Hannah’s Teshuva

Hannah’s Teshuva [1]

by Rabbi Corinne Copnick

“One only loves God with the knowledge with which one knows him.

According to the knowledge will be the love.”  

Moses Maimonides [2]

During the Holocaust, Rabbi Ephraim Oshry – known to be a deeply compassionate scholar of Jewish law — was considered the spiritual leader of the Kovno ghetto. In this role, he tried to help the members of this community, subjected to horrific conditions, to maintain a semblance of Jewish life. He endeavored to answer many difficult questions of Jewish law for the troubled ghetto Jews. Oshry’s genius was his creative ability to find a way to say “yes” instead of a blanket “no.”

But this is not a story about Rabbi Oshry’s genius. It is the story of my friend, Hannah (not her real name), who was still bedeviled by her Jewish identity at the late age of 82. Like the many people who wrote to Rabbi Oshry during and after WWII, individuals trying their best to live up to the standards of Jewish law – to remain good human beings in the eyes of God despite their behavior in appalling circumstances – I am asking a question on behalf of Hannah’s soul as, unknowingly, she prepares to meet her Maker.

Hannah was spared the horrors of Hitler’s Germany by the actions of her father in gaining a Christian identity, intended to protect her from anticipated harm. Yet caught in a web of ambivalence, she was not spared the suffering of her soul. So here is the question (the she’ela) – the many questions, in fact – that, as a rabbi, I am asking for her because she cannot ask them for herself. Perhaps there is no answer.

The Questions:  

Can someone born into Judaism, but forced into Catholicism from early teenage by parents anxious to protect her, return to Judaism on a part-time basis? Can she move back and forth between the two religions – and their two communities – and still be considered a Jew? Can she still be a Jew if she marries a Catholic and brings up her children as Catholics – even though she is no longer a practicing Catholic herself? Is she a Jew or a Christian if she is involved in leadership positions in the Jewish community? Is she a Jew or a Christian if she reverts to Catholicism for fear of losing her soul and going to eternal hell fire as the approach of the end of life draws near?

The Back Story:

Hannah was born into a wealthy educated, and cultured Jewish family in Holland (her father was a diamond dealer). She remembered that they lived as Jews and had Jewish friends. But as Hitler came to power in Germany and began to make aggressive moves against the Jewish communities, her father realized that the Dutch Jews would soon be in danger in Holland (where there were already rumblings against the Jews), and he began to make plans to protect his family. Since his livelihood was a portable one, he took his wife and three young daughters to Paris, where, far from their usual associations, they submerged themselves in a secular world.

They hurriedly studied French while he made the necessary arrangements to take them to Montreal in Quebec, Canada, but both parents were aware that they still counted as Jews (even if they claimed they were secular), rapidly being characterized by Nazi elements as the vermin of Europe.

It was toward the end of 1938 when they finally arrived in Montreal. As the news from Europe grew worse (Canada entered the war in 1939, well before the U.S. did), Hannah’s father quickly took his three daughters to a convent with beautiful facilities and excellent educational reputation in Montreal. At the time, neither this city’s Catholic majority nor its Anglo minority could be considered fond of Jews, but although slurs against Jews certainly occurred on the part of individuals in this time of economic depression, there was no official anti-Semitism, as there was in many parts of Europe. Hannah’s father instructed the nuns to educate his blonde, blue-eyed girls as Catholics. In the event that Hitler’s reach would (God forbid!) extend to Canada, he made a gift of a considerable sum of money to the convent. “If anything happens, protect my children,” he said.

That is how it happened that Hannah, born a Jew, was educated to be a Catholic. At this early age – she was fourteen and still a minor following her parent’s bidding – she did not understand all her father’s reasoning, but she came to truly love the pageantry and rituals of the Catholic service, particularly Mass, and was intrigued by the lives of the Saints.

