By Rabbi Corinne Copnick
A paperback copy of a French-language book etched in my memory was entitled “Le Gout des Confitures” (“The Taste of Jam”). It was authored by Bob Ore, a Moroccan-born, Jewish businessman I knew long ago in his art-dealing capacity in Montreal. Forced by the Arab hostility toward Jews aroused in 1948 when Israel was declared a state — an anger that became dangerous when Morocco ceased to be a French protectorate in 1956 — he sought a new version of his life in other countries. After first attempting to settle in both France and Israel, Ore immigrated to French-speaking Montreal. Like many immigrants, his book explains, he never felt completely at home anywhere other than the land of his birth. In France, he was not French enough; in Israel, he was not a sabra; in Quebec, he was not Quebecois, but at least, au moins, he was not un anglais (although he spoke both English and French fluently).
His yearning for the sunny skies, the flowers, the multiple cultures and languages of Morocco, and especially the friendships scattered around the world, express the loss of what was once near and dear felt by first-generation immigrants everywhere.
In the years before Ore found his way to Canada, with lots of business acumen to sustain him, 250,000 Jews lived in Morocco. They had lived in that North African country for centuries, even thousands of years, many emigrating there long before the Romans conquered Israel and destroyed the Temple in the early common era. Native to Morocco when those first Jewish immigrants arrived were the Berbers, and the Jews got along with that indigenous population very well. In fact, a considerable number of Berbers even converted to Judaism. Morocco grew prosperous.
In the 15th and 16th centuries C.E., the Spanish Inquisition brought a different group of Jewish immigrants to the island, this time conversos fleeing for their lives. Seemingly converted to Christianity, most of them lived secret lives as Jews. Even so, the long arm of the Inquisition tried to reach into Morocco to punish the secret Jews they detected, but with little success. The Moroccan population did not cooperate. Why disturb the country’s prosperity, aided in large measure by the Jews? And the Jewish community continued to build and celebrate a substantial Jewish life.
Today, a large drawing by a contemporary artist is prominently displayed in the small, four-room Jewish museum in Casablanca. It depicts many of the Inquisition’s “penitents.” They are being forced to repent for the crime of remaining Jewish, and so they wear tall, pointed hats to mark their humiliation and reduced status. Some penitents are depicted with ropes around their necks. Since they have renounced Judaism, they will suffer an easier death: they will be strangled before being burnt at the stake.
The museum itself portrays a different message. Attractively built in recent years, the museum is sponsored by King Hassan II. Like his father, King Mohammed VI, before him, who tried to protect Moroccan Jews from the French Vichy regime during World War II, Hassan promotes harmony and toleration in his kingdom. At the entrance, a large plaque bearing the king’s signature and commemorating the opening of the museum, proclaims that all peoples and religions may live in harmony and peace together in Morocco. There is a picture of the head of the Jewish community shaking hands with a government official.
Billed as the only Jewish museum in the Arab world, it has multiple cases filled with magnificent antique Berber jewelry. Photographs of Jews living happily in Morocco decorate the walls throughout the four rooms. A large bima (platform) from a Casablanca synagogue that formerly existed stands in the middle of the largest room. I climbed the steps to the bima and looked over the dark-wood railing, a rabbi addressing the congregation that wasn’t there. The ark holds three large Torahs clothed in soft, velvet mantles, which rather surprised me. I had expected cylindrical Sephardic Torahs. Some of the most interesting contents of the museum can be viewed on multiple sites on the Internet. Many of the artifacts depicting Jewish life, however, are from the 1950s.
But where are the Jews now? The Moroccan climate is great; the food is fantastic; the people are welcoming; the newly restored but small synagogue is there. It provides a considerable contrast to Casablanca’s magnificent Hassan II Mosque (completed in 1993), the largest in Africa and fifth largest in the world, and elaborately built at such great cost (reputed to be $800 million),with hand-carvings decorating every inch and a retractable roof (there is no air-conditioning), its construction (completed in 1993) nearly bankrupted Morocco, and the citizenry had to be taxed to pay for it. It has a capacity of 25,000 inside and another 80,000 outside for large holidays like Ramadan. As I was guided through, I was awed by its immensity – the minaret stands at 60 stories high, it faces the Atlantic Ocean — and could only imagine what it must look like when devout Muslims fill it for prayer.
