Lech Lecha (Genesis 12: 1- 17:27)
A D’var Torah by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
Why are you going? Where are you going? What will you do when you get there?
“Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those that bless you
And curse him that curses you;
And all the families of the earth
Shall bless themselves by you” (Genesis 12: 1-4). [1]
Where was the place that God was exhorting Abraham (still called Abram because the covenant between God and Abram had not yet been invoked) to leave? It was located in the city of Ur in the Sumer region of Southern of Mesopotamia (later Babylon and today the site of modern Iraq). [2] The city of Ur where Abram lived was no rural backwater. It was a busy city situated on several trade routes, a hotbed of commerce. The people worshipped idols (one of the three capital crimes in later Jewish law), and Abram’s father manufactured the representations of these idols that they purchased for their altars and homes. Abram eventually destroyed them in anger as he answered the inner call of an abstract God – whose guiding, invisible presence he was the first to discern.
According to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, “Abraham was commanded to leave behind the sources of both tradition-directedness (‘your father’s house’) and other-directedness (‘your land, your birthplace’). He was about to become the father of an inner directed people. His entire life was governed by an inner voice, the voice of God.” [3]
Abram was seventy-five years old (it’s never too late!) when together with his wife, his family, including his nephew, Lot, and the wealth that he had accumulated over the years, he set for the land that God had promised – the land of Canaan. To be sure, there were interruptions in the journey. Because of a terrible famine, they had first to sojourn in Egypt for a while. They proceeded to Bethel in the Negev, where Abram first invoked the Lord by name. Lot pitched his tent near Sodom (people conducted their lives in wicked ways, and where God eventually destroyed Sodom and Gemorrah for sexual immorality), but Abram remained in the land of Canaan, “settling in the terebinths of Memre, which are in Hebron; and he built an altar there to the Lord”( Genesis 13:18).
The Hebrew verb in “Lech Lecha” is doubled, which connotes extra urgency, not simply “Go forth!” as it is often translated, but more like and emphatic “get out of here” in modern terms. “Get out of Iraq!” There is a better place that your faith in the Creator will lead you, a place where you can live by your values, a place where you can develop and transmit your spiritual possibilities.
How many of us have felt that interior urging at various junctures of our lives? How many of us have had the courage to leave everything we have established behind and actually get up and go? Sometimes we cannot stomach the moral injustice in the land where we live. Sometimes we have no choice; conditions are so intolerable that we have to leave while we can. Sometimes, as survivors of disasters can testify, you have to leave what was behind, and rebuild with purpose what can be – even if it will never reach its fullness for them but they are laying the groundwork for the next generation. And sometimes we simply have wider vistas – or we experience the divine call.
America was built by people with that kind of courage, by people with faith that, with God’s help – and often with only a few dollars or less in their pockets — they could make it. Because they believed in a religious faith that was persecuted elsewhere, or because they had ideals they could not compromise.
Sometimes we can stand up, individually and together, and rectify injustices being perpetrated, even legislated into being, in the land that we live in and love. Sometimes we can stand firm in unison – and then we don’t have to leave.
In his column for the Reform movement, Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce points out that millennia after Abraham’s biblical journey, the rabbis have been concerned with the tension between the physical and spiritual – that is, the ideal – worlds, and how we can reconcile them [4]. It takes courage as well as inspiration and yes, faith, to attempt it, and it can be a lifelong endeavor.
And when one day we die, like Abraham we begin a journey that is both physical and spiritual. As we are in the process of departing from our physical selves in the lands where we live – as we humans inevitably do – we also have to take heart that we have lived a life of courage and vision to the best of our abilities, circumstances, and resources, and that we are now journeying to a new land that God will show us, the inner landscape of the soul. Who knows what opportunities we will find there to aid the human spirit?
[1] The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh translation.
[2] A significant port on the Persian Gulf, the biblical Ur was first established in 3800 BCE.
[3] http://rabbisacks.org/inner-directedness-lech-lecha-5778/
[4] https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/lech-lcha
©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2017.
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B’reishit (Genesis 1:1-6:8)
A D’var Torah by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
It is common knowledge that most rabbis tend to have an underlying theme that they inject into all their sermons. If this is so, then mine is likely to be the combination of scientific knowledge (including new technology and the digital information age) and accumulated religious wisdom in approaching the mysteries – the mystical wonders and connections — of the cosmos. And the wonders of the cosmos are certainly front and center in the Torah portion this week, as we joyfully begin the cycle of our Torah readings all over again, as we begin to peer into the Divine mind of God in terms of God’s power, capacity to design, and will.
At the same time, I am reminded of the questioning words that the famed and folksy author, Mark Twain (1835-1910), puts in the mouth of his literary creation, Eve, in his humorous rendering of “The Diaries of Adam and Eve.”[1]
“I feel like an experiment,” the fictional Eve says on the very day she is created, “I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do….Then if I am an experiment, am I the whole of it? No, I think not; I think the rest of it is part of it. I am the main part of it, but I think the rest of it has to share in the matter”. [2]
If Eve is an experiment, perhaps her mate, Adam, is too. In Genesis 1:27, the Torah portrays male and female as having been created simultaneously: “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”[3]
The pronoun “them,” has evoked much interest recently in terms of gender identity, especially in the LGBTQ community and in university student groups, such as Berkeley. At the latter, I’m informed, the proper current protocol is to ask a person by which pronoun that person prefer to be addressed (he, she, or they) before you make an assumption about their gender identity.
At the Beit Kulam Jewish study group that I teach twice monthly in Los Angeles, we spent a couple of sessions discussing the six genders that the Talmud identified so many years ago: [4] Zachar (male); Nekivah (female); Androgynous (possessing both male and female characteristics); Tumtum (sexual characteristics indeterminate or obscured); Ay’lonit (identified as female at birth, develops male characteristics at puberty, and is infertile); Saris, identified as male at birth but develops female characteristics at puberty). So “they” and “them,” it appears, are quite appropriate – if experimental — terminology.
Leaving gender identity aside, we note that in the next chapter of Genesis, the story of the creation of human life is told a little differently — God appears to have given Adam the world’s first anesthetic (“So the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he slept, He took one o his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot” (2: 21), and then in the very next verse (2:22), he created the world’s first clone (“So the Lord God fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and he brought her to the man). But Adam’s grateful reaction leaves the world of experimentation and expresses so poetically the joy and oneness of human connection – and companionship.
“This one at last
Is bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh.
This one shall be called Woman,
For from man she was taken” (2:23).
How different this joining – into one flesh – is from Yuval Noah Harari’s futuristic scenario (a possibility, not a prediction) of the extinction (like the dinosaur) of Homo Sapiens as a species and its replacement by far more intelligent Super-Computers (sophisticated electronic algorithms that keep learning).[5] Human beings (biological algorithms, to which the same mathematical rules apply) will become mere microchips in the new “God” of data flow, a single data-processing system. Harari’s new book his called “Homo Deus.” It’s a fascinating but depressing (if you’re a human being, not a computer) scenario.
Fortunately, I also picked up a copy this week of –Peter Wohlleben’s “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate,” a beautiful book about the connectedness of trees.[6] Reading about these “discoveries from a secret world” it is restorative. No tree is alone in the forest. Each one belongs to a micro-universe that is part of the Divine plan. (“And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation: seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it….And God saw that it was good”(Genesis 1:11-12).Reading the Torah is restorative too.
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[1] Twain, M. The Diaries of Adam and Eve. (New York: Prometheus Books,2000).
[2] Ibid., 95.
[3] JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. The New JPS Translation, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1999).
[4]Fonrobert, C.E. “Gender Identity in Halakhic Discourse,” Jewish Women’s Archive, accessed 5/25/17.; Kukla,Rabbi Elliot., Sojourn blog; Mishna Kiddushin 1:7.
[5] Harari, Y.N., Homo Deus: a Brief History of Tomorrow (USA: Harper Collins), Kindle edition.
©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2017. All rights reserved.