She dimly remembered that her parents continued to have Jewish friends and to live their lives, although largely secular, as Jewish people. Protected by the convent, however, the three daughters were trained to be Catholics. Later in life, two of the daughters, younger than Hannah, refused to admit that they had ever been Jewish, born of Jewish parents. But Hannah knew.

After the war, she was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, and her Francophile identity was both reinforced and welcomed when she returned to Montreal. She did not have an identity problem then; she was a French-speaking Catholic. Point final. She sang Canada’s national anthem (with Quebec nationalistic fervor) in French. With her love of Catholic pageantry, she was attracted to the theatre, where she met the charismatic actor who was to become her husband. He was Catholic, and in due course, they had two children, both brought up a Catholics.

Eventually Hollywood’s artistic top echelon called on her husband’s talents, and that’s where her identity problem resurfaced. In Los Angeles, far from the circles she frequented in Montreal, Hannah was drawn to the Jewish community, and, as time went on, involved in its leadership. Then, as her children grew and moved back to Montreal, she became increasingly active in the L.A. Jewish community and contributed generously to many Jewish charities.

However, she never attended synagogue services. Never. Nor, as a non-practicing Catholic, did she attend Catholic, or indeed, any kind of religious services. She was vocal, though, against Israel’s “policies,” and thus relieved her guilt and ambivalence towards her Jewish antecedence by her attitude towards Israel (which she eventually visited with a church group). But, despite her anti-religious, anti-Israel posture, there was no doubt about it: she was magnetically drawn to the Jewish community. It was there that she felt most at home.

Yet there was another side to the coin. Whenever she returned to Montreal for a visit with her children and friends, she immediately reverted to her French Catholic past life and associations, although she did not attend Catholic services there either. But she always felt guilty – wherever she was. She felt guilty in Montreal because she was hiding her Jewishness, and she felt guilty in Los Angeles because she was hiding her Catholicism.

* * * *

A Double Life:

When I met Hannah in Los Angeles some twenty years ago, she was a widow. No more Catholic husband to complicate things. Her children were far away. I assumed that she was Jewish because of her activities in Jewish organizations, but, as our friendship grew, she confided to me how tortured she felt about her identity.

“I feel like such a hypocrite,” she said. “When I am in Los Angeles, I lead a Jewish life. I have Jewish friends. I belong – and lead – Jewish organizations. But when I am in Montreal with my children and grandchildren, I live as a Catholic.”

She was leading a double life – a tale of two religions, two cultures – in terms of her identity, yet she denied being “religious.” She was secular, she would insist. So her religious orientation didn’t matter. Nor she did not follow Jewish religious practice in secret, as the Marranos (victims of the Spanish inquisition in the late 1400s and 1500s) once did.

“There are many paths to God, “I would suggest, not as a rabbi but as a friend. “For you, there was a fork in the road, and the path you took was chosen for you by someone else. Since you travel both paths, why not enjoy the best of each of them and learn from each of them. But you know, Hannah, eventually you will have to decide for yourself, to make a choice.”

Still, as she grew older, Hannah became increasingly uneasy about her identity, secular though she proclaimed it to be. “Sometimes I miss the rituals and pageantry of the Catholic Mass,” she would say wistfully. “Sometimes I dream about them. My grandchildren are Catholic.” Yet she still resisted going to services of any kind. Not Jewish, not Catholic.

When she decided to move from her apartment to an Assisted Living facility, she gave away many of her possessions to charitable organizations, and she also gave some lovely things to her children and friends, including me. Wanting to reciprocate, I thought long and hard before I decided what I could give to her in return, something small that she could take with her to her new home. She already had everything material anyone could want. What didn’t she have? Peace of mind.

When I lived in Canada, I owned an art and antique gallery for a number of years, and among the antique jewelry I had retained when I closed the gallery was a beautiful, large, antique cross, dating from the 1850s. Silver on gold (as was often done in those days) and ornamented with little diamonds, it hung from a silver chain.

I had already donated the Jewish ritual items I owned to a local Judaica museum, but the curator didn’t want the cross. Now, many years later, I decided to gift it to Hannah, who was already well settled in the Assisted Living facility but still breathing at night with the help of an oxygen tank. “This is for you Hannah,” I said. “Your father wanted you to be protected. When you wear it, you’ll be doing what your father wanted.”

“There is always anti-Semitism,” she replied, tears welling up in her eyes. “It never goes away.” Immediately, she put the cross around her neck and smiled joyfully. She has been wearing it underneath her clothing ever since.

“Now you have decided for yourself,” I said. “There is comfort in that. God’s world is for everyone.”

With a failing heart, in fear, she had chosen her path, like the hidden Jews who still live in New Mexico and elsewhere as Catholics, secreting their true Jewish identity 500 years after the Spanish Inquisition in fear of a persecution-to-come. But in Hannah’s case, it was a cross, not a Jewish star, that she wore under her clothing, next to the heart.

In Hebrew, the word for heart is “lev.” The heart’s beating is connected to the pulse of our being. And to our minds. The heart always knows.

“What the heart is to the body, the Jewish people are to the world,” wrote the famous poet Judah Halevi [4]. It is a heart that has continued beating for thousands of years.

* * * *

[1] Teshuva refers to Repentance. In order to completely repent, you must first make restitution to the injured party or parties, and then sufficiently repent so that when a similar circumstance occurs, you act differently.

[2] Mishna Torah, Bk. 1., Ch. 10:6. In Isadore Twersky, ed. A Maimonides Reader, 85.

[3] “Highly regarded as a scholar, he was presented with many questions about Jewish law amidst the hardships of ghetto life. Rabbi Oshry wrote the questions and answers on scraps of paper torn from sacks of concrete, placed these notes in tin cans, and then buried them. These questions reflect the dilemmas faced by Jews in the Holocaust and serve as an historic record of how the Jews in the Kovno Ghetto were determined to live by Jewish law despite the inhuman, horrifying conditions. After the liberation of Kovno in August, 1944, Rabbi Oshry retrieved the hidden archive and published five volumes of responsa.”

http://www.ou.org/jewish_action/04/2013/responsa_from_the_holocaust, March 31, 2014).

[4] www.rabbiwein.com/Kuzari.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2017. All rights reserved.

When the Fatwa Generated a Storm: The Freedom and Integrity of the Pen

When the Fatwa Generated a Storm:

The Freedom and Integrity of the Pen

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

It was December, 1992  — a quarter of a century ago — when my sister arrived, to visit me in Toronto. Wheelchair bound for many years, she travelled rarely. Thrilled that she was coming, I had planned various activities I knew she would enjoy, among them PEN Canada’s annual gala, a fund-raiser at which some of PEN’s literary celebrities (like Margaret Atwood) would perform [1]. The event was to held at the downtown Pantages Theatre in Toronto, where I reserved two seats, one of them wheelchair accessible for my sister, with great sightlines. But the night of the gala, it started to snow hard, quite hard, and so I packed my sister into the car, folded her wheelchair into the trunk, and left much earlier than I would have done normally in order to get there on time.

Canadian born, my sister and I were used to winter. My family were all skiers. I know how to drive in snow. But this night was a doozer! Despite the weather, though, when we finally got to the theatre, it was packed full of hardy souls, just as we expected. First of all, the tickets were too expensive not to come, once you had one, and secondly, none of the assembled literati, including me, were going to miss the PEN Gala. It was not exactly the Canadian version of the Oscars, but it was close.

My sister’s handicap placard wasn’t valid in Canada, but the police – oh my goodness, there seemed to be a lot of them! – kindly let me park right in front of the theatre long enough to unpack the wheelchair and push my sister, a rather hefty bundle, through the snow into the theatre. We found our seats, and then I left to park my car. By this time, the snow was heavy but still “walkable,” and I was exuberant at finding a parking space in a lot a couple of blocks away, or so it seemed to me. I quickly parked the car and briskly walked back to the theatre, sinking into my seat just a couple of minutes before the curtains parted for the show.