But the synagogue is empty. When necessary – a funeral, a yarzheit, another ritual event – the remaining Jews of Casablanca gather a minyan (the requisite 10 people to hold a service). The diminishing Jewish community celebrates the high holidays as best they can. And this year for Passover, there was a colorful poster showing that a Seder (a ritual feast celebrating the biblical liberation from slavery in Egypt) would take place at a stunning hotel in picturesque Marrakesh. The food would be kosher, and the 8-day stay would only cost $1590 Euros ($1900 US) per person (considered very reasonable).
Still, most of the Jews who come to Morocco are tourists, and Morocco is actively trying to promote its Jewish tourist trade. The children of Moroccan parents and grandparents come to visit the graves, but they don’t live there, in what is essentially an Arab culture. Dress is not legislated, although most Arab women I saw wore traditional dress, including the hijab (head scarf). Their tunics were colorful, and few black abayas (cloaks) or face veils were seen.
The bottom line? An estimated 2,500 Jews now live in Morocco, the majority in Casablanca. Most of them are elderly and some infirm. Unless the community is reinforced, it will soon disappear by attrition. What will remain is the memory – the taste, the gout, for what was left behind, the love for what has been, but is not now, and can never be again: the je ne sais quoi of a long-lost taste of jam.
©Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2019. All rights reserved.
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By Rabbi Corinne Copnick
Last week I wrote about the immense, cathedral-like environment carved out of a lava tube on Canary Islands’ Lanzarote by inspired nature-artist Cesar Manrique. Among many other projects, he also created a huge, park-like, otherworldly environment, Jardin de Cactus, featuring more than 1,100 species of cacti planted in what was a disused quarry – that is, until Manrique, who is also an architect, decided to accent nature with art and vice-versa there. He and his talented team created an jaw-dropping garden of carefully landscaped and tended cacti, accented with red rocks, bridges, paved paths and even pools at different levels.
These are not little or even medium-sized cacti, oh no! Everything is grand in scale, plants that have been nurtured in the volcanic soil for many years. They range, according to the Jardin’s information, “from towering saguaros and spiny over-sized globes to more unusual species that resemble giant white maggots, thrusting asparagus spears, prickly mounds of broccoli, or dark green corals and sea anemones.” All have been planted in close proximity to one another in artistic patterns. The result, which took 20 years to complete, is astoundingly beautiful.
It was springtime when we visited, my daughter and I. And so many of the cacti were in bloom. It took my breath away. The word “awesome” seemed almost inadequate.
For me, visiting the Jardin de Cactus was a Heschel moment. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel has long captured my imagination with his concept of “radical amazement,” which thankfully continues to influence every day of my life. As Heschel wrote about in his stellar books, “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism,” and “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity,” that we should live our lives with a sense of wonder: to be spiritual is to be amazed. We should get up every morning with an appreciation of being alive, he explained, with a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and the desire to celebrate it.
That sense of wonder certainly resonated in me at the Jardin. It was springtime when my daughter and I visited. And so many of the cacti were in bloom in response to the balmy weather. It took my breath away. Although I understood that cacti have many practical uses in the desert, I didn’t know that cacti are actually flowering plants. The word “awesome” seemed almost inadequate.
I did know about the “monocarpic” century plant, so biologically labelled because it is a cactus said to bloom only once in 100 years (although some century plants have been known to bloom much sooner, perhaps in a few decades, depending on the climate, soil, and care they get). Unfortunately, after the century plant (horticulturally categorized as an “Agave americana”) blooms, it usually dies. I took a long look at one of the Jardin’s century plants; it reminded me of male worker bees who, once they mate with the Queen Bee, also die after this moment of glory.
It also reminded me that I still have a way to go before my final bloom. My human generation seems to have an unusual number of centenarians, so it’s comforting to know that at least a few century plants, like most cacti, are repeat bloomers.
Fortunately, most humans have the capacity to be repeat bloomers, as indeed Cesar Manrique’s many projects testify. The Jardin de Cactus was his last project – his final artistic bloom — completed in the 1990s. Two years later, he died in a car crash. His beautiful creations, however, live on in the volcanic soil. Truly awesome!
Awesome too, was the excitement of one of our fellow tourists, a retired surgeon from California, who was almost dancing with joy as he checked out the cacti in the garden. “I have two greenhouses at home, with 400 varieties of cacti growing,” he exulted. “And I can identify so many of the cacti in the Jardin. Of course, my cacti are little. I love to take care of them.”
“Do they bloom yet?” I asked this brilliant man, who had become our friend, who, after so many years of doctoring, still loved to care for living things.
“Not yet,” he replied. “But now I know they will.”