Chol Ha-Mo’ed Sukkot: (Exodus 33:12 – 34:26)
A D’var Torah by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
My daughter, Laura, just sent me an academic article detailing scientific research that shows via percentages that “religiousness” (attending services, prayer, and behavior in adherence to a moral code) and “spirituality” (meditation and mindfulness practices) have positive effects on health outcomes. [1] The reverse is also true. Maybe larger numbers of Jews should attend services more often than on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Especially this week when we can pray with family and friends and imaginary guests in a leafy Sukkah!
What especially interested me in this article was the distinction made between “religiousness” and “spirituality.” You can be “spiritual,” I suppose, without being “religious,” but can you be truly religious – exalting God and adhering to religious moral codes — without also being spiritual, without feeling close to God? Perhaps the answer is right there in Exodus 33. As one of my favorite sources, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, wrote last year (5777) about the Jewish religion:
“Between the lines of Exodus 33…we sense the emergence of one of the most distinctive and paradoxical features of Jewish spirituality. No religion has ever held God higher, but none has ever felt Him closer. That is what Moses sought and achieved in Exodus 33 in his most daring conversation with God.”[2]
Exodus 34 takes us a step further – higher and closer at the same time – by enumerating the attributes of God in language human beings can understand in two famous verses:
“The Lord! The Lord! – a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations” (JPS trans., v. 6-7).
When we Jews are told that we are created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, these are the attributes we are supposed to emulate.
Spoiler alert! In this case, surprisingly, it is Moses Maimonides – the same Moses that tradition tells us there was no one like since the first Moses who led the Jews out of Egypt. Maimonides, of course, was known for his rationalist approach to religion. In his Guide for the Perplexed, [3] he is also known for his doubts. These positive attributes in verses 6 and 7 describe only the essence of the Divine, he explains, but not its entirety. Taken literally, they reduce God to the level of mankind.
Generally speaking, it’s best to take the spoiler’s words in the spirit in which they are given. Take Ecclesiastes, for example, who warns that while we are are celebrating Sukkot with joy, it shouldn’t be with an excess of joy because everything comes to an end. Of course, Ecclesiastes’ words were much more eloquent. He wasn’t being a sour puss, raining on the parade, though. Rather, the Hebrew word he uses, “hevel,” is translated poorly as “vanity” – all, all is vanity — in most English translations. A better translation is “breath,” which is ephemeral. All the substance, all the beauty and joy of God’s creation, is ephemeral – it vanishes, takes different forms, like the breath of our lifetimes. Enjoy every moment of life while you can!
And if we heed Rabbi Mark Saperstein’s recent warning in his erudite D’var Torah for the Reform Movement [4], that unless Jews have children at an earlier age than they tend to do now; unless the Jewish birthrate goes up; and unless many more self-identifying Jews do not simply categorize themselves as “spiritual but not religious” — or as “secular” or “cultural Jews” — but instead actually join, support, and attend their synagogues or minyans in North America, in a hundred years the strong Jewish community we take for granted in this beautiful land may cease to exist. It will be “hevel.”
In the meantime, take ten deep breaths and have a joyous Sukkot!
B’tzelem Elohim [1]
By Rabbi Corinne Copnick
Inlay Your two hands
directly on my single soul,
impress Your mystic caress
right through the translucent
veil that keeps me from You.
Hand-clasp my pen-in-hand
prayer that this poem, Yours
for the asking, mirrors mutely
the cadence of a nameless Receiver.
©️Corinne Copnick, Jerusalem, Israel, 1989; Los Angeles, 2017. All rights reserved.
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[1] Aldwin, C.M., Park, C.L., Jeong, Y.J. & Nath. Differing pathways between religiousness, spirituality, and health: A self-regulation perspective. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality © 2013 American Psychological Association 2014, Vol. 6, No. 1, 9–21.
[2] Sacks, Rabbi Lord Jonathan. Ki Tisa: The Closeness of God. Covenant and Conversation. www.aish.com/tp/i/sacks.html.
[3] Maimonides, Moses. Guide for the Perplexed, www.amazon.com. Kindle edition (see chapters 53-60).
[4] Saperstein, Rabbi Professor Mark. The Sukkah and the Jewish Experience: Chol Ha-Mo’eid Sukkot. (Exodus 33:12-34:26.) Union for Reform Judaism, October, 2017.
Aharei Mot (Leviticus 16)
A D’var Torah by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
“Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and he shall place lots upon the two goats, one marked for the Lord and the other marked for Azazel” (Leviticus 16: 7-8).
“Aharei Mot,” the title of this parasha, means “after the death,” referring to “the two sons of Aaron who died when they were too close to the presence of the Lord” (JPS translation) [1]. These words are a time reference as we continue the great biblical story to the Day of Atonement we call Yom Kippur, a set day to be kept forever. All of Leviticus 16, in fact, is devoted to the expiation of sin and consequent purification. Great detail is given as to how the priests prepared for this time of atonement, which Jews all over the world honor (even if it is the only time they go to the synagogue). Scrupulous attention is paid to the priestly white linen attire and a host of other atonement rituals, including the choice of a bull for sacrifice and a pair of he-goats. Of the latter, only one is chosen by lot to be sacrificed. The second, marked for Azazel, is to carry all the sins of the Israelites into the wilderness. Like casting our bread crumbs into natural waters at Rosh Hashana, sending Azazel into the wilderness is reminiscent of the banishment of Cain and of Hagar and Ishmael as well. Cain eventually found respite in Edom, where he and his descendants prospered. Hagar and Ishmael were comforted that God would make of the Israelites two great nations.
But what of Azazel, who symbolically carried all our sins away? Did he find respite on the mountain that some think was near Mount Sinai? Different rabbis of old have different explanations. The one that I like best is that of Ibn Ezra. “According to Saadia [Gaon],” he writes, Azazel is “the name of a mountain, so called because it was precipitous”[2]. Possibly the goat driven into the wilderness would eventually stumble on the rocky cliffs and fall to its death, but it would not be slaughtered as a sacrifice. Other commentators explain that “Azazel” is a compound word (more common in Aramaic than in Hebrew). Thus “az azel” means “the goat went” [3]. Rashi, however, translates Azazal as meaning “to the goats;” in other words, the goat was released alive into the wilderness, presumably to dwell among the other wild goats. The “el” at the end of the word is simply a grammatical suffix. I am comforted by Rashi’s explanation [4].
I was born in January, you see. My astrological sign is the goat, a designation with which I was never comfortable until I visited Arizona, Scottsdale to be exact, where a single, dry, brown mountain dominated the arid landscape. As my stay there grew longer, though, I began to discern shapes on the rocky mountain. Animals, living being of different kinds. And the most agile among them were goats. Surprisingly beautiful to my newly opened eyes, they were mountain goats. One of them stood high on a cliff, looking out beyond the mountain, protecting the flock below. I began to think that being a mountain goat was perhaps a wondrous thing. To me, it signified that Azazel was cast by lot to be a survivor, a goat that could withstand the barren wilderness and create a family there. Perhaps, in overcoming the sins with which it had been burdened as a form of sacrifice, the biblical goat had also endured.
Watching God’s creatures, the nimble goats, I was so moved at the time that I wrote a poem about this experience. I called it “Born in January,” like me. Now, with a little more humility – fitting for Yom Kippur — I am giving it a new name: “Azazel.”
Azazel [5]
Mountain goats in their whiteness
clamber up the stony cliffs,
scale rocky heights,
melt age-old snowcaps
with heated vision.
Flock protected beneath his
Fortress, a monarch stands
alone atop the tajo.
Azazel.
[1] Aharei Mot, JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1999) 244.
[2] Ibn Ezra. Quoted in Michael Carasik,
[3] Michael Carasik, 120
[4] Ibid., 121.
[5] First published in the 10th Anniversary Issue of “Voices Israel,” Haifa, Israel, 1982.
©️Corinne Copnick, Toronto, 1974. All rights reserved.
For those who would like to read a story about a spiritual awakening related to the Book of Jonah, which is usually read the afternoon of Yom Kippur, please see my earlier posting, “Kiss a Whale and Lick Cancer,” in the section headed “Musings.”
