Judaism – Page 31

Past helps decode present

My husband saw the pair of decoder rings in a catalogue, long before our twins were old enough for them. Still, he ordered them and put them away. At the time, it amused me. How could he predict the future? Would our kids want these someday?

Fast forward to one October 2020 pandemic weekend. I’m not sure how he knew it was the right time. Before I knew it, two 9-year-olds were whizzing around the house, holding onto rings much too large for their fingers, and sending each other secret messages in code.

When they returned to school that Monday, they continued with the crazy codes, trying to teach their classmates about it. Unfortunately, this fun was short-lived. About a week later, we got an email from the school. It said that remote learning “may” be offered, and that we could sign up if we “might” be interested.

The situation was worsening in Manitoba, so we clicked through late on a Saturday night. This seemed wise, if we indeed understood the confusing letter correctly, that this remote learning might be happening. In any case, if some people signed up for the remote learning, it would allow more room in our older, smaller school building for others to social distance. Well, surprise! We were contacted on Monday morning and, by that Wednesday, our kids were at home again, learning with us. In the long run, this is the right choice – Judaism teaches us to value life above all else.

Both my husband and I are already working from home. At the beginning of my career, I used to teach school. Although I’ve never taught Grade 4 before, we’re muddling through. The remote learning we’re offered doesn’t continue the Hebrew curriculum we had before. It started with a single Hebrew packet, but, when it looked like we were nearing the end and I asked the school if it had more to share, I got a stern “no” in response. Remote learning offers only the basics, even if we can see via Instagram that, in class, the kids’ schoolmates are still doing fun projects without us.

It’s hard on children to feel left out. However, since there’s already been a COVID virus exposure at the school, we made the safe choice for us. My kids are lonely for their friends. My husband, a biology professor, thinks that schools should shut down now, until the infection rate lessens and the health system isn’t so overburdened.

Yet, here we are, with an everyday virtual, multi-age “school lesson” that lasts an hour. We do the reading, writing, math and science on our own. We also do something Jewish. One night, it was a discussion about Mezritch, which was a centre of Chassidism. Another day we talked about tefillin. On a third day, we learned about Sigd, the Ethiopian Jewish holiday celebrated 50 days after Yom Kippur, which is now a national holiday in Israel. The kids keep up their Hebrew as best we can, with my support and by using a free language program online.

Today, we hit the very last page of the Hebrew packet sent home by the school a couple weeks ago. There were moans about how hard it was and further cries when they realized there was no more of the “packet Hebrew.” For me, the last page left a special, coded gift.

This page taught about how each letter of the aleph bet, the Hebrew alphabet, also signified a number. Aleph is one, for instance. The numerical values of the letters of chai, the word for life, add up to 18.

My kids struggled with this page for entirely different reasons. But, if we can learn to write the numbers in Arabic numerals (also called the Hindu-Arabic system), we can learn the Hebrew ones. We’ll learn to spell out the number names in Hebrew. Like magic, I’d been given a gift, a secret decoder system to share. We just have to learn all the symbols together!

I won’t lie. I wish my kids’ class had all gone “remote” together, so they could see their classmates for an hour a day. I wish the pandemic hadn’t happened. I wish I’d gone to bed earlier over the weekend, instead of staying up late, reading the huge obituary section – but wait, that’s not right.

My biggest wish that puts all these little ones to shame? I want to honour every life that’s in those obits, every life that has been lost. There’s so much suffering, death and loss right now, and we’re all working our way through it.

I also want to honour the diverse positive ways we’ve innovated and managed during a scary, singular experience. Studying a textual tradition like ours, that’s thousands of years old, means we have deep resources. We can hear about deaths and the first obituaries in the Torah portions this time of year. We imagine similar chaotic experiences like Noah’s ark in the flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There are plenty of opportunities to think through our rich history during remote or home school.

