It's no secret that I am Jewish; I sport my religion with great pride. When I read about other people who take public pride in their religion it gives me great joy. Here are two stories which I trust will be as inspiring to you as they were to me.

 

First there's the article titled "Pilot On Mission To South Pole Takes Religious Articles With Him."

Though there are only 2,000 other human beings living in minus-20-degree temperatures of the South Pole a small flame of Judaism will flicker in Antarctica over the next six months.

 

David Wakil, a 39-year-old Australian pilot from Sydney, will leave for the South Pole this week, leaving behind all he holds dear - but not his religion.

 

Mr. Wakil will take all his religious articles along with him and use them with great pride. He will carry a Siddur/Jewish Prayer Book, Tefillin/ phylacteries, a Mezuzah, a Menorah and a charity box with him as he flies scientists studying global warming around the South Pole.

 

The other news article - titled, "Have prayers and Packers, too!" - spoke of Rabbi Shais Taubof the Chabad Lubavitch of Wisconsin, who led a group of 10 Orthodox Jews on a pilgrimage from Milwaukee to Green Bay, Wisconsin. They tailgated across the street from Lambeau Stadium - where the Packers were playing - in a grass-covered parking lot.

And they prayed and ate Kosher.

 

According to news reports, "... they showed that people can find or express their faith at a house of worship or a house of sports."

 

When interviewed, and asked what the point of the trip was Rabbi Taub answered, "Number one, Judaism is not relegated to the synagogue or the study hall. When you're a Jew, you're a Jew everywhere. If a group of Jews want to go to a Packer game, we do it like Jews."

 

"Number two, Jewish pride," he added. "Some Jews should see this and say, 'You know what, there is nothing to hide.' I can be openly and boldly Jewish and do that anywhere on earth and go where I want to go."

 

Very few people who surrounded the group of religious Jews noticedthat among the group was former Packers offensive lineman Alan Veingrad, who is now known as Shlomo Veingrad. Veingrad still stands 6 feet 5, but now has a bushy, gray beard and wears a Yarmulke beneath a Packers cap.

 

"I think it's important to be proud of being Jewish," said Veingrad, who played for the Packers in the late 1980s and won a Super Bowl ring with the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s.

 

"It's a beautiful thing that you can express your religion," he said. And that's what the tailgate was all about - food and fun within the guidelines of their religion .

 

These people who keep their religion with pride made the news. There are ordinary people everywhere, every day, of every religion that keep their religion with pleasure and joy - yet they don't make the news. They are every day heroes.

 

Every once in a while news stories of people like David Wakil and Rabbi Shais Taub remind us that you can be who you are everywhere and anywhere.