Has Aaron Rodgers been learning Torah at his offseason retreat?

“There’s some good books to actually read behind me,” the star quarterback said

Aaron Rodgers, center, on the “Pat McAfee Show.” (Screenshot via ESPN)

By Louis Keene January 11, 2024

Was he reviewing the Ten Plagues? Brushing up on Jewish canon for his next turn on Jeopardy!? Or seeking biblical inspiration for his next comeback?

Aaron Rodgers, the star New York Jets quarterback and erstwhile game show host notorious for his esoteric off-field habits, displayed a bookshelf containing several Jewish volumes during a remote appearance Thursday on an NFL talk show.

Eagle-eyed Jewish viewers of The Pat McAfee Show said the books behind Rodgers included an Artscroll Tanach — the complete Hebrew Bible — and a Chumash Mesoras HaRav, the Pentateuch with commentary by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik.

Rodgers did not say where he was joining from other than “the woods,” and did not expound on the teachings of Soloveitchik, the late lodestar of modern Orthodox belief. But reading the Torah wouldn’t be the craziest thing Rodgers, who is recovering from a torn Achilles he sustained in September, has done in an NFL offseason. Previous Rodgers expeditions have included a four-day darkness retreat and a three-day ayahuasca retreat.

And it’s not like he didn’t notice the books — indeed, he complimented them.

“No darkness here,” Rodgers said with a smile. “You can tell — there’s a lot of light, there’s some good books to actually read behind me. So, we’re not doing that darkness thing anymore.”

(That plague doesn’t hit Egypt until next week’s Torah portion.)

Update: Twitter sleuths have come up with a possible answer:

Folks, the answer is very Aaron Rodgers. I knew Rodgers had a guru, Aubrey Marcus, known for "darkness retreats." Marcus has interest in Jewish mysticism. But who's Marcus's Jewish guru? Marc Gafni (uh google him). @mpershan found Gafni's library and well: https://t.co/HFt6gGFuel pic.twitter.com/5OADhj1vXG

— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) January 11, 2024

Louis Keene is a reporter for the Forward. His work has also been published in The New York Times, New York magazine and Vice. He is based in Los Angeles.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO