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.”
My International Kids: Jade [1]
By Rabbi Corinne Copnick
I was beginning to contemplate moving to California where two of my daughters already resided, and my first grandchild was on the way. A third daughter was heading for California as well, and my fourth daughter was now living on the West Coast of Canada. It was lonely living by myself in Toronto when I was used to bustling activity, company for meals, and youthful enthusiasm all around me. So, even though I might be leaving for the U.S. soon, I agreed to host another international student. Jade was my first student visitor from mainland China.
A rather plain and initially awkward girl from a rural area, teenage Jade was surprisingly astute when it came to financial matters. She had a business mind like a steel trap. Her father ran a shoe factory in China, and he had sent her to study English, so that she could help him do business with Western countries. She was thrilled to be in Canada, so excited at the prospect of learning, and honored to have the responsibility with which her father had entrusted her at an early age.
When I looked at the clumpy, unattractive shoes Jade wore, I realized that she indeed had a lot to learn if her father’s factory was to please Western tastes. But Jade was a fast learner, a veritable sponge! With her inquisitive mind, she absorbed and analyzed everything she saw around her. Unlike the other Asian girls from Taiwan and Japan whom I had previously hosted, however, Jade was lacking in charm and polish, and she was smart enough to realize it. She extended her course of study for another few months – to absorb charm and polish, of course!
While I am enjoying life in California now with my own children and grandchildren close by, I often wonder how my international kids, my “adopted” Toronto family, fared when they returned to their own homes in other lands. Are Llazlo and Olga, the inseparable Yugoslav couple for whom no room was too small, who would gladly share a single bed to remain together, still a team?
And dear Lily from Taiwan? My guess is that, after traversing the world for a while, she would opt to marry the well-heeled, classy suitor her parents favored, one who could give her a spacious apartment in Hong Kong. I suspect that she will not send her children away to boarding school, as her parents did with her. She will be at home with them when they are young.
Mariko from Japan knew that she was too “Western” for most Japanese men’s tastes, so I imagine that she soon became the principal of the Japanese school where she taught first-level English to foreigners and eventually married the Japanese suitor educated in the United States — who, on her behalf, hand-delivered a Japanese-style rice-maker, made in New Jersey, to me in Toronto.
I hope that Danilo married his Brazilian sweetheart, and that while they were raising their family in relative luxury in Brazil, they also did something to alleviate the poverty in which so many families live in that country. Years later, I heard from him via Facebook that he had achieved his dream of working in the airline industry.
Khaled had already decided to avoid paying the heavy “bride price” demanded for a Bedouin bride in Saudi Arabia by marrying the Chinese student he fell in love with in Toronto. Also, because the Bedouins, from whom he originated, tend to marry their cousins, he hoped to circumvent the genetic sickle cell disease that plagued his own family by marrying “out.”
As for entrepreneurial, sharp-as-a-tack Jade, I would hazard a guess that she quickly became a sophisticated, prime footwear entrepreneur. She likely put marriage and family on the back burner, delaying having children until her career goals were met.
Lots of naches from my international kids!
©️Corinne Copnick, Toronto, 2008; Los Angeles 2017. All rights reserved.
[1] Adapted from Corinne Copnick, Cryo Kid: Drawing A New Map. (New York: iUniverse, 2008). Finalist 2009 Next Generation Awards of Excellence.
Toledot (Genesis 25:19 – 28:9)
A D’var Torah by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
Toledot marks a clear demarcation line in the Torah to the story of Isaac, beginning with his marriage to Rebekah when he was forty years old. The chapter culminates with Isaac’s son Jacob traveling to Paddan-aram to take a wife from the daughters of Laban, his mother’s brother. Jacob’s twin brother, Esau, on the other hand, deliberately disobeys Isaac’s injunction not to marry a Canaanite woman and instead chooses his wife from the line of Isaac’s half-brother, Ishmael (whose lineage was detailed at the conclusion of the previous parasha).
Esau had good reason to be angry with his father, although he is also complicit in his own deception by exchanging the spirituality implicit in his long term birthright for the temporary satisfaction of a hunger-satisfying, red stew. Toledot details how Esau was the victim of his own impetuousness, his twin’s deceit, the complicity of his mother (who favored Jacob) in his deception, and the weakness, metaphorically paralleled by his dimming eyes, of a prematurely aging father. “One may have the dignity of old age without its years, or length of days without the dignity of old age,” proclaimed Rabbi Aha, a fourth generation Amora sage [1]. The result is that Esau’s birthright, as the first son to emerge from his mother’s womb, with Jacob a close second, holding on to his brother’s heel, is mistakenly bestowed upon Jacob. It is Jacob who, masquerading as Esau through a downright dirty trick, obtains his father’s blessing. Eventually it is Jacob who must flee to Laban to escape Esau’s wrath.
The Torah portrays the two brothers as engaged in a struggle for dominance, even in the womb.
“Two nations are in your womb,
Two separate peoples shall issue from your body,
One people shall be mightier than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23).[2]
According to the biblical scholar, Richard Elliott Freedman, the wording of the last sentence in the biblical Hebrew is ambiguous, so that one cannot really tell which twin should serve whom.
“The decision as to who is number-one son is still God’s….The text does not in fact say that the elder will serve the younger son. In biblical Hebrew, the subject may either precede or follow the verb, and the object likewise may either precede or follow the verb. What that means is that sometimes it is impossible to tell which word in a biblical verse is the subject and which is the object, especially if the verse is in poetry.” In other words, ‘the elder will serve the younger’ can also mean “the elder, the younger will serve.’ “ [3]
As Friedman explains this verse, it’s a toss-up. My take, though, is that the implicit mutuality of the verse is intentional in the Torah. Yet the adversarial interpretation of this verse situation persists today in real life, thousands of years later, in the Middle East.
What is not intimated in this verse, however, is that the brothers – each of them, despite having taken different paths, emerge successful and prosperous. When they eventually meet again, it is at first uncertain whether they will fight or reconcile – is the greeting of Esau, the wronged party, a kiss or a bite, or perhaps both? – but the brothers do make peace with one another (just as Isaac and Ishmael came together to bury their father, Abraham in the preceding parasha). And then Jacob and Esau part, each to continue his own life, but the pact of brotherly love and goodwill remaining.
Why is their long enmity, rather than the embrace that brought them both together, the story that has resounded through the centuries?
Last night in Los Angeles, I attended the Israeli Film Festival’s showing of a rediscovered, filmed interview with the first leader of modern Israel, David Ben Gurion in his 80s, already retired from politics and personally engaged in rebuilding the desert. He was simply a Jew, he said (to paraphrase), who wanted to live in Israel in a world where there was peace among the nations – and where people did not exploit one another but rather put the Jewish value of loving one another into practice.
“Judaism has always been more than mere expectation, or fulfillment postponed; it has always looked to some this-worldly expression of progress toward its long range hopes,” penned Rabbi Gunther Plaut [4]. Maybe it’s time to put the long-ago reconciliation of Jacob and Esau into the present tense. Maybe it’s time for a mutual embrace instead of a bite.
[1] Quoted in “Gleanings,” The Torah: A Modern Commentary, revised edition, ed. Rabbi Gunther Plaut (New York: Union for Reform Judaism), 164. Rabbi Aha was one of the Ammoraim (interpreters of the Torah), the sages who followed the first and second century CE Tannaim (repeaters of the Torah).
[2] JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1999) 48.
[3] Commentary on the Torah: With a New English Translation and the Hebrew Text, ed. Richard Elliott Friedman (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 88.
[4] “Essays,” The Torah: A Modern Commentary, revised edition, ed. Rabbi Gunther Plaut (New York: Union for Reform Judaism) 165.
©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2017. All rights reserved.
Chayei Sarah (Genesis 23:1 – 25:18)
The First Recorded Real Estate Transaction
A D’var Torah by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
It’s small wonder that Sarah died shortly after the Akeida incident which precedes this parasha. If your husband trekked your obedient, only child, one thankfully born to you at a late age, up a holy mountain with the intention of sacrificing him to God on an altar, you’d possibly have cardiac arrest too. Would you forgive your husband for what he did without consulting you, even if he tried to atone for it by buying you – and your family thereafter — a beautiful burial cave?
In any case, after mention of Sarah’s death (in Kiriath-arba, now Hebron, in the land of Canaan), in the second verse of “Chayei Sarah” (the life span of Sarah), a momentous transaction takes place. In fact, it is the Torah’s first recorded real estate transaction: the purchase of a family burial plot by the first Jewish patriarch, Abraham, from Ephron the Hittite. Even the price, 400 shekels of silver, is recorded in the written Torah.
After Sarah died, the sympathetic, neighboring Hittites, who considered Abraham the “elect of God among us,” had actually offered to give the site to Abraham as a gift. But Abraham, who called himself a resident alien, a “ger vtoshav,” insisted on formally paying for it, thus establishing legal ownership of the Cave of Machpelah facing Mamre, now Hebron.
At the divine level, though, ownership has limitations. Jewish people have long recognized that every corner of the earth belongs to God, and that, as God’s creations – whatever the financial transaction — we humans have only temporary custodianship of the land. It is ours as long as we keep the covenant with our Creator.
So, from a metaphorical (and metaphysical) perspective, all the land belongs to God. As human beings, we belong to God too; we are merely vessels, containers for the divine spirit. That’s why (just like the American dollar), we are not allowed to deface our bodies – they are on loan to us for the time we are on earth. The divine spark within each of us, by contrast, is part of the wholeness of God.
In temporal terms, however, through our patriarch Abraham, we Jews bought the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, and we paid for it in the coin of the land. A fact. Recorded in writing in the Torah and passed down through the centuries.
“Abraham accepted Ephron’s terms. Abraham paid out to Ephron the money that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites [i.e.,witnesses] – four hundred shekels of silver at the going merchants’ rate….Thus the field with its cave passed from the Hittites to Abraham, as a burial site” (Genesis 23: 16-20).[1]
There are no Hittites living in Israel anymore; but, despite persecution, the Jews of the world have survived for thousands of years. Even though Hebron is a tinderbox of political unrest today, Jewish people certainly have the right to access the purchased cave of their ancestors.
* * * *
Another real estate purchase — a very important one, in the time of King David – is also recorded later in the Bible. After King David makes Jerusalem his capital around 1,000 BCE, he “buys the upper part of the hill above the northern boundary of the city,”[2] the site of the future Temple – the Beit HaMikdash on Mount Moriah, the place where he will eventually bring the Holy Ark.
Why, in the midst of combat with his adversaries, would David urgently want to buy the threshing floor on Mount Moriah? Because pestilence is sweeping the land of Canaan. The beleaguered David wants to set up an altar to God – in the hope that prayer will help his people avoid the terrible plague. Once again, the selling price is recorded in the Bible, but this time in two different places. [3]
In the 2 Samuel (24:18-25) account, David buys the threshing from Araunah the Jebusite (like the Hittites, the Jebusites are also long gone from Israel). Just as the Hittites did earlier, Araunah offers to give the land to King David for this purpose, and once again, David will not accept the land as a gift.
“But the king repied to Araunah, ‘No I will buy them from you at a price. I cannot sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that have cost me nothing.’ So, according to this account, David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver from Araunah the Jebusite.
However, according to1 Chronicles (21:25-26), written at a later date, the price of the land was much higher: Here King David purchased the land from Ornan (rather than Araunah) the Jebusite for 600 gold coins, then a large sum. “So David paid Ornan for the site 600 shekels worth of gold. And David built there an altar to the Lord and sacrificed burnt offerings and offerings of well-being.”
Of course, Mount Moriah is famously the spot where Abraham brought his beloved son, Isaac, to show his devotion to God – and where an angel or messenger of God – prevented human sacrifice. Instead a ram was miraculously provided.
Although the Torah doesn’t specifically say so, there is no mention of Isaac ever talking to his father, Abraham, again. Surely Isaac was traumatized by this incident. Abraham had to send a servant to fetch a suitable wife for his son from Canaan. Despite all of this, Isaac loved his wife, tried to live a tranquil life peacefully with his neighbors, and he never left Israel. Biblical scholars, unfortunately, often describe him as “a placeholder” in the Bible.
Perhaps Isaac was a weaker man than his father, but he was always true to the land and his family, including his half-brother, Ishmael. Apparently, when Abraham died, Isaac and Ishmael reconciled. Thus in “Chayei Sarah,” the Torah recounts that, as Abraham joined his dearly loved Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, the two half-brothers buried their father together, as Abraham joined his dearly loved Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron.
“His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the Cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, facing Mamre, the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites: there Avraham was buried, and Sarah his wife. After the death of Abraham, God blessed his son Isaac” (Genesis 25:9-11). [4]
As for Mount Moriah, where the first Temple once stood – the Temple Mount — the Islamic Dome of the Rock is now situated, often a place of controversy in recent times. But what is below the earth tells the story in a different, very beautiful way. Hidden behind the Western Wall [5] and under the golden dome of this Muslim shrine is “an exposed piece of the bedrock of Mount Moriah – metaphysically known as the shatiya, literally, ‘drinking stone.’ Water and spirituality are synonymous, and the Torah is known as mayim chayim, ‘water of life.’ According to [mystical]Judaism, the world is spiritually nourished from this spot, this stone — which is the metaphysical center of the universe” [6].
May God’s blessings shine on us all.
[1] JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, The Traditional Hebrew Text and the New JPS Translation. Second Edition. Ed. David S. Stein. (The Jewish Publication Society, 1999).
[2] http://kenspiro.com/article/history-drash-course-12-david-the king. See Aish.com
[3] See 2 Samuel 24:18-25 and 1 Chronicles 21:25 for two different accounts of this purchase.
[4] JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh translation. The Torah also mentions that, after Sarah died, Abraham had taken another wife, Keturah (which means “the exotic one”). Since Isaac and Ishmael buried their father together, there has been some speculation that Keturah may have been an oblique reference to Hagar. In any case, “Chayei Sarah” ends with listing the genealogical line of Ishmael.
[5] Although today Jewish people pray at the Western Wall (the Kotel) and insert written hopes between its stones, it was not originally intended as a shrine. Rather, more than 2,000 years ago, Herod the Great built it as a retaining wall around Mt. Moriah (see Talmud, Sanhedrin 107a).
[6] http://kenspiro.com/article/history-drash-course-12-david-the king. See Aish.com
©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2017. All rights reserved.
Homage to a Veteran [1]
By Rabbi Corinne Copnick
I found a tree that feels like me,
all flame and autumn fire,
dark branches reaching fine-honed
fingers to hold the wistful sky.
I touched a tree whose roots go deep,
proudly placed by sturdy stones,
moistly loved by velvet earth,
tall grown to sanctify this day.
I touched a tree whose time has come,
whose winter color gladly bares itself
to winter’s gusty grasp and
guards her blazing power,
transplanted in the night.
[1] This poem first appeared in “Altar Pieces,” by Corinne Copnick, a narrated collection of the author’s stories and poems that was screened many times nationally on Vision TV in Canada.
©️Corinne Copnick, Toronto, 1992; Los Angeles, 2017. All rights reserved.