Gambling had role in religious history

Dwayne Carpenter, a Boston College professor, said Catholic and Jewish traditions set aside days for gambling. (Aram Boghosian for the Boston Globe)

With Hanukkah beginning Tuesday night, Jews can look forward to the annual rituals of menorah-lighting, blessings, gift-giving - and gambling.

In some Jewish homes, not only do children risk a stash of chocolate or goodies spinning the dreidel, but their parents play kvitlech, similar to blackjack. According to Dwayne Carpenter, Boston College scholar and a man who enjoys an occasional hand of blackjack and poker, Hanukkah card-playing was a traditional cover for Torah study, which had been outlawed for Jews by a Syrian-Greek king in the second century BCE.

With the Massachusetts Legislature bracing for a debate over casino gambling, endorsed by Governor Deval Patrick, several religious leaders, including Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, have spoken out against the proposal. Others are readying organized opposition to the proposal. It is interesting to note that the objectors include some from religions with a historical tolerance for certain games of chance.

"Both the Catholic and Jewish traditions traditionally set aside days for gambling," said Carpenter, who as chairman of BC's Romance Languages and Literature Department seems at first blush an unlikely authority on the subject. But he's also a practicing Jew who read religious legal texts about gambling during a stint in law school. Last month, he was among the specialists addressing a BC conference on gambling and theology.

When he lived in New York City, he often played kvitlech when visiting Jewish friends during Hanukkah, he said.

Tolerance of Hanukkah gambling did not extend throughout the year to all games; the Talmud disqualified gamblers from serving as witnesses in legal proceedings.

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church encouraged adherents to gamble on holy days. Carpenter cited one medieval treatise that suggested Christmas as an apt gaming day, because "it is a holy day on which everyone should rejoice in his home."

"It's not fair to say that the religious authorities were enthusiastic about gambling throughout the year. But it was seen to be a way to . . . add to the merriment of an already joyous occasion," he said.

That, as they say, was then. As for today, O'Malley has blogged "unequivocally" against casinos in Massachusetts, even as he acknowledged the "nuanced" gambling stand of his church, affiliates of which hold about a third of the bingo licenses issued in Massachusetts, according to the Associated Press. Bingo revenues in other states, including Connecticut, dropped after the casino onslaught, according to the AP, but O'Malley wrote of moral rather than financial concerns. He raised the possibility of casino patrons developing gambling addictions and the consequent havoc on families, as well as the fear that money would be siphoned off from other businesses and community activities.

The Massachusetts Council of Churches has raised similar concerns and has scheduled community forums to oppose casinos, starting with two this week. One will be held Tuesday in Worcester and one Wednesday in North Andover.

The New Testament does not condemn gambling per se, but Christians are typically wary of games of chance as a form of greed and because some gamblers become addicts. Criticisms of gambling appear in the Koran as well as in some Buddhist and Hindu texts.

But even conservative Christianity has cracks of dissent on the topic. William Stuntz, a Harvard Law professor and a participant in BC's conference, is an evangelical Presbyterian who opposes state lotteries, which he said extract money from poor ticket-buyers, and casinos.

But he opposes a ban on gambling across the board, as some evangelicals do. He notes that a federal crackdown on criminal gambling in the 1950s and '60s backfired, that gambling spiked in those decades.

"I don't believe that my faith requires me to oppose legalized gambling in all its forms," he said. "I think it would be an absolutely terrible idea to do with gambling what we have done with drugs," declaring war only to lose it. He raises a moral concern about the drug war, saying it's common, and unjust, to jail girlfriends of drug dealers for lengthy sentences because they refuse to testify against their lovers.

Carpenter, on the other hand, favors casinos, arguing that Massachusetts residents patronize out-of-state casinos and that there's at least the potential for creating local jobs by legalizing casinos in the Bay State.

He's also a man with a sense of humor about such things. He once applied to BC for a grant to research gambling and religion amid a sports betting scandal at the school. He promised to do his field work not at BC's sports arena, but Connecticut's Foxwoods casino.

He got the grant.

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