Archive by category "Musings"

A Generational Implication: We Need Kids

A Generational Implication: We Need Kids

Dear Friends,

We are living in such a divisive and potentially violent period, politically and environmentally, that I hope, one day soon, we will individually and collectively come to our senses and realize the spiritual strength we can gain from setting some common goals. Hopefully, we will once again remember one another’s needs and, ultimately, bond together in maintaining this incredibly beautiful world – if only we take the time to look – that surrounds us.

In that hope, I offer this poem, which I wrote originally for a marriage ceremony — an age-old bonding our free-wheeling society should also remember to honor. Keep the bonds of a covenantal relationship safe. They need to be nurtured. And, if you can, however you can, have some kids (or take care of some or help them have a better life) to carry on our Jewish tradition. There is a generational implication in the privilege of being alive. Do I sound like a rabbi? You bet!

Shabbat Shalom!

The Bond

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

Amidst frankincense and myrhh,

budding spring flowers color

the air with an ancient song.

“I am for you and

you are for me,”

the most fragrant lyric ever sung.

And in the scented forest,

tall trees inhale

resounded notes and

rebreathe new memories.

Old roots clasp gnarled

hands more deeply in

the rich, red earth,

their bonds long-forged

leafing freshly toward

a misty, blueing sky,

as gentle sun showers

envelop a bridal

duet.

Butterflies dance from

trees to celebrate this

covenant of winging

spirits.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2009, 2017. All rights reserved.

Rewriting the Exodus

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

“Ours is a tradition that insists that God has spoken – yet is open to a variety of possibilities of how God spoke and what, in fact, God said,“writes Daniel Gordis in Revelation, Biblical and Rabbinic Perspectives [1]. It is this tradition of explication and interpretation of the written Torah, compiled over many centuries” that is continued by Richard Elliott Friedman in Who Wrote the Bible? [2], a scholarly book that reads like a detective novel.  Now he has a new book out, The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters [3], which promulgates a brand new theory.

The Sources and the Questions

In Who Wrote the Bible?, Friedman – building on the Deuteronomistic theory first advanced by Christian scholars in the 18th century, maintained that the Hebrew Bible was compiled by a general editor (called a Redactor) mainly from four entwined sources, defined as: J for the document that called the deity Yahweh; E for the document that referred to God as Elohim; P for the large legal section that also dealt with priestly matters, and D for the book of Deuteronomy. He lays out his basic issues very clearly, explaining in a detailed and methodical way how each of the sources contributed to a Torah composed of many genres and many documents. Historical interpretation, Friedman claims, is dependent on the point of view of the person or persons telling the story and raises many questions:

    • How did the social, geopolitical, and religious influences of the time affect the teller?
    • What did successive editors censor in and out, and from what perspective?
    • How have scrolls that were lost and some of them found been combined over time to form the Torah we have today?

This last question is an essential consideration in reading Friedman’s book because it is the final editor, the Redactor (what might be called the General Editor — Friedman thinks he was likely Ezra, probably aided by his scribe, Baruch), who, as he attempted to reconcile the different sources, shaped the text that we have today. It is this editor (R) who is really the “rabbi,” Friedman says, telling the biblical story that itself has been a page-turner for centuries.

A New Take on the Exodus

However, the piece de resistance of Friedman’s new book, The Exodus, is this: We have learned, in the decades since Who Wrote the Bible? was written, that the four biblical streams (J, E, P, and D) were enhanced by the interwoven, much smaller documents of at least 75 additional writers and editors, and sometimes the Redactor. Then, at the end of The Exodus, Friedman cites the specific biblical verses that make up each of the four streams. So by looking them up, we can actually read the story threads that make up each of the original streams separately. Exciting stuff!

The biblical text itself has long represented a giant puzzle that biblical investigators have been trying to solve through their different disciplines – historical, linguistic, literary, and architectural analyses – all vying to make each one preeminent. Each discipline has professed to have the most likely answers, and the validity of the Bible as an historical source rather than just literature has been disputed. But now that the disciplines have pooled their knowledge, their combined investigations support one another’s findings – and, in the process, also shed light on much of what we read in the biblical text.

It is a welcome departure from some earlier biblical critics (who, believing that Christianity had superseded Judaism) seemed almost to take pleasure in discrediting the Hebrew Bible’s account of the Jewish people’s encounter with God. Then, in more recent times, various, politicized “experts”(and some serious scholars who are influenced by their findings) have taken to calling the Hebrew Bible’s account a fairy tale. The Exodus didn’t happen, they say; it’s just a great story. Also, the Jewish people have neither a claim to the Holy Land nor to Jerusalem. (It’s usually illuminating to discover who is funding the research of these self-proclaimed authorities.)

The Exodus Happened!

In fact, one of the latter day misreadings of the Bible that Friedman’s new book, The Exodus, dispels is that it did not happen. The Exodus did indeed happen, he asserts, but a little differently than we had formerly thought. Historians have documented, he explains, that there were many groups of Western Asians in Egypt at the time of the famine, and among them were a people called the Habirus (Hebrews), probably descended from the seventy Jews (Levites, since Joseph’s family were Levites) who originally came to Egypt seeking food when Joseph was the Pharaoh’s right hand man. So these Jews, who unfortunately multiplied too quickly and consequently were enslaved in Egypt 400 years after Joseph was long gone, comprised a tribe that derived from a single biblical ancestor, Levi, one of the twelve sons of Jacob. It was not nearly as large a group of oppressed Hebrews to leave Egypt as previously estimated; rather, the Jews involved in the Exodus comprised only one tribe  — the Levites – not twelve tribes. If this hypothesis is correct, then the hurried departure of Jews from Egypt fits in very well with current architectural, historical, linguistic, and literary analyses.

The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

This theory (it is still only a theory) provides the missing piece that fits the puzzle, Friedman claims: If the Levites were the only Hebrew tribe to have traveled to Egypt (in North Africa) at a time of great famine – and later fled enslavement – where were the other 11 tribes? In Israel (Canaan), of course. Many historians of what used to be called the Near East [4] agree that the ancient Hebrews were a semi-nomadic, shepherding people that gradually settled in the land of Canaan as farmers, keeping separate from pagan tribes [5]. After the Exodus, the Levites rejoined their brethren in Israel.

In other words, Friedman is positing that eleven tribes of the ancient Israelites were indigenous to Israel centuries before the tribe of Levites fleeing from Egypt, and bringing with them the moral precepts of the Ten Commandments, arrived in Israel after the Exodus. The other 11 tribes had already divided the land, however. The latecomer Levites didn’t get any – just a few cities. But from this group came the priestly class and the establishment of a society that valued holiness, enacted laws to preserve it, looked after the widow and orphan, and welcomed the stranger.

[1] Daniel Gordis. “Revelation: Biblical and Rabbinic Perspectives.” Biblical Religion and Law, 1398.

[2] Richard Elliott Friedman. Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Harper Collins, 1987).

[3] ——————————. The Exodus. Kindle edition, 2017.

[4] Today we refer to Israel as being situated in the Middle East, which is a region, rather than referring to its location in Western Asia, which is a continent.

[5] It is rather the story of “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho” that never happened. In the revised version of Exodus, there is no conquest.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 201 7. All rights reserved.

Lullaby

Lullaby

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

Here

violin

strings

vibrate

Mosaic

dreams

in percussion.

Color

and light

resonate

shadows

in reborn,

reflecting

waves.

Here

Miriam

who loved

a child

lullabies

the sea.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2009, 2017. All rights reserved.

Balancing the Scales

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

Years ago, when my sister was in another city, she was the victim of a violent attack headlined in the morning’s newspapers, which also reported that my parents had immediately traveled there to be at her hospital bedside. When I hurriedly returned home (I still lived with my parents, as most young women I knew did in the 1950s until they married) from university classes that very afternoon, thieves — human vultures, believing the house empty — had already been there before me. It had been ransacked.