Our tour guide almost had to pull him out of the garden to rejoin the bus. He simply didn’t want to leave the cacti blooming, as if just for us, on a lovely spring day.
Click link for video: Jardin de Cactus
By Rabbi Corinne Copnick
I had been inside a lava tube once before, a long time ago. The tube was in the Hawaiian Islands and amazingly cut right through a volcano that was still fitfully alive — the Kilauea volcano on Big Island, near the Hawaii Volcanic National Park. Apprehensive visitors like me might be experiencing some internal quaking of their own before entering the tube, but the attraction was irresistible: a 1,000-year-old, tropical rain forest. Right inside the rocky darkness of the lava tube! Such a beautiful, bountiful, colorful rain forest that its location strained credulity.
This volcano, one of five in Hawaii and estimated to be between 300,000 and 600,000 years old, was known to be temperamental. From time to time, it erupted, hurling its lava streams down the mountain into the sea. I remembered walking on another area of that same Hawaiian volcano, deemed “safe” for that afternoon by knowledgeable scientists (seismologists I think they are called) who took continual, up-to-the-minute readings of the volcano – and would change the visiting parameters accordingly. Still, my family and I (my husband and I were there with our four teenage children) could actually see red embers glowing here and there beneath the thin cracks in the black lava. Prominent signs warned visitors not to stay for more than a few minutes because of the sulphur fumes.
In more recent years, the Kilauea volcano erupted so forcefully that it destroyed everything in its wake. In fact, the eruption did in so much damage that the Hawaii Volcanic National Park had to be closed for some time.
* * * *
Decades have passed, and I am standing at the entrance to another natural wonder on a different island. This time it is a black lava tube on Lanzarote, in the Canarias (Canary Islands in English). These islands, infamous for dealings with pirates in past centuries, are part of Spain, but they are autonomous. It has taken six days at sea on the Atlantic Ocean to travel here from Barbados, our first stop. I am with my daughter, Janet (who, as it happens, was also with me when we visited the Kilauea lava tube). But this time an immensely talented man has joined forces with nature to create an aesthetic, unexpectedly spiritual, environment carved from the black rocks inside.
His name is Cesar Manirique, and, although I had never before heard of him, he is an internationally known and respected artist. His life’s work – he has since passed away — is built on the premise that art and nature in combination cannot be surpassed. His projects are large scale, and their effect is deeply moving. His major work is intentionally on Lanzarote, and they have brought fame – and tourists, with an accompanying boost to the economy — to an island created from ground-up, rocky soil as well. The landscape is dotted with small settlements of white, adobe-style houses clustered together on the black land, with a little greenery flourishing here and there.
My daughter, who rock climbs as a sport, jokes that I have also become a rock climber in Manirique’s lava tube. She calls it “scrambling.” I would call it something else – OMG — stooping as low to the ground as possible and clutching on to the jagged rocks like a railing as I climb the many steps carved further and further into the black tube. Soon my fears of falling disappear as I am overwhelmed by the aesthetic experience created by a master artist.
Manirique and his team have enlarged a natural opening in the rock in the shape of a perfect oval, so that those who enter the lava tube discover a magnificent view of the ocean and the looming mountains beyond. This exquisite sight from outside is reflected in a large, sky blue pool amid the rocks, bestowing a unity with the outside world on the lava tube’s environment. The water continually flows from the lava tube to the sea, so that the level of the water rises and falls with the tide. As I look at the pool with the eyes of a rabbi who serves as a dayan (a judge in a rabbinic court, a bet din), I realize that, unintentionally, Manrique has created a natural mikveh (body of water for ritual purification).
And when I look at the water and surrounding rocks more closely, I see that there are living things in this pool — tiny, albino spider-crabs, as small as spiders, but they are actually crabs – that keep the water clean.
We look at the pool for a long time. To further enhance its effect, Manirique has outlined the pool’s curving shape with a thick, white plaster substance, an artistic exclamation point, something he has repeated at various points throughout the lava tube experience.
There is even a small, charming restaurant close by, tables and chairs, more openings to the outside.
We climb more stairs, further into the tube. And then we enter a huge space carved out of the rocks, or maybe it is a natural space, a bubble in the lava tube. I gasp. My daughter gasps. The immense ceiling is so high. It is dimly lit. Benches carved from the black rock and accented with white plaster backs descend down a long, sloped aisle to what seems to be — a stage? — at its base. There are benches on the other side of the aisle too. Seating, we learn, for 1200 people. Classical concerts are given here at regular intervals. The acoustics are terrific, and the space has been wired for sound and additional lighting. Amazing.
