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The Ateres Yaakov Star

We have just ended our first
semester and our first series of Ateres
Yaakov Star issues. Our dedicated staff
and faculty members have made the
paper a tremendous success. With all
this behind us, we look to the future
with hopes of continuity and improvement. After all, real accomplishment is
achieved through hard work and consistent perseverance, not by resting on
your laurels. The only thing more important than a strong start is a resilient
finish.
Over the past few years, the
New York Giants have proved this principle of finishing strong. In both of their
Super Bowl runs, they were heavy underdogs throughout the playoffs. In
2007, they had finished 10-6, a hot and
cold team that had barely managed to
reach the postseason. Few people
viewed them as legitimate playoff
threats and even fewer predicted them
to go all the way.
However, the team united and
worked tirelessly, following coach Tom
Coughlin’s mantra: “Finish”. He understood that the past was in the past and
that if they persisted and held themselves to elite standards, they could run
the table and have a shot at the Lombardi Trophy. They won three straight
games and found themselves facing
Tom Brady, a living legend, and his 18-0
Patriots in the Super Bowl.
The odds were stacked heavily
in the Patriots favor, but the Giants believed in something the Patriots didn’t:
that the past means nothing. It didn’t
matter who had had a better regular

February 2015

The Student Newsletter of
Mesivta Ateres Yaakov
of Greater Long Island
Ruth and Hyman Simon High School
Rabbi Mordechai Yaffe, Ph.D., Menahel
Rabbi Sam Rudansky, M.A., J.D., Principal

season. The better team on Sunday would
win the game, regardless of statistics and
expert predictions. And for that week, the
Giants were the better team and riding a
fourth-quarter comeback for the ages, they
took home a championship.
In 2011, both teams found themselves in the same scenario as four years
earlier. The Patriots had steamrolled their
way to the title game, while the Giants,
who had sneaked in as a 9-7 wild card, had
pulled off three consecutive upsets on their
way to squeaking into the Super Bowl. It
was “Deja Blue”: a resilient Giants team
that refused to quit would match up with
the league’s annual offensive juggernaut.
And again, the game came down to the
Giants’ mindset: Finish. By putting everything behind them and focusing solely on
the game ahead, New York was able to
stifle the Patriots and claim its fourth Lombardi Trophy.

Rabbi Yossi Bennett, M.S., A