Just in case you think a thief and a robber are synonyms for people who take something from you that doesn’t belong to them, think again! In the Talmud, a distinction is made between a thief (a “ganaf”) and a robber (a “gazlan”). Really? What’s the difference? Either way, they take our things and cause us grief!

According to the Talmud, a “ganaf” intends to remain invisible to the property owner; that is, his thievery is by stealth. A “gazlan,” on the other hand, is someone who robs you by confronting you, and, unfortunately, there may even be violence. There is a caution, though: A ganaf who intends to remain invisible to the property owner may become a gazlan under certain circumstances. When? If the ganaf is surprised and becomes violent (i.e., a gazlan) upon being seen.

Which one does the Talmud consider worse? You may be surprised to find out that a ganaf is considered even more reprehensible than a gazlan because the people whose property has been taken by an invisible thief don’t know where the threat to them – the violation of their property — came from. It could occur again, at any time, leaving them uneasy, even in their own homes.  On the other hand, those stolen from by a gazlan may also become uneasy when they can actually identify a gazlan who hasn’t been apprehended.

It is hard for most of us to believe that there are people who thrive on profiting from others’ misfortune, compounding it in fact. Yet one of the ugly things that all too often follow loss of life and property in the face of natural disasters like the horrific wildfires so recently fought in California – or the floods experienced in Puerto Rico and Houston and elsewhere – is their aftermath, looting.  

There are other consequences, emotional ones. The medieval scholar, Rashi, taught that people who have been robbed may go into a state of abandonment of hope, what the Talmud calls “conscious ye’ush.” It all depends, the Talmudic rabbis believed, on whether those robbed have given up any hope of recovering their property or still hope to recover or restore the loss – to rebuild. Only life cannot be restored. Fortunately, although harmed physically and emotionally for a long time, my sister did not lose her life.

Although property and life do not weigh evenly on the scales of consequence, age also comes into the equation as a determinant. The young, of course, bounce back more quickly; there is time for new dreams in their life spans.  But can older people harmed by the acts of others or by natural disaster find the strength to rebuild their lives? “Halakha (Jewish law), writes Rabbi David Hartman, “does not permit spiritual incapacity…. [1]. Every day is a new day, and every day promises hope.” As an older person who became a rabbi late in life, this is something I believe with all my heart.

[1] “Sinai and Exodus: Two Grounds for Hope in the Jewish Tradition,” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journal/religious-studies/article/div-classtitlesinai-and-exodus-t…, Vol. 14, Issue 3, David Hartman, October 24, 2008, 378.

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

Moving On?

Moving On?

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

Let me share with you true story about something that happened to me, about personal property that was lost. My personal property. It was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. After I finished stuffing a turkey for a holiday celebration and, with a sigh of satisfaction, had put it in the oven for about twenty minutes per pound at 400 degrees Farenheit, and with a nicely folded foil tent over it, I began to tidy up the kitchen. That was when I noticed that my beautiful, emerald-cut diamond was missing from the ring that had marked my engagement, a ring, that, together with my matching wedding band, I never, ever took off. I had been wearing it for many years. The engagement ring was still on my finger all right, but there was a big, gaping hole in the center where four prongs had formerly held the lovely gem.

My diamond was lost! No, I did not enter into a state of ye’ush (abandonment of hope), not at the beginning. I still hoped; no way would I abandon hope. I searched all over the kitchen, in every nook and cranny of the floor, the counters, for my diamond. Not too easy to find a clear diamond on a white tile floor or white counters (white, European kitchens were in vogue then), but … no diamond! I searched and washed all the dishes in the sink. Nothing had been put in the dishwasher yet, so maybe …  no, no diamond. “Oh no,” I cried. “The turkey!”

Releasing a keening sound of something that was not yet resignation, that still had a note of hope in it, I removed the turkey from the oven, and, bit by bit, removed what would have been a delicious stuffing from the turkey, examined it with a magnifying glass, kneaded each morsel carefully between my fingers. No diamond was to be found. Next, as I peered into the now empty cavity of that turkey and poked and prodded its insides (fortunately it had been deceased for some time), the sinews glistened back at me as if they were laughing. After all, the turkey had been cooking in a pre-heated oven for twenty minutes. It dripped a little here and there.