It is an awesome space; it feels like a cathedral. I imagine that it is a synagogue at Rosh Hashana. On the stage, the bima, my mind projects an altar and there, just behind it, an Ark holding the Torah scrolls. The rabbi – is it me? a few of my colleagues taking turns with me, sharing the service ?– and a cantor are there. A choir? Of course. Are there people sitting on the benches? Throughout my visit to the Canary Islands, I have looked for Jewish history, for any evidence that there is still a synagogue in these islands (there is a small one in Las Palmas, and the Torah scroll that was once in Tenerife was sent there; however, the synagogue’s door is unmarked, and, in the brief time I was in Las Palmas, I could not find it).
Once, even before the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, there was a humble Jewish community on this island, Lanzarote. Later there was a prosperous community of Portuguese Jews who fled their own land and built this island’s economy. Once…
I take a deep breath. At this moment in time, just for this beautiful moment, I have found what could serve as a synagogue deep in the rocks. Complete with mikveh – and catering service. And my daughter is by my side. Outside the sun is shining.
©Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2019. All rights reserved.
By Rabbi Corinne Copnick
Over the past few years since I entered my 80s, I have been contemplating retirement (I seem to have actually “retired” several times from my several careers, but then, drawn by the attraction of a compelling new interest, I keep on reinventing myself as only “semi-retired”). In the process, I have come to believe that a rabbi never completely retires. Maybe that’s true for many seniors whose passions lie in other fields. In any case, as a non-retired, retired rabbi, I have served as Guest Staff Rabbi for both Passover and the Jewish High Holy Days on a number (seven now) of delightful, lengthy cruises. It has afforded me the luxury of travelling, accompanied by one of my four daughters, to many fascinating, faraway places in the world that I could never have otherwise visited.
As an American, pluralistic rabbi, it has given me the opportunity to explore Jewish communities in other countries, many of them now only a memory recorded in a small museum or a series of plaques, or a “Jew street” where once its inhabitants conducted commerce. A few communities are small but still vibrant, maintaining customs different from the ones I am used to celebrating at home. Some are still Jewish – despite. I have visited countries like Indonesia where Judaism is not one of their six official religions, and where people with Israeli passports cannot disembark. I have also visited Jewish communities that are still substantial and thriving, such as Australia or Brazil. Or countries like Spain (with a time limit) and, more recently, Portugal (no time limit) which now offer citizenship to Jews who can show ancestry to relatives expelled or persecuted at the time of the Inquisition; or, Morocco, which, in an appealing new spirit of harmony, now welcomes all religions, putting aside the fact that most Moroccan Jews – who had migrated to that country even before the Spanish Inquisition and lived peacefully with the Berbers — were shamefully persecuted and thus forced to flee when Israel declared itself a state. And I have visited Rhodes in Greece where a tall black memorial records the death in the Holocaust of the 1600 Jews who once lived there. And so on.
So I was taken aback when a more stationary American rabbi asked me a rather startling question the other day: “Do people on cruise ships really want to attend a religious service?” he asked.
“When you’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without sight of land — just seemingly endless waves — for a week before reaching a port,” I replied, “it certainly puts you in a receptive state of mind to find some time to have a conversation with God.”
Actually the passengers on board who identify as Jewish (in my experience, anywhere from 24 on a smaller ship to 68 on a larger ship) welcome the chance to celebrate a sacred Jewish ritual together as a “community within a community.” For me, it is a joyful experience to welcome people who come from different countries, speak various languages and practice diverse traditions, but are still delighted to celebrate on an ocean-going voyage with other Jews. This year at Passover, I asked for volunteers to read “The Four Questions” with Yiddish, French, Spanish, Ladino, and English translations at hand, symbols of some of the countries in which Jews dispersed from the Holy Land had lived for centuries if not thousands of years. Then all the “congregants” at the Seder tables read them together in Hebrew (transliteration provided).
And although the meal was kosher (I spend a lot of time working out the menu with the always cooperative Director of Food Services and the talented Executive Chef), and the wine chosen was an excellent kosher Baron de Hirsch brand, I knew someone would pipe up with, “I usually have Manishevitz,” and of course we did have that square bottle of VERY SWEET wine too.
The tables were gorgeously set with “kept only for Passover” dishes, beautiful scrolled menus, flowers, white tablecloths, place cards, a Haggadah at each place setting, and wine glasses, of course, which the waiters made sure to fill four times on cue. Ceremonial platters containing the symbols of Passover were on each table of eight. The ship’s techies had arranged a microphone for me so that everyone could hear the service and my remarks.
