do better when we can trust each other. Putnam wrote this over 25 years ago. A barbinelle, the classic commentator to the Torah, wrote much the same thing over 500 years ago in commenting on this week's Torah portion. Vayi khal haaretz safah echa sudvar mahadim. Everyone in the land had one language and spoke in the same manner, and they found a valley, they dwelled there, and they said, let's build a building, and a tower. Vayi roshah b'ashamaim, it will reach heaven. Vayi khal haaretz safah echa sudvar mahadim. And God descended to see the city and the tower they were building. And God said, Ha'in am echad v'safah echa slakulam, they are one people and one language among them, let us go descend and confuse, mix up their language. A'sher lo yishmu'u'u'ish esfas reyayhu so that one person will not understand the other. And this was the terrible sin of the people who built the migdal buvel called buvel kisham bul al ha'shem sfas khal haaretz. That's where God confused, mixed up, created chaos out of what had been the unity of language that existed before. And that of course becomes the land above all the land of Babylon. And from there they spread out and conquered and settled the entire land. So the problem is as follows, what were they doing wrong? I mean, it sounds idyllic. You know, especially we live in Quebec where there's all these arguments over language and wouldn't it just be better if we all spegged the same language? Wouldn't that just get rid of so many of the problems? And they were cooperating. They were engaged in the same task. Doesn't it sound like it would be very good with a lot of unity? Listen carefully please to what our Barber Nell says. He comments on the Pussek just before what I started to read. The Pussek says, v'kush yolad es nimrod kush gay berth had a son named Nimrod who hechel lios gibor baaretz. He was the first tyrant in human history. He was the first one, says that a Barber Nell to abolish human equality. This was the first instance of oppression of the weak by the mighty. And a Barber Nell says that he, Nimrod, and his approach, his attitude, was responsible for the Migdal Bovell, the horrible experience of this Tower of Babel. We read it and we say to ourselves it sounds so great. But listen to how our rabbis explain it. Our rabbis describe the attitude of the people who are working on this project. This is from the Medrish. Inna fah al-Adham v'mesh, if a person, a man, would fall and die, they're building this big tower. Someone would fall off the scaffold and die. Lo haye, some one lay low above. They didn't pay any attention. Just get another worker and bring them here. Vim nafla levena achas, but if a brick fell, they're building this with bricks, if a brick fell, hayu yoshvin uvochin v'omrin, they would sit and they would cry and they would say, ay, lanu, woe to us, eimah saith, talah, acharah, stahtah. When are we going to get another brick to take its place? This was a society of tyranny where people were subjugated and treated as tools. So if you lost one tool, it didn't matter as long as you had another one to replace it. If you lost a tool and you didn't have another one to replace it, that's a big deal. A society where there is tyranny is a society where there is no real cooperation or trust. Yes, they were all working on the same project, but no one had any trust in each other. No one felt that the other guy is looking out for me. On the contrary, they're not looking out for me. They care more about the bricks than they do for me. And in fact, everyone is being used, manipulated by this tyrant, by this strong leader. In other words, to use Putnam's term, this is a society in which there is no social capital. And such a society cannot flourish. It cannot act even at its own best interest because people will not be able to make the best decisions for themselves because people can't trust each other. And if even if someone gives me advice, I can't trust that that's good advice because no one cares about each other. And that's why God had to dismantle it in order for society to flourish again. This is one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century, Putnam's work. And this is precisely what the Torah is teaching us in a lesson from 3,500 years ago. The objective benefit of trust and cooperation and equality and morality and treating each each person with dignity. It's not just to be nice. It helps me. It helps society. And Putnam shows us clearly the way out of this horribleness. Join a bowling group or a mahjong or a walking group. Come to Shul and stay for kiddish. It doesn't matter in which way we do it. And there are so many opportunities. Do it because it's enjoyable, but also do it because it improves society. And especially today, our social capital is so low. Distrust is so high. Cooperation is so rare. We need this to build social capital like never before. And so you'll have fun. You'll enjoy it. And you and your society will also be better for it. My friends, I wish you a great day. And I look forward to seeing you soon in person.