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April 2, 2004/Nisan 11 5764, Vol. 56, No. 28
Yeshiva students bet on March Madness
E.B. SOLOMONT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New York - On April 5, there will be a lot of betting money riding on the NCAA basketball championship - and a portion of it will come from yeshiva high school students.
Some school administrators and principals are loathe to admit there is gambling of any kind in yeshiva day schools, but the NCAA tournament and the popularity of poker and blackjack among Jewish teenagers are eating up some weekly allowances and wages from part-time jobs.
Their brackets - slots on betting sheets - may be filled in with No. 2 pencils or crumpled inside backpacks with last week's homework, but high school sports betting pools range from $100 to $1,000 enterprises.
It's estimated that millions of dollars are bet on March Madness - as the NCAA tournament is known - and students at non-Jewish schools obviously participate as well.
At Jewish schools, each entrant in an average pool usually pays $10 or less, but the money can add up: The student who wins the March Madness pool at Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles, for example, can take home as much as $500, one student said.
Betting in school may be forbidden, but Jewish teenagers don't want to be left out while the rest of the country goes crazy for basketball this March.
"Everyone's into it," said a 16-year-old at the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, in New York, who bet $10 on Kansas in last year's tournament and won $180. "It's exciting, all the upsets and games going on."
"It's certainly against the rules," said Rabbi Mark Gottlieb, principal of the Maimonides school in Brookline, Mass.
But, he said, he doesn't see the NCAA pools as a serious problem.
Still, gambling is forbidden according to Jewish law, or Halacha - and when it's discovered at Maimonides, it is treated in an educationally appropriate fashion, Gottlieb said.
"It's not cause for dismissal, but an educational opportunity to teach students the value of money and healthy-versus-unhealthy competition," he said.
For kids, March Madness doesn't seem like a huge infraction.
"It's ridiculous," said a senior at Maimonides who is organizing this year's betting pool. "It's $5 a person. We're not gambling addicts. Let us have a little fun once a year."
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