A D’var Torah by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
“Choose life,” the Torah tells us in Nitsavim, “if you and your offspring would live – by loving the Lord your God, heeding His commands, and holding fast to him For thereby you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil that the Lord swore to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them (Deut.30:19–20).” These verses are with me always, and they have been more deeply implanted in my heart and soul each time I visited Israel.
It was July, 1989, before the first intifada had begun. I was walking through the Shiloah underground water tunnel at the City of David, Jerusalem (constructed by King Hezekiah to link the Gihon Spring with the pool of Siloan, 700 BCE). The tunnel was still open then, before it became too dangerous for Israeli authorities to allow tourists to venture through this narrow, historic passage. Our guided group walked in darkness over slippery stones in almost knee deep water to get to the other side. Only a single candle, protected by my hand so that it wouldn’t blow out, lit my way. And then, midway, the passage widened to reveal the meeting place where an inscription in rock was once inscribed in the ceiling. Even though the ancient rock is now in a museum, my skin tingled then with the appreciation of what was once there, and with the knowledge that, as Jews, we must never forsake the Covenant, nor to strive for peace.
Soon after we reached the other side, I was inspired by this exhilarating experience to write the following poem. Today, as Selichot approaches, I choose life in anticipation of the peace and joy that might be – one day — on both sides of the tunnel. Choose life.
DESTINATION
A slim, green candle,
purchased from a village waif,
held low against the draught,
lit my way through
this winding, cool, wetted
chasm where once,
deep beneath the ancient stones,
inscribed in rock, a
joyful, dripping message
recorded the meeting of
men, toiling to touch,
centuries past. Clear spring
waters flowed as they fused.
I niched my candle
in the rock; its light
still grows and burns
inside me, always.
You have shown me
your wineglass,
blessed city that wishes
the world what it might be.
O Jerusalem, for me
you plant new vineyards
in the cloudless sky.
Although what I have been describing here happened long ago, and I am in my eighties now, I am heartened – and excited – by the statement in Va’yalech – it’s a comvined portion this week — that Moses was a still a vigorous 120 years old — “with eyes undimmed and with vigor unabated” (Deut. 34:7) before he passed on the leadership to Joshua. It was time for a new generation in the land. And for that new generation, in turn, to explain the Covenant to their children. “Take to heart all the words with which I have warned you this day. Enjoin them upon your children, that they may observe faithfully all the terms of this teaching. For this is not a trifling thing for you; it is your very life: through it you shall long endure on the land you are to possess upon crossing the Jordan” (Deut. 32:46-47.)
As for me, I am tickled pink by the fact that God also chose to create a beautiful poem at this time of entering the Land, and that Moses wrote it down. Today we call it “The Song of Moses,” which appears in the next Torah portion, “Ha’azinu..”
©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2015. All rights reserved.
A Contemporary Narrative
by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
There is a Hebrew name for the abandonment of hope. It is called ye’ush. Various fascinating perspectives – psychological, theological, ethical, and legal – can all be applied to ye’ush. It also has a related concept, ye’ush shelo medat (abandoning hope without knowing it – in other words, unconsciously giving up hope). Both concepts appear in a very small tractate of the Talmud called Bava Metzia. One may also read the passage as consciously acting on the assumption of eventual ye’ush.
What do these ideas really mean? Can one ever abandon hope? If so, under what circumstances? How does one turn the coin of despair over to the other side and become hopeful once again? The story of Mrs. Mandelbaum, who refused to give up hope, offers some clues.
When I was a young woman in Montreal, Canada, our family used the dressmaking services of Mrs. Mandelbaum, a middle-aged Holocaust survivor. We would go to her immaculate apartment, where her newly bought furniture was protected with plastic covers, and where she lived with her husband and son. There our dressmaker spent a great deal of time on her knees on the hardwood floor, as she pinned up the hemlines of her affluent clients.