It was at this point that I began to cry. I entered a state of resignation, a state of ye’ush, but I did have the presence of mind to report the loss to the insurance company. “My diamond is gone,” I sobbed. At least some of the economic value, if not the sentimental value, was recoverable. And it did not take too much effort to report an insured loss. Now, if I had known that the diamond could not be found, that the loss was irrevocable despite all my effort, at the time the loss occurred, would I have entered a state of retroactive ye’ush immediately – that is ye’ush without knowing it, ye’ush shelo medat? It would have saved me a lot of searching time!

However, my story is not finished. When I finally served the turkey to my guests at a beautifully laid table that night, there it was, my diamond, floating in the gravy, as several of my guests pointed to it with astonishment. Thank goodness nobody had swallowed it! And yes, the diamond was undamaged. Diamonds, as you probably know, can survive high heat.

Yes, I had abandoned hope prematurely! Can we ever know, I reflect now, the precise time at which hope should be abandoned? Is there a time when we should give up hope and say, “Move on now! Collect the insurance money! Forget the sentimental value! Replace the diamond!”

But that is not the end of the story. Some years later, my diamond ring, this same diamond ring was stolen. A thief, a ganaf, broke into my house by stealth and stole all my jewelry, including this ring. And, oy vay, this time I no longer had jewelry insurance. It was too expensive! Since I was living in a large, metropolitan center where one diamond is like another diamond, I realized that I probably would not recover it. Even before the police advised me that it was unlikely I would recover the ring, that the thief would have fenced it or shipped it to another country before I had even discovered the loss. There were no identifying marks because the ring was not engraved with an inscription or initials, and, in any case, the thief would likely have taken the diamond out of the ring for resale. So this time, my ye’ush was not in vain. I had to abandon hope for real.

But since, as the police said, it was already too late to retrieve my loss before I even discovered it was missing, was this not also ye’ush shelo medat—ye’ush without knowing it, unconscious ye’ush? In other words, if I had known, would I have given up hope of recovering it from the moment it was stolen, even before I actually knew it was stolen?

But that is not the end of the story. After I set this seemingly cyclical tale of loss and recovery and loss down on paper, I had a sudden urge to put “recovery” – hope — back into the picture when a recurring advertisement in a very reputable magazine caught my attention. National Geographic, no less, in which a company reachable on the Internet was advertising gem-quality diamonds that looked very much like the one I had lost and found and lost again. Only these diamonds were not extracted from deep in the ground through the grime and sweat of miners working in unspeakably treacherous conditions that have been the subject matter of recent movies. These advertised diamonds were cooked in a scientific lab, and, yes, they had all the properties of natural diamonds found in the ground – but with one very important difference: They were flawless, a quality almost impossible for natural diamonds to attain. And, yes, these synthetic diamonds had another favorable attribute: The price was miniscule in comparison to what a “real” diamond would cost.

The temptation was too great to resist. I selected my ring (platinum-fused silver), with the large emerald-cut center stone surrounded by smaller baguettes on the side, just like the ones my long lost ring (solid platinum) had possessed. Again, there was a difference. This time the emerald-cut stone I chose was not a diamond; it was a synthetic emerald, proudly reflecting four karats of polished green, chemical properties in the sunlight.

It is very beautiful ring but somewhat ostentatious, so I haven’t worn it yet. Maybe I never will. If I should, however, it is unlikely that anyone would realize that this artful replacement for my lost jewel is synthetic. But if an unknowing thief should attempt to steal it from my jewelry box at any time in the future, that ganaf will have gained only an object of no significant value, not compared to the multiple lives that have been lost in mines over the centuries trying to recover that sparkling “real thing” – like the one I formerly owned — from the ground.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2015. All rights reserved. This story appears in my rabbinic thesis, “The Staying Power of Hope in the Aggadic Narratives of the Talmud.”

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