On the plus side? It also means that I have a Hebrew lesson plan for tomorrow and beyond. We have access to an ancient, special Hebrew numerical code, called Gematria, and a mom teacher who now gets to figure out how to use that, along with those fancy decoder rings, for good – for the twins to learn math, puzzles, Hebrew and more … in Grade 4.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Rebuilding Volozhin Yeshivah

Volozhin Yeshivah in Belarus, 2017. In learning about the institution, Mark Weintraub was moved to sponsor a lecture on it, in honour of his mother, and to champion restoration efforts. (photo by Da voli)

“How did I not know about this?” That was the question echoing through the mind of Vancouver lawyer Mark Weintraub, a longtime student of Jewish intellectual history, when he first learned about Volozhin Yeshivah, a once-illustrious place of study that he describes as “the Harvard, MIT and Yale of the Jewish people rolled into one.”

Once Weintraub understood the influence Volozhin – which was open from 1806 to 1892 in what was then Russia – had on the Jewish world, he was stunned that it was so little known. His passion about this treasure of Jewish history led to his participation in organizing a recent online class, From Volozhin to Vancouver, taught by Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz, the rav and a teacher of Ohr Samayach Yeshivah in Israel, whose resumé includes having been a professor of law at the University of Maryland. It led, as well, to Weintraub’s championing of an effort to restore the still-standing building of the yeshivah, which is in Belarus.

To spread knowledge of Volozhin and to honour his late mother, Rita Weintraub, z”l, a lifelong devotee of Jewish learning, Weintraub helped organize and sponsor the online class with Congregation Beth Hamidrash, Congregation Schara Tzedeck, Vancouver Hebrew Academy and Shalhevet Girls High School. On Oct. 18, more than 60 people gathered to learn from Breitowitz on Zoom. Weintraub introduced the lecture, dedicating it to his mother, and Rabbi Ari Federgrun of Schara Tzedeck moderated the discussion. Breitowitz had risen at 5:30 a.m. in Israel to give the lecture about the legend and history of Volozhin, whose very name, he said, “carries an aura of mystery and delight.”

Volozhin is sometimes called “the mother of yeshivot,” since it was the first modern, institutionalized yeshivah, explained Breitowitz. It was established by Rav Chaim Volozhiner (1749-1821), a famed kabbalist and Torah scholar. Rav Chaim was a student of the Vilna Gaon (1720-1797), a towering figure at the time and the leader of non-Chassidic Jewry in Eastern Europe. The Vilna Gaon had led the Orthodox opposition to Chassidism, concerned about its radical theological ideas and the possibility that Chassidim might transgress Jewish law and lead to extremist mystical movements that would disrupt or damage the Jewish community. Followers of the Vilna Gaon came to be known as Misnagdim (Opponents), as the Chassidic movement grew to become the dominant force in Eastern European Jewish life.

Rav Chaim, who did not sign the Gaon’s writ of excommunication against the Chassidim, took a gentler stance towards the movement than his teacher. He focused his efforts on teaching an intellectually intense absorption in Torah study for its own sake and a fierce devotion to the observance of halachah (Jewish law) as a form of devotion to God.

Rav Chaim formed the Volozhin yeshivah to create a new kind of environment for study. Instead of the local learning that took place in small houses of study in the shtetls, Volozhin was a large institution that provided both housing and food to its students, and taught young Jewish men from near and far. “The Volozhiner wanted yeshivahs to be non-local institutions which all of Israel had a stake in,” explained Breitowitz. “He didn’t like a few large donors but many small donors.”

The yeshivah had 24-hour learning that was intended to sustain the world with the power of Torah and de-emphasize practical legal rulings for the sake of pure disinterested study. Volozhin – and its immediate offspring in the form of other similar yeshivot started by its graduates – created both a new model of Jewish learning and a generation of non-Chassidic luminaries with a far-ranging and decisive influence on orthodoxy and beyond. A short list of the graduates it produced, or who taught there, included Rav Chaim Soloveitchik (the Brisker Rav, 1853-1918), Rav Nafatli Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv, 1816-1891), Rav Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) and many others, including both Zionists and anti-Zionists, mystics, ethicists and legalists.

The yeshivah environment encouraged creative ferment and demanded intellectual rigour, and Volozhin was not only famed for the Orthodox leaders it produced. Some of the students became leaders in the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, and it was rumoured that secret books were passed among students and housed in a hidden library full of philosophy, science and secular language texts. Among its luminaries in this regard was Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934), the renowned Israeli poet and writer.