When her only son reached Bar Mitzvah age, Mrs. Mandelbaum invited all her customers and also sent out invitations to fellow survivors of the horrific concentration camp experience they had somehow managed to live through to liberation. She also invited some survivors she had encountered in the Displaced Persons camp after World War II. That was where she met her husband and conceived her son. From the D.P. camp, the Mandelbaums managed to get sponsorship to Canada, where we, the Bar Mitzvah invitees, were now their only “family.” And everyone who was invited came.
The American-born guests/customers were amazed at the lavishness of the Bar Mitzvah. How could a woman of such limited means, someone they saw mainly down on her knees, afford such an elaborate celebration? Mrs. Mandelbaum knew how. She had saved every cent of her dressmaking money for more than five years in order to host this occasion.
But her fellow survivors, the ones who flew in from the U.S., from South America, from Australia, from Israel – from wherever they had found refuge after the war – were not surprised. They understood that it was the hope that one day she would have a son who would provide continuity to the Jewish people through his Bar Mitzvah commitment that kept her alive in the concentration camp. The survivor-guests had promised one another that, if they made it thr
ough the war, they would be the witnesses to the celebration. No matter where life took them, they would serve as one another’s family. They had shared a common flame of hope, and now it had come to fruition.
It was a wonderful celebration. And after the Bar Mitzvah, Mrs. Mandelbaum got up from her knees. She did not have to pin up other people’s dresses any more.
* * * *
©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2015, 2017. All rights reserved.
Interpreting Talmudic Concepts with my Own Stories
by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
In Eastern Canada, where I was born and lived most of my life, November is a bleak month. After the brief autumn blaze of color, the trees have lost all their leaves, the skies are grey after the morning darkness, and snow has not yet come to whiten the landscape. People in Canada tend to get somewhat depressed in November. I used to alleviate these feelings by creating a beautiful image for myself: The trees were simply waiting, their bare branches upraised, to receive the snow that would fall in December. “Everything is waiting for to be hallowed by man,” Simon Noveck explains, capturing the essence of Martin Buber’s philosophy. This is how Buber felt about the relationship between God, man, and nature. And, in the final analysis, that is what hope is all about, having faith in this relationship.
Long before the technology of the internet helped anyone with a computer, tablet, or smart phone to understand what it means to be “connected,” the Jewish tradition understood that interaction. It understood that everything in creation, every action, is inter-related, and that in the spring, new shoots would come. The bare branches would have leaves again.
Faith is the flame that keeps hope alive. The Jewish religion is the story of that faith, that hope. Talmudic stories can reinforce these beliefs. The ancient rabbis understood that the ability to maintain hope in the direst of circumstances helped the Jewish people to survive. They realized that, without maintaining hope, the Jewish people would not have survived as Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. Against the background of the destruction of the temple, the death of large numbers of Jews through catastrophic revolt, and the loss of many others to exile, the rabbis tried to pinpoint the specific point at which one abandons or does not abandon hope. With its usual precision, the Talmud tries to answer that question. The rabbis even considered whether one could abandon hope retroactively. It is also possible to consider the abandonment of hope proleptic (something held in the imagination, not in reality) rather than retroactive, at least at the time one assumes the eventual loss of hope in the future.
Rabbinic narratives stimulate thinking. Their innate creativity tends to beget new creativity: learning derived from them may be applied in original ways. It is with this thought in mind that I offer several of my own stories, inspired by Talmudic concepts, in a series of future posts. These stories appeared originally in my Master’s thesis about finding hope in the aggadic narratives of the Talmud.
© Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2015. All rights reserved.
A D’var Torah: by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
“Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings” (Deut. 28:6)
Ki Tavo, which means “when you come to,” referring to the Holy Land (and also, according to Talmudic lore, to when you enter the world without sin, in the hope that you may leave it the same way) [1] is often called the “Blessings and Curses” chapter.