For me, one of the most moving moments occurred before the Seder when a non-Jewish couple asked if they could attend. “Our daughter converted and is married to a Jewish man, and our son-in-law invites us to their home every Passover,” they explained. “We’re far away now, but we’d like to feel close to them.” So they came to the Seder – despite the fact that Good Friday coincided with Passover this year, and there was a priest aboard to lead Easter services — and they enjoyed it immensely. As well, we had a Messianic couple (considering conversion to Judaism) also in attendance.
For the second night, I held a discussion group on “Counting the Omer,” and to my surprise, a considerable group attended. Soon we would begin to stop at ports every day, but people still attended the “Yizkor” (Memorial) service on Friday night, which I coupled with Holocaust remembrance. I invited the priest to recite the 23rd Psalm, which he was delighted to do. He had been a missionary in North Africa for many years and was now the Director of his country’s missions in various places.
We did have one controversy aboard as to whether Passover should be seven or eight days. We settled on seven days (which is the modern norm in Israel and also Reform congregations), but if anyone preferred eight days, that was okay too. We still had plenty of matzah at hand.
Lots of good, often very accomplished people. And, oh yes, since we had a passenger aboard who was born in Morocco, we had a Mimouna, something I had never celebrated before. It’s simply a celebration to mark the end of Passover and features lots and lots of delicious pastries, Moroccan style. In Israel, Mimouna (the name honors Maimonides) is marked by a general Open House, and people go from house to house sampling all the desserts.
So the answer to my fellow rabbi’s question, is “Yes, it’s really possible to conduct religious services on a cruise ship, and many people are happy to come – and, indeed, grateful that these services are provided. Of course, not every cruise line provides this service (unless it’s specifically a Jewish-oriented cruise), and in most cases, it’s left up to the passengers to conduct their own services if they wish to do so.
And no, my friends, I don’t get seasick, and I love being at sea with people from many lands.
by Rabbi Corinne Copnick
There seems to be an insidious effort today to split American Jews on issues of color, racism, Israel, etc. And once again we see the rise of hard-right, white supremacists both in America and globally. Although sadly, we are also verbally assaulted by leftist extremists, in my opinion, we need to be most watchful of the white supremacy playbook, which labels Jews as privileged whites responsible for colonialism, the slave trade, mass incarceration, and other forms of oppression. Even the Holocaust is dismissed by some misguided people as a “white-on-white” crime and therefore of little import. From this twisted point of view, the State of Israel is a colonial enterprise and should be destroyed.
It should be remembered that from biblical times, the Jewish religion has been color blind –or at least intended to be color blind. We are all human beings created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image. The Hebrew Bible itself is instructive on this issue. When Miriam gossiped about Moses’ wife because she was a Cushite – that is, from a black tribe – God punished Miriam for the sin of lashon hora (the evil tongue, gossip) by afflicting her skin with the white scales of disease (Numbers 12: 1-16).
Scientifically, it’s a well-known fact that the color of our skins is mainly influenced over time by the angle of the sun – and consequently the strength of the radioactive rays emitted – in the places where we live. That’s right, where we live eventually determines the color of our skin.[1] Like all of God’s creatures, we adapt to our environments. Additionally, genetic factors come into play.
So, originally from Western Asia and therefore indigenous to Israel (where, despite persecution, a small presence was continuously maintained), most Jewish people were propelled by antisemitism through the centuries to live in disparate places geographically for centuries, sometimes thousands of years. As a result, Jews today can claim the privilege of being multi-colored, multi-racial, multi-ethnic [2].
We have just finished celebrating Passover, the holiday symbolizing Jewish belief that every human being has the right to live in freedom and dignity. Now, as Shavuot approaches, we all stand together at Sinai: Symbolically, as if it were today, united, we reconfirm our covenant with God – to live by the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-14).
[1] According to the Bible, the ancient Hebrews were slaves in Egypt — in North Africa – for 400 years. Israel, on the other hand, where the slaves eventually returned after a sojourn in the desert for 40 years is located in Western Asia. Today the whole region is called the Middle East.
[2] Like most American Jews, I am a white Jew of Ashkenazi (European) heritage. However, there are also a smaller number of American Jews of varying colors (JOCs), who derive from different backgrounds. It is my understanding that, with a new census, demographics may be gathered on how many JOCs are currently in the U.S., and projections made as to how that number will likely grow in future years.