In 1892, the Russian government closed Volozhin when the heads of the yeshivah refused to change the daily schedule to curtail Torah study and include hours of government-approved secular studies. While it reopened in 1899 on a smaller scale, its glory days had passed.

Volozhin functioned until 1939, when the Second World War broke out. During the war, German soldiers used the building as a stable; later, it was a canteen and deli. The site was returned to the Jewish community of Belarus in 1989. In 1998, it was registered on the State List of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the Republic of Belarus.

It was the discovery of this history that so excited Weintraub. His mother had been a devotee of learning, libraries and study. “I wanted to have lectures to honour her, since it was difficult to communally mourn her during COVID,” said Weintraub. “I approached Rabbi [Don] Pacht at Vancouver Hebrew Academy about bringing in Rabbi Breitowitz.”

Wondering if the topic was too Orthodox for his mother, Weintraub, who has been involved in the Conservative movement for years, decided, “Nothing was ever too Jewish for her. She saw the goodness in everyone’s Judaism, no matter what it was, so I went ahead to tell this fascinating story of Jewish learning in her honour.”

For his part, Breitowitz has taken on a project to raise awareness and money for the reconstruction of Volozhin. He has begun organizing a group to work on it and is beginning “to raise momentum and find a way.”

“Five hundred years from now, Harvard, Yale and MIT are in ruins and everyone just walks by it?” he challenged. Volozhin, he said, “is a place that needs special attention from the Jewish community.”

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He has been published in Philosophy Now, Tricycle, the Forward and elsewhere. He blogs on Medium and is master teacher at Or Shalom Synagogue in Vancouver.

Litman shares stories

Storyteller Shoshana Litman. (photo from maggidah.com)

Shoshana Litman, Canada’s first ordained maggidah (storyteller), kicked off Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2020-21 monthly lecture series on Nov. 1 with a talk entitled Building Jewish Culture Through Stories and Song.

“We humans are a storytelling species,” Litman told the Zoom audience. “That’s what we do. Whether it’s the conversations we have with each other about what’s going on in our lives or the stories we tell ourselves in our own minds, whether they’re true or false, we are always doing this.

“And we Jews are a storytelling people,” she said. “This is what we do, too. If you look at our core text, it is full of stories. The first two Books of Moses are full of stories.”

Litman’s path towards being a maggidah began as her children grew older and she rejoined the workforce. At the time, she started to become ba’al teshuvah (a secular person who “returns” to Judaism). Based in Victoria, she attended conferences run by the Mussar Institute, which was founded by Vancouverite Alan Morinis, and, ultimately, located a program that trains maggidim.

In the mid-2000s, Litman connected with maggid Yitzhak Buxbaum, a student of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, in Brooklyn, and she embarked on a two-year program that was taught via conference calls and semi-annual workshops. Upon completing the program in 2008, Buxbaum said to her, “Shoshana, I see how good you are. Now go, save our people.”

Litman regaled attendees of the Victoria synagogue’s event with a story about the Baal Shem Tov from Buxbaum’s Storytelling and Spirituality in Judaism. It happens in the time just before the Baal Shem Tov’s passing, when he told his disciples what they should do when he was no longer with them.

To his follower Rabbi Yaakov, the Baal Shem Tov advises that he go off and become a storyteller. Rabbi Yaakov is skeptical. How can someone make his living as a storyteller? he wonders.

After two-and-a-half years as a peripatetic purveyor of tales following his teacher’s death, Rabbi Yaakov gets wind of a magnate in Italy who would give a gold coin for each story of the Baal Shem Tov he heard.

When Rabbi Yaakov arrives at the gate of the rich man’s villa, he says to the servant, “Tell your master that the personal assistant of the Baal Shem Tov has come, and I have many wonderful stories to tell from experience and not from hearsay.”

The rabbi is invited in and, after a week of good food and relaxation, Shabbat comes. Following a festive meal replete with songs, it is time for stories. But, just then, something peculiar takes place. All recollections of the Baal Shem Tov evaporate from Rabbi Yaakov’s memory. Every trick he tries to elicit the stories fails. The host tells him not to worry, to go to sleep and try again the next morning.

The next day arrives and nothing has changed. Shabbat passes. The other guests at the magnate’s home grow increasingly doubtful. As it comes time to leave, still no tales have sprung from Rabbi Yaakov’s mouth, yet the magnate gives him a bag of gold anyway.

When the rabbi suddenly recalls everything, as he enters his carriage, the magnate asks him to return and Rabbi Yaakov tells the story of a journey he had taken with the Baal Shem Tov.

The group ended up in a town where angry crowds were drawing lots to carry out violent acts against Jews. Everyone was scared, except the Baal Shem Tov. They came to their lodgings in the town and the great Chassidic master went upstairs and opened a window looking out to the main square. The Baal Shem Tov pointed to a house across the square and out of that house walked a bishop, the man responsible for inciting the townspeople against Jews. The Baal Shem Tov told Rabbi Yaakov to bring the bishop to him.

Rabbi Yaakov went to the stage where the bishop was speaking and told him that the Baal Shem Tov wanted to talk to him. At first, the bishop refused, but, after much pressing, the bishop relented and went to see the Baal Shem Tov.

Rabbi Yaakov admits that he doesn’t know what the bishop and his master discussed. Nonetheless, as he finishes his story, tears are streaming down the rich man’s face.

“I can tell you exactly what the Baal Shem Tov said, for, you see, I was that bishop,” says the magnate. “Fortunately, I had holy relatives who convinced the Baal Shem Tov to save my soul. To do so, I had to do many mitzvot. He said I would know when I had been forgiven when someone comes to me and tells me my story.”

During non-pandemic times, Litman performs at schools (from nursery to university), libraries, senior facilities, theatres, houses of worship and other local, national and international venues. To hear her recent talk in full, including the entire Baal Shem Tov story, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com/shoshana-litman. For more information on her, visit maggidah.com.

The next Kolot Mayim lecture, which takes place Dec. 6, at 11 a.m., features Jonathon Orr-Stav on the topic Arabic Hebrew: An Introduction to How Modern Israelis Really Speak. For more information, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com/lectures.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Reaching younger Jews

Madison Slobin wrote a guide on the Jewish ritual of mikvah because she wants to help people navigate and change our world.

Madison Slobin appeared in the pages of the Jewish Independent a few months ago for two projects she helped create: YVR Yenta and Shivah Delivers. These initiatives take Jewish rituals, such as matchmaking, in the first instance, and how we comfort mourners, in the second, and put a modern twist on them. Her latest project is another such endeavour: the writing and compiling of Rebirthing Ourselves to Rebuild Our World: A Feminist Mikvah Guide.

The guide begins by answering the question, what is a mikvah? “Mikvah is an ancient Jewish cleansing ritual performed in a sacred bath or in a natural body of water,” she writes. “We can participate in a mikvah ceremony to mark moments of transition, to make our souls and bodies feel holy, and to metaphorically rebirth ourselves and start anew.”

The Jewish Independent spoke to her about the project.

JI: What motivated you to write this guide?

MS: I was motivated to write this guide for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I saw a lot of friends and loved ones struggling to go through the transition from summer to fall due to COVID-19. It seemed like everyone’s plans for school, for work and in their lives generally had been altered or put on hold. I wanted to create a ritual space for people to process their grief, feelings of being stuck and lack of transition. To me, mikvah is a Jewish technology, which means it is an ancient tradition that is relevant to our context today and provides us with a useful blueprint for how to navigate our world. Mikvah can help us to create a forced transition in the absence of one, where we ask ourselves questions about where we have come from, where we are going and who we want to be when we get there.

The second reason I wanted to write this guide and title it Rebirthing Ourselves to Rebuild Our World is because we are collectively living in a moment of reckoning, where violent systems are being exposed and revolutionary change feels possible. I don’t want the world to “return to normal” after the pandemic has ended. I want us to create new systems, where our society is organized according to human value and dignity as opposed to being centred around capital. I wanted a forum to ask together: what work do we need to do internally to prepare ourselves to fight for the new world to come?

JI: Can you share a bit about your background, as it is relevant to your being able to write the guide and to guide others in the process?

MS: I had never guided a mikvah before this year but I am often engaged in thinking and learning about Jewish rituals, as I feel they keep me grounded and connect me to my history and ancestors. I was a Hebrew school teacher for quite a few years and grew up going to Camp Miriam, which led me down a path of working for Habonim Dror in a number of different capacities over the years. Through coordinating educational activities and building curricula, I saw firsthand the ways that Jewish ritual was a hugely helpful tool for young folks in guiding them to work towards social justice and liberation. Mikvah stood out to me as something that I wanted to learn more about, and the more I learned the different ways mikvah is being reclaimed and repurposed, the more I wanted to be a part of the movement of people doing so.

JI: How long have you practised the ritual? In what circumstances were you introduced to it?

MS: A couple of years ago, while working for Habonim Dror in New York City, my team and I went through a tough time. We were all feeling the weight of leading a Jewish organization through some very complicated situations and, ultimately, were feeling collectively burnt out. We drove to upstate New York and one of our team members led a beautiful mikvah for us. That experience helped me to understand the myriad ways that Jewish ritual can be repurposed to fit our daily needs and struggles. It was my first mikvah and it successfully allowed us to let go of experiences that had been weighing heavily on us.

I always thought mikvah was something that was reserved for Orthodox women and that it was to be strictly used for niddah, weddings or conversion. Experiencing a mikvah that was being led for me outside of these confines really opened my eyes to the ways that mikvah could be used as a modern technology, as opposed to an unchanging tradition.

JI: What are some of the benefits you’ve personally gained from participating in a mikvah? Do you do it regularly?

MS: Throughout the end of summer into fall, in preparation for the Jewish New Year, I was leading mikvah about once a week. I felt strongly that I didn’t want to be paid for this work, as I am one of the few people among my peers who has a steady job and income right now. That being said, I benefited greatly in other ways from leading this ritual for folks. It allowed me to meet amazing people who are also passionate about their Judaism or Jewishly curious folks who wanted to learn more. It allowed me to build community, the kind of Jewish community that I want to exist in Vancouver, centred around young Jews passionate about social justice. It allowed me space to continually ask myself how I want to be reborn and who I want to be, as I facilitated others asking themselves these questions.

I also led a couple special mikva’ot that included Indigenous folks, who brought and shared their own ceremonies and teachings around water and cleansing. I learned a lot from those individuals and am thankful for spaces where we can come together and share traditions and teachings with one another.

Lastly, leading all of these mikva’ot meant that I got to go swimming more often!

JI: There are three kosher (indoor) mikva’ot in Metro Vancouver, I think. It’s easier to see, perhaps, how a religious person would find meaning in the ritual. In what ways do you see the experience being meaningful for less religious women?

MS: Before every mikvah we would sit down and participate in a circle. Together, we would do some learning around mikvah, its ancient uses and how it is being reclaimed today. We would share and reflect together what purpose we wanted the mikvah to serve each one of us personally. We asked ourselves the question: what am I trying to work through that today’s ritual could help me with?

I found that, when the ritual becomes personalized and the individual chooses exactly how they want mikvah to be used, it is more likely to have a positive and lasting effect. Ultimately, mikvah gave people the opportunity to meet and connect with other like-minded people safely, so, if anything, it can just be an opportunity to do some learning, then have fun and go swimming with new friends.

JI: In what ways is your approach feminist, or different from more traditional approaches?

MS: I think the way I approach mikvah (and all Jewish ritual) is that traditions have to change and work for us in our contemporary context. It doesn’t make sense to practise Judaism in exactly the same ways that our ancestors did 2,000 years ago because our reality and our society does not look the same. I want my ancestors to recognize the rituals I am doing, but I also want to make sure that the rituals serve a function for me and the people around me, and that may mean expanding what they look like and who can participate. Jewish people continue to change and evolve, so I want our rituals and practices adapt and reflect that. I want to cultivate a living and ever-changing tradition.

JI: As winter approaches, how do you see your guiding working?

MS: I would be excited to lead a polar mikvah or two but my guess is that most likely folks will want to participate in the ritual when things warm up a little bit come spring.

JI: If there is anything else you’d like to add, please do.

MS: I was super-excited to see the guide being picked up and used across North America. There were people writing to me that I had never met, saying that they used the guide and found the ritual to be extremely meaningful.

I wrote the guide to be general enough so that Jews of any gender/race/sexuality in any location could use it to lead themselves through the ritual. I found the positive responses overwhelming and they helped me to feel connected to Jewry outside of Vancouver, who were going through many of the same hardships we were also experiencing. In writing the guide, I wanted to position myself in community with a wider movement of young Jews, demonstrating how Jewish ritual can be expanded to work for us and provide deep meaning throughout our lives.

Help repair the world

I am flipping through one of my social media outlets, as I lie on my bed, cuddling my 7-month-old baby to sleep. A picture catches my eye. Garbage strewn in front of a restaurant. I look closer, puzzled as to why someone would post a picture of garbage. Then I see. Discarded needles littered amongst the garbage. I read the accompanying message. The poster says that we need to relocate addicts to a secured facility in the north. Provide them with drugs and food and medical care, but we need to get them off of our streets.

I scroll through the comments. I cringe as I read them. I see posts such as, “These people,” “Get them off of our streets,” “Decided to act against societal norms,” “Until they wish to act like proper citizens,” “Undesirables” and so much worse.

The poster is Jewish. Many of the people commenting are Jewish.

My mouth drops open. I take a sharp breath and feel a pain deep inside of me. My heart hurts. I want to cry. My hands shake. It takes all the strength I have not to respond. I am hurt and angry. I shake my head in pain.

I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. I haven’t had a drink or a drug in a little over 20 years.

Yes, I am one of those undesirables. So is my husband. My mother and some of my best, most cherished friends.

I was 25 years old when I found recovery. I am one of the lucky ones. I never lived on the street. I didn’t do needles. I didn’t have to experience that kind of bottom, but what being in recovery has taught me is that I am no different than those who live on the streets, than those who inject themselves with needles. Because I am an addict. Once I use, I can’t stop.

The American Psychiatric Association classifies addiction as a complex brain disease that is manifested by compulsive substance use despite harmful consequence. I have a brain disease. I will drink and drug even though it causes harm to me and those close to me. Once I use, I don’t care about anything else. I have a disease that I have to live with and battle for the rest of my life. It is painful. It is a struggle. Some days are easier than others, but the fact of the matter is, I have to live with a disease that can return at any moment. Like a person in remission from cancer.

Does the Jewish community not want me or my children because I am an addict? Am I less of a worthy Jew because of my disease? What about my children? Even as I write this, my heart is beating fast, my breathing is shaky. I think of v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha. I think of how we, as Jews, are commanded to love the stranger who dwells among us, to have one law for the stranger and the citizen, to never embarrass our fellow human beings in public, and to guard our tongues and speak no evil.

Where is the love of humankind when we classify human beings as undesirables? Where is the humanity in suggesting that we take human beings and put them into remote locations, away from civilization? Is this starting to sound familiar? Perhaps like the Shoah? When Hitler classified us Jews as undesirables? Did those Jews have a choice as to whether or not they were classified as Jews even?

I have a disease. I did not choose to be an addict. I did not know, when I drank my first drink and smoked my first joint that I would end up addicted. I was a kid. I did what almost every other teenager did. I experimented. None of my friends from high school are addicts. I am. I got it.

Addicts come from all walks of life. They are your teachers, your lawyers, your doctors, heads of companies, celebrities. They are also those living on the street and leaving their dirty needles behind. Addiction doesn’t discriminate based on your ethnicity, your socioeconomic status or your religion, yet we, as a community, want to believe that addiction doesn’t happen among our tribe. I can tell you that it does. I can also tell you that there are many Jewish addicts and their families who are afraid to come forward precisely because they are afraid that they will be looked down upon and judged as morally impaired. As undesirables.

This, to me, is morally reprehensible. We, as a community, need to act with love. Let’s help repair the world that we live in so that we can love and support all people, even when they are sick with a disease that we don’t understand. It is our duty as Jews. V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha and tikkun olam. Love your fellow as yourself and help repair what is broken.

Amanda Haymond Malul is a JACS (Jewish Addiction Community Service) Vancouver supporter.

That which no one else can do

Listening to an online class by a Chassidic rabbi, I heard this: “We’re each put on this earth to do something unique, something which no one else can do. No one before you, and no one after you.”

A little pressure? No kidding.

He went on to say: “Fulfil your true and essential purpose. That’s where you will see and experience your ultimate blessings.”

High expectations? Heck, yeah.

I hear these words time and again. Why? Because they’re one of the countless mantras of Chassidim. What’s more, they’re encouraging, positive and impressive, so who wouldn’t be curious? Until you find yourself asking: “But what is my purpose in this world?”

I ask myself that regularly. There are days when maybe I do a good deed for someone and see that person benefit and I think, “There it is.” Maybe I call an elderly friend and wish them good Shabbos. Perhaps I bake a bunch of challah to give away and I think, “There it is. That’s my purpose. Or is it?”

The $64,000 questions are, How do we identify our purpose? And can we have more than one purpose in life? I think the answer to the second question is a resounding yes.

According to a wise rabbi I know, “Every element of our lives is an integral part of our purpose. It’s multi-faceted at every moment.” Sometimes, our purpose can be doing something that makes us happy. Sometimes, it’s the exact opposite – it’s something we struggle with that, in the end, serves a higher purpose and maybe even has a holy outcome. It’s certainly not random though.

As for identifying our purpose, that can be a bit trickier. My guess is that often we don’t even recognize it in the moment, but it’s there, nonetheless. If you have the privilege of recognizing G-d’s purpose for you, consider yourself lucky.

Some people are blessed to have one, humongous, overarching talent, like being an inspirational public speaker. Or a devoted caregiver. Or whatever. Most of us though – we fumble along searching for what resonates, not only with us, but with others. Because, in the end, we are a collective. What we do is never in isolation. Never. We always impact others. Even if it’s not immediately apparent.

We are not single humans floating around this world, alone, or islands unto ourselves. We’re an integral part of relationships – with G-d, with our loved ones, with our co-workers, with our friends. Even with strangers. What purpose we have in life only comes to life when it impacts others. We don’t exist in a vacuum, thank goodness, because those are filled with shmutz.

The thing is, the details of each individual’s purpose look different. Your purpose is something that no one else on earth can do. However, it all converges at the same point, which is to make the world a holier, more light-filled, compassionate place where G-d’s presence is revealed. Whoa, that’s some heaviosity! I dare you to unpack that.

Constantly dipping my amateur toes in the ocean of Judaism – Chassidism, to be specific – I am struck by how often I hear those words: revealing G-d’s presence in this world. Don’t ask me to explain it. I’m just a rookie, trying to understand it a tiny bit more every day. I have miles to go. But I’m certainly up for the challenge.

All I know is this: sometimes we seek out our purpose, sometimes it seeks us out; sometimes gently, sometimes it whacks us upside the head. It doesn’t matter how it happens. It only matters that it does happen. Sooner rather than later. Because sooner gives us an opportunity to do something great, even if it seems small or insignificant. Purpose is all relative. But to what? To the precise moment when that specific purpose finds its way into the world and affects another human being. That’s all it takes. Simple. Like neuroscience. Or astrophysics.

I don’t profess to have any answers or even suggestions, or insights. I just have my own experiences to share. For most of my life, it never crossed my mind that each of us has a purpose that we’re put on this earth to fulfil, except maybe for the obvious ones: teachers help kids learn, doctors heal people, mechanics fix cars. But what was my purpose?

I spent my working life as a librarian and communications officer at a public library. I mostly helped people find things and do research. For a short period, I was a children’s librarian, so I shared the love of literacy, reading stories, singing songs and teaching rhymes to little ones and their parents. Is that purpose? I’m not sure. Certainly it was fun. But it wasn’t what I would call meaningful, in the spiritual realm. Maybe I impacted a few people in some way, who knows. But did I change lives? It didn’t feel like it.

As a communications officer, I spent a good part of each day writing: annual reports, speeches, press releases, book reviews, brochures. Anything and everything. Was that my purpose in life? I doubt it. Maybe I touched a few people with the annual article I wrote in memory of my father’s yahrzeit. But did that give me purpose? Only momentarily.