HA’AZINU
A D’VAR TORAH: BY RABBI CORINNE COPNICK
In the brilliantly evocative Song of Moses that appears as Ha’azinu at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses assures the Israelites that all of Creation is indeed God’s work. The language and imagery is passionate: It was I, God says, “Ani, Ani,” that did all this. In Hebrew, the language is even more gripping, and when God finally says, “I, Anochi,” you know God means business. It’s a word that it used in the Bible, but not in rabbinic times, and it refers only to God.
In this unforgettable passage, we are assured of all the good things that will happen if we follow the moral path divinely outlined for us: feasting on the yield of the earth, honey from the crag, oil from the flinty rock, curd of kine and milk of flocks, the best of lambs, rams, and she-goats, the very finest of wheat, and foaming wine from grapes. This was fantastic fortune in an agricultural society. But then we are warned about the catastrophic things that could happen if we do NOT cleave to God’s moral path: consuming fire and misfortune, wasting famine, ravaging plague, deadly pestilence, fanged beasts, and so on. God will reduce us to naught. The whole catalogue is terrifying.
In a world that has been so recently beset by disasters both natural and man-wrought, these biblical consequences seem dangerously close to us: economic woes, earthquakes, famine, disease, fire, oil spills, floods, tsunamis, nuclear contamination, revolution, chemical attacks on one’s own people. But there are also courageous volunteers who risk their own lives in small boats to save others they don’t even know.
The Song of Moses is undoubtedly a passage about the distinction between good and evil, and the consequential choices our free will allows us to make. This passage clearly presents good and evil as both coming from the hand of God in response to moral or evil behavior. It is certainly something to consider during the week of Selichot, as we deeply reflect in preparation for Rosh Hashanah, the New Year to come in only a few days, when traditionally we recite the “Una Tana Tokef” prayer, often to soul-stirring music. Life or death. Choose.
If we are basically good people, we reflect, if we try to follow a good life, then why, as has been repeated so many times, do bad things happen to good people? As we read scary news headlines and listen to and watch horrendous media reports, it’s something we can’t help thinking about. If God is good, as the Jewish tradition teaches, if the created world is good, as the Bible tells us, then why is there evil?
That is why I was so interested to read a lengthy interpretation by the noted scholar, Jon D. Levinson, called “Creation and the Persistence of Evil,” but very disturbed by its pessimistic tone.[1] Why does evil persist? His article has a somewhat gnostic feel to it, suggesting that evil is a separate, adversarial force.
Even though God promised Noah never to flood the world again, that promise is not so easy to maintain; it requires God’s vigilance. “The world is not inherently safe,” Levinson asserts; “it is inherently unsafe…. Creation endures because God has pledged in an eternal covenant that it shall endure, and because he has also in an eternal covenant, compelled the obeisance of adversarial forces. If either covenant comes undone, creation disappears.”
I wept when I read Jon Levinson’s views because at a time when an evil force like ISiS, with its many variant names, is infecting the world with a fanatic ideology, or when neo-Nazi ideology is re-infecting the globe, it is indeed possible to conceive of the world breaking down to the extent that chaos results, that we, we may return figuratively to the tohu va bohu, the void.
My own view, however, remains more optimistic. As moral human beings, as Jews continually renewing the Covenant, I do believe with all my heart that – together – we can dismember the mythical Leviathan representing the forces of evil, and that we can bring the beneficent side of God that represents love and compassion firmly back into our world.
Last week’s parasha emphasized choosing life. In this week’s portion, the choices are set clearly before us. As God’s partners in creation, we have the gift of free will. We have been taught to remember that, with Divine help, we survived Pharaoh, and we will survive, as best we can, whatever comes our way. This Rosh Hashana, 5778, it’s up to us to transcend the headlines; we must continue to choose life, and all that it requires from us to maintain a world that is inherently safe because we work hard to make it so. And because we have faith that it can be good.
[1] Levinson, J.D. Creation and the Persistence of Evil: the Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. xxxiv + 182.