Nevertheless, I still had time to observe that the theatre’s interior seemed to be lined with quite a few Mounties (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, although they rarely ride horses anymore) in full ceremonial dress. These are the federal police in Canada. Interspersed among them were others in civilian dress, probably detectives, scrutinizing the crowd. And then I had no more time to think. The show had started!

It was a lot of fun, especially for people with a literary bent. My sister loved it. But then, just as the audience was starting to applaud for what we thought was the final curtain, a male figure strode onto the stage, surrounded by a semi-circle of Mounties.

The First Miracle

When the center figure of the semi-circle on the stage was introduced as Salman Rushdie, author of the satirical novel, “The Satanic Verses,” the audience gasped. We all knew that a “fatwa” calling for Rushdie’s assassination had been issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, four years earlier in 1989. Why? For satirizing the prophet Mohammed and his wife, Aisha, in “The Satanic Verses.” The Ayatollah considered it blasphemous. Salman Rushdie was therefore condemned to death, and anyone who murdered him would be well rewarded with a milliondollar bounty.

But Salman Rushdie was British-Indian, born in India, educated at Cambridge, and a British citizen. For the Ayatollah to issue a death warrant for a British subject was a great affront, not only to Britain, but to what was then called the free world – in other words, the West – whose shocked reaction was ineffective. Although Iran had thrown down the gauntlet, the Western countries seemed not to know what to do beyond diplomatic protests. Meanwhile there were public burnings of Rushdie’s books in countries with Muslim majorities.

As a result, Rushdie was put under police protection by the British government for several years. The PEN event in Canada three years after the fatwa was issued was the first time any organization had the courage to invite him to give a public reading. It took a great deal of courage and organization, and the invitation was conducted in complete secrecy. Only the top executive leaders of PEN knew Rushdie was coming.

Onstage, an immensely grateful Rushdie described what it was like to live in hiding, fleeing with his wife, and – with the help of the British government – to sleep in a different house every night, and always with the fear of being killed in his sleep. It was such a memorable event that in 2012, PEN Canada held a 20th Anniversary celebration of this occasion [2].

When Rushdie read to us excerpts from his new manuscript, “Midnight’s Children,” which he was still writing while in hiding, it was a moment that this 1992 audience would never forget. It was such a memorable event, accompanied by tumultuous applause, that in 2012, PEN Canada held a 20th Anniversary celebration of this occasion [3].

After the reading, my sister’s face was flushed with excitement and appreciation. When Rushdie had first appeared on the stage, the audience had almost collapsed in, as one writer put it, “collective disbelief.” It seemed like a miracle. For my sister and myself, it was to be only the first miraculous event of the evening.

The Second Miracle

The second miracle didn’t feel like a miracle at first. It felt more like a disaster. After I parked my sister in the theatre lobby in front of a large glass window looking out at the street, I said, “I’m going to get the car now. I won’t be long. I’m just parked a couple of blocks away.”

But when I stepped outside, the driving snow had turned into a veritable blizzard, and the direction I was walking was heading right into it. The snow had already built up halfway to my knees. So I crouched down low, lifting one foot up from the thick snow and planting it down further ahead in more thick snow, and then the same thing with the other foot. Methodically I advanced toward the parking lot a couple of blocks away. On the South East corner of the street, right? That’s what I had noted when I originally parked there just two and a half hours earlier.

When I finally plodded through the snow to the parking lot on the corner, it was still full of cars. Only they all looked the same. Completely covered with snow. And guess what color my car was? You guessed it! White. Never buy a white car in Canada. I tried to determine the approximate place in which I had parked my car – and brushed away the snow from the license plates in that general area. Brush, brush! Not my car. Brush, brush! Not my car. After a lot of brush, brushing and many wrong license plates, I determined that 1) my car was not in that parking lot, no way, and 2) that I had better get back to the theatre lobby before they closed, and my sister was out in the street.

Plod, plod, plod, plod. “I’ll never make it to the theatre.” I was shivering. Just at that moment, I spotted an ambulance, a police ambulance, parked at the side of the road and just starting up the engine. “Wait, wait,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Wait for me.”

The ambulance driver did. I managed to reach his window and begged him to 1) help me pick up my invalid sister and 2) help me find my lost car. “Well, it’s against the regulations” he hemmed and hawed, but as he watched my tears freeze on my face, he said, “Okay. Get in. I’ll help you.”

So we got my sister, to the worried manager’s relief, and the three of us lifted the wheelchair, and my sister in it, into the ambulance. Thank God. My sister could not conceal her amazement. Where had this ambulance come from? I realized it had been parked on the street as a precaution in case there were any problems associated with the Rushdie reading. Well, now we were the problem, my sister and I.

“Show me this parking lot,” the ambulance driver said kindly.

“The South East corner, two blocks down.” So he drove me there, and I told him about my earlier brush, brush routine. He understood. “A white car,” he groaned. His ambulance was white too. White and blue.

“You know,” he said, “there’s actually another parking lot on the South East corner, but it’s one block over to the right. Do you think you could have parked there?”

A light went on in my head. Could it be?

So he drove us to the next lot, and after a lot of brush, brush on my part, the letters and numbers of my totally snow-covered license were revealed. My car! My white car!

We thanked him a million times as he transferred my sister to my car, helped me fold up the wheelchair and pack it in the trunk, and waited until I cleared the snow off my windows, the front and rear lights, and my tailpipe, revved up the car, and backed out. Ready to go.

“Drive slowly,” he said. And with a wave of his hand, the officer and his ambulance were gone.

My sister and I were giddy with relief. We laughed and laughed and giggled and giggled. We couldn’t stop. “No one will believe me,” my sister chortled. She was known to embellish a tale or two. And then there was a third miracle.

The third miracle was that by keeping my eyes focused on the red tail lights of the cars directly in front of me, I managed to see my way through the blizzard. When we got home, we were still laughing.

So that’s how it happened. Three miraculous events in one night. And all of them were generated by the courageous leadership of Canadian writers who respected the integrity and freedom of the pen. Even in a snowstorm.

* * * *

[1] PEN was originally an acronym for Poets, Essayists, and Novelists, and you had to be invited to belong. Today this international organization includes Playwrights and diverse other writers as well.

[2] Graham Gibson, then President of PEN Canada, and the husband of Margaret Atwood, and several others like John Ralston Saul are to be commended for inviting Rushdie and for the complex organization and security arrangements that followed.

[3] “On December 7, 1992, PEN Canada held a benefit for Salman Rushdie at which then Ontario premier Bob Rae became the first head of government to welcome Rushdie in a public forum anywhere in the world…. Rushdie later described the evening as one ‘he would never forget’” (PEN newsletter).

©️Corinne Copnick, 2017. All rights reserved.

Thanksgiving, 2017

Thanksgiving, 2017[1]

by Rabbi Corinne Copnick

I feel a poem grow in me

like green grass dotting

faded frosty plains,

jade clusters sculpting

flattened land

again to leafy life.

I feel a poem rise in me

like high hilltops tombed

in fog as sudden sun

seeps softly through,

coaxing far-down coastal

waters to glitter

silvered streaks

beyond the broken rocks.

I feel a poem’s urge.

©️Corinne Copnick Spiegel, Embrace/Etreinte: A Love Story in Poetry (Montreal, Editions Guy Maheux, 1981) 63.  

[1] A limited edition, this bilingual (English/French) book can occasionally be found in rare book stores. “Thanksgiving, 2017” was originally titled “Process.”