Then I retired. And started volunteering.

First, I started baking challah buns, as part of the Light of Shabbat meals that Chabad Richmond delivers to homebound seniors on a regular basis, and delivering some of those meals. Now, I know it sounds kind of flimsy and trivial, but baking challah gave my life more meaning. I wasn’t just mixing ingredients, forming them into buns and baking them. As I learned from some rebbetzins, making challah is an auspicious time to give tzedakah and pray for what you want or need for yourself, for your family and for others. I knew that the people who’d be receiving my challah buns might not otherwise have challah for Shabbat. And, even if it wasn’t meaningful to them, it was to me. Oddly enough, that simple act of baking challah gave me a sense of purpose. Delivering it and shmoozing with the seniors was an extra bonus.

As my volunteer activities increased, so did my sense of purpose. When I began tutoring English to Israeli high school students via video chat through the Israel Connect program, I was terrified, but willing to try. After all, what did I know about teaching? Exactly bupkis. Little did I realize that the curriculum was only the supporting cast. The main actors were my student and me. While the goal of the program is for Israeli teens to become proficient in English vocabulary, comprehension and conversation – and they do – the meaningful stuff happens in our connection to one another. When you parse it, life is all about building relationships. About finding ways to connect. It’s about trust and compassion, learning and discovery. It’s about impact. Traveling both ways.

All that to say that having a sense of purpose in life doesn’t require monumental acts. It simply requires meaningful acts. Acts of giving.

So, go out and find your purpose. Or let it find you. Just get out of your own way.

Shelley Civkin is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer.

Comfort food and COVID

There’s been an uptick in the eating of comfort food in our house since the pandemic began. Cooking and eating are a big deal during stressful times.

Now, we were “into” food pre-pandemic. I cook a lot. However, everything went up a notch when our focus turned inwards, particularly for holidays like Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot and Thanksgiving. When our neighbourhood bakery closed down in the spring, I went from making only challah to making all our bread. My kids, surprised, said, “Mommy, you made this? It’s really good!” – as they gobbled up the crusty spelt bread I turned out. Over these months, it’s gone from bread production to canning. Once the shelves filled up with jams, pickles and applesauce, autumn became baking and roasting season.

We’ve eaten too much: apple pie and crisp, sweet potato pie, cherry pies, and more. I tried for moderation – and then my husband bought Halloween candy. He started doling out two snack-sized chocolates a day. I couldn’t resist.

In the summer, I combated all this “extra” with dog walks and playing outside, but now it’s cold out again. It’s harder to take long walks. Fall virus numbers have soared, so swim lessons, gym visits and other kinds of exercise are off the table for now.

Imagine my surprise when Daf Yomi, the practice of reading a page of Talmud a day, came to the rescue! I found good advice while reading Eruvin 82b and 83b. After all, it’s not the first time in Jewish history that we’ve gone through periods of stress. When feeling out of control, it might only be natural to struggle with basics like “how much is enough to eat?”

In Eruvin 82b, a discussion emerges. To extend the eruv, the boundary of how far you can go on Shabbat, you can place food in a location, usually cooperatively, with your neighbours, so that you all “share” the space. When you establish this with your neighbours, it’s communal space, like in your house. You can carry things within a larger area. Imagine a block party potluck, and you’re understanding this.

How much food is enough? It’s supposed to be enough when each neighbour puts in enough for two meals. However, that amount must be defined. Is that food enough for two “work day” meals, when people might be doing hard labour? On Shabbat, we eat more, so do we put more out to designate the eruv? How much should it weigh? Does it need to be expensive or fancy food?

The rabbis then do math, which is always a bit dodgy, to be honest. Why? Measurements in the ancient world varied from one geographic location to another. Food staples varied, too – for instance, some places had better access to one kind of grain as compared to others. Rice bread is acceptable, for example, but millet bread can’t be used, because the rabbis say it’s hard to make edible millet bread.

Different communities couldn’t afford the same things and, even if they could afford them, in some cases, the bread they produced was simply not edible. In Eruvin 81a, there’s a discussion about a kind of mixed grain lentil bread, a concoction of wheat, barley, