By Richard Friedman, Executive Director

The Iron Bowl: Alabama vs. Auburn. This was the week; this was the day; this was the game and now it's over. Alabama won handily, 42-14.

The Iron Bowl gave fans time away this week from such daunting issues as Jefferson County, the home of most of Birmingham's Jewish population, filing for bankruptcy, or the controversy over our state's new immigration law. Maybe that's why football was invented -- to take our minds off our day to day worries as well as the complexities that saddle us individually and collectively at times.

What I do know is that the Alabama-Auburn spirit was in the air all week, and once again there was drama leading up to the Iron Bowl. Would Alabama avenge Auburn's remarkable comeback last year? How would the final BCS standings shake out and where would Alabama land? These were just two of the story lines going into this year's game.

ONLY IN THE SOUTH

Daniel Odrezin, a third year University of Alabama law student who will be joining our BJF staff after graduation, is an avid Crimson Tide fan. He told us that after last year's Penn State game in Tuscaloosa, he was talking to some of the Nittany Lion fans (who, sadly, were enjoying better times a year ago).

Daniel said they remarked how impressed they were with Alabama, its team, its stadium and its fans. "We can't believe it," one of them told Daniel, "even the women down here love football!" (No kidding! Just come by The BJF any Friday afternoon during the fall and talk to the women who work in our office.)

The Iron Bowl is a big day for Birmingham's Jewish community as well. Many folks go to the game, the Alabama band announcer is a well known member of the Birmingham Jewish community, Dr. Robert Levin, and the Southeastern Conference Commissioner, Mike Slive, and Associate Commissioner/Media Relations, Charles Bloom, are involved members of our Jewish community and donors to The BJF.

Moreover, our Federation and The Birmingham Jewish Foundation have provided funding to the Hillel/Jewish Student Organizations at both Alabama and Auburn and worked with both schools to strengthen Jewish life on their campuses.

One of our own Jewish community members, Jeremy Royal, has been at the Heisman Trophy weekend in New York the past two years when Alabama's Mark Ingram and Auburn's Cam Newton won the award. Jeremy, who won the Wendy's High School Heisman in the 1990s, wrote stories for Update about being there with our state's winners, and also sent pictures of himself with Ingram and Newton which ran in Update.

Who knows? Maybe this year we'll be running a photo of Jeremy and Alabama running back Trent Richardson, which would make him our state's third Heisman winner in a row. RTR. Run Trent Run!

And, though I must admit the allegiances of our BJF staff tilt toward the Tide, we are equal opportunity t-shirt providers. We offer crimson shirts that say Alabama in Hebrew and orange shirts that say Auburn in Hebrew.

BIGGEST RIVALRY

Folks down here claim no college football rivalry surpasses Alabama-Auburn. I've had my own one-person focus group staying with our family over Thanksgiving weekend -- my daughter's boyfriend. He is from Ohio, has been a diehard Buckeye fan his whole life, and insists the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry is bigger and more intense than Alabama-Auburn.

His reasoning? He was in a restaurant here on Wednesday, where Alabama and Auburn fans were both eating, and, he said, "they didn't seem particularly suspicious of each other or vicious."

Oh well.

What is certain is that in the wake of the Iron Bowl, fans of the winning team will celebrate and brag, and fans of the losing team will be disappointed and sullen. What's also certain is that now that the game has ended folks throughout our state are already looking forward to next year's Alabama-Auburn game.

My lasting Iron Bowl memory is not so much of the dramatic hard-fought battles over the years as it is of attending the Alabama-Auburn game the first November I was in Birmingham, with my late father-in-law Leo Jaffe. My thoughts are similar to those BJF volunteer leader Hilary Gewant expressed in Update recently on going to an Alabama football game as a young girl with her grandfather Aaron Aronov: "I no longer remember much about the game, but the memory of being there with him is more precious than who won that day."

The Iron Bowl is a time for putting problems aside; wearing your team's colors, shouting "War Eagle" or "Roll Tide," cementing friendships and planting memories.