Rabbi, priest, imam, and monk walk into year’s best Super Bowl ad

A rabbi, a priest, an imam, and a Buddhist monk get into a Toyota truck.

That wasn’t the opening line of a bad joke. It actually was the start of the most heartwarming commercial that aired during the Super Bowl last Sunday night.

In the ad, called “One Team,” a rabbi rushes out of a synagogue and into his Toyota pickup truck to get to a local football game. On his way, he stops to pick up a priest, who rushes out of church in the middle of a service, and then an imam and the monk. The four clearly are friends, and they tease each other on their way to the game.

When they get there, the rabbi dons a kippah in the team’s colors. As the members of the group excitedly take their seats, two nuns scold them for being late.

“We’re all one team!” they say.

The ad, for Toyota, was created by the firm Saatchi & Saatchi. While it was praised on social media, a rival car company was criticized harshly. A Dodge ad used excerpts from a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. and ended with a graphic of the phrase “Built To Serve.”

Many on Twitter thought the ad cheapened King’s words by using them to help sell Ram trucks.

Super Bowl ads always are extremely expensive. This year, companies paid more than $5 million for a 30-second spot at the football game.

JTA Wire Service