Personally, I have experienced many blessings. For one thing, I have a loving family. Secondly, I live in sunny California, something that can only be appreciated fully by someone who has spent most of her life in a wintry climate. You have to admit, though, that this state is an uncommonly beautiful and diverse –both geographically and humanly — part of America. Thirdly, I have been able to visit Israel twice and look forward to the next time. Yes, I am saying it out loud.
“Blessings and curses were closely bound to a belief in the power of speech,” in a way that was almost magical, writes Rabbi Gunther Plaut in The Torah: A Modern Commentary [2]. In fact, when this parasha is read aloud in the synagogue, the reciters lower their voices to a whisper when it comes to the curses.
Bar/Bat Mitzvah kids groan when they have to learn this portion for their Jewish coming-of-age ceremony. Since the list of curses are four times the length of the blessings, many wise rabbis simply give these young people the “blessings” part to absorb.
But sometimes curses can turn into blessings. When the last stock market crash occurred, cutting my hard-earned, mutual fund savings in half at a time in my life when I could not replace what was lost, I was distraught. Then I decided that the best investment was in myself: I enrolled in rabbinic school, and my rabbinic education and eventual ordination has turned out to be a wondrous, life-changing blessing, one that I can hopefully transmit to other people.
Both “the blessings and the curses,” Richard Elliott Friedman points out, “are there out of a realistic recognition of human psychology: rewards and punishments are effective tools of instruction from childhood and up. But the aim is higher: that humans should come to see that what is being put in their hands is ‘life’ and ‘good’ and love’ (Deut.30:15-16) [3]. There are indeed many blessings to come.
Towards the beginning of Ki Tavo is a summary of all the blessings that the Creator has already given to the Israelites, beginning with their liberation from Egypt. You may recognize this time-honored portion (don’t skip it!) from the Passover Haggadah:
“My father was a fugitive Aramaean [4]. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there, but there he became a great and populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The Lord freed us from Egypt with a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deut: 26:5-9).
Isn’t it amazing how quickly we forget good things that were done for us in the past and get into the “what-have-you-done-for-me-lately” mode? So at least twice a year, when we read Ki Tavo in the approach to Rosh HaShanah, and again in the Spring in the month of Nisan, we remember to be grateful for past gifts.
The Haftarah (Isaiah 60:1-22) that accompanies this Torah portion, framed in the imagery of light and of worldly splendor, is itself a gift to the human spirit. It is the sixth of seven weekly haftarot of consolation recited weekly to precede Rosh HaShana after the devastation of Tisha B’Av. Distinguished commentator Michael Fishbane discusses the Haftarah’s proclamation of the new light that shines on Jerusalem because God’s presence is now there. The Haftarah also predicts the ingathering of the exiles to Zion, of a glory that transcends nature, and of the peace and victory that will ensue [4].
Given the devastation from natural causes during the past weeks in the world we live in today, this Haftarah is especially uplifting this Shabbat, with its poetic message of redemption. It is one of the most beautiful of all the Haftarahs:
“Arise [kumi], shine [ori] for your light has dawned;
The Presence of the Lord has shone upon you!” (Isaiah 60:1)….
“And nations shall walk by your light” (Isaiah 60:3).
Could we ask for anything more? Shabbat shalom!
[1] Cited in Gunther Plaut, Ed.,“Gleanings, “ The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Revised edition (New York: Union for Reform Judaism),1366.
[2] Ibid., 1363
[3] Commentary on the Torah, with a new English trans. (New York: HarperCollins, 2003),648.
[4] “Fugitive” is alternatively translated as “wandering.” According to Plaut, the Aramean could refer to Abraham (not a fugitive) or Jacob (not an Aramean), but was possibly Laban, who tried to undo Jacob (representing the father in this passage), Ibid., 1363.
However, more plausibly in my view, the revered 16th century rabbi, Sforno, identifies Jacob as the wandering Aramean because for a time “he was a wanderer in Aram without a permanent home and therefore not prepared to establish a nation fit to inherit a land” (Sforno: Commentary on the Torah, eds. Rabbis Nosson Scherman and Meir Zlotowitz, trans., notes Rabbi Raphael Pelcovitz (N.Y.: Mesorah Publications, 1993) 837.
[5] Michael Fishbane. The JPS Bible Commentary: Haftarot (Philadelphia: JPS, 2002), 304-305.
by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
My maternal grandmother, Rachel Freedman, had a very loving view of God. She imbued in me the idea that the God of Israel was compassionate, forgiving. In my grandmother’s mind, God would always understand — within my grandmother’s religious and moral boundaries, of course.
For instance, my grandmother kept a strictly kosher home all of her life. So she would never eat ANYTHING at my mother’s house because my mother had been brought up in a kosher home (my grandmother’s), and therefore she should know better than to be a Reform Jew who didn’t uphold all the Judaic rules.
Yet my grandmother ate at MY home – also within certain boundaries – because I, her darling ainekel, had been brought up in a home that DIDN’T KEEP KOSHER, and therefore I hadn’t been taught better.
So my grandmother sat down, along with my parents, at my Friday night table most every week from the time that I married (at 22, which seems so young today, but then was quite normal, even late, to be wed) until almost the day she died. But my grandmother only ate the fruit salad I would specially prepare for her on a glass plate never used for any other purpose. Also a small piece of the kosher challah. And she always had a glass of red wine because it was good for her heart. God would understand, she said.
Since my husband and I lived quite a distance away from her own apartment, she allowed herself to be driven (by my parents) to our home for Friday night dinner and then back again at the conclusion of the evening. God would understand, she assured me, that it is more important to share a Sabbath meal with your beloved grandchild and her husband (and later with her great-grandchildren) than to obey the injunction not to drive when distances were so far. (It’s not as if we had to throw a blanket over a camel or commandeer a horse and wagon). My grandmother was pretty good at getting God to approve of what she wanted.
My long-deceased maternal grandfather, on the other hand, had been a labor socialist immigrant to Canada from Russia in 1903. Although he claimed to be an atheist, he was nevertheless active in organizing the Russian-Polish Society’s Jewish cemetery in Montreal. It is still there on rue de la Savane, where my grandfather’s name – Joseph Freedman – is etched in stone as one of its founders.
In fact, when my father, Rachel and Joseph’s son-in-law, graduated as a dental surgeon from McGill University, his first job was with the landzman Russian-Polish Society, whose members he tried to educate in taking better care of their teeth. This he did with the aid of the Talmud. In the 1837 Jubilee Anniversary book of the Society, he began his article, “Dentistry and the Jewish Public,” with this story:
“The Talmud tells of a pseudo-scientist who, although able to count diligently the planets of the sky, did not know how many teeth there were in his oral cavity. One day this man bragged about his profound knowledge of astronomy in the presence of the great Rabbi Gamliel and said: ‘The number of stars is well known to me.’ Smiling, the Sage replied, ‘Tell me how many teeth you have.” The braggart, confused, put his hand to his mouth and began to count them. The Rabbi then exclaimed, ‘You don’t even know what you have in your own mouth. How do you expect to know what there is in the sky?”
As we approach Rosh HaShanah In 2017, we humans think we know quite a lot scientifically about stars and planets and how to travel to them, and about crashing meteors, and even multiple universes, perhaps to an unimaginable infinity. But we are still trying to discover whether life existed on any of them before the created beings of this Planet Earth did. We are still awed by the constantly changing “facts,” whether allegorical, scientific, evolutionary, or theological, and the manner of creation.
And, even with all our technological tools, we are still overcome by the unpredictable patterns of the sea and the devastation to the land and its people that overflowing waters and uncontrollable air currents – and human greed — can wreak. How much has really changed since the biblical generation of Noah inhabited the earth?
This is the greatest who-done-it story of all time. Is God the Creator the perpetrator of this chaos? Of the deaths of so many innocent people? Is God the perp? Or do we humans have a hand in it? Or is that just the way Nature is? I feel as if I’m still counting the teeth in my mouth. Dear God, I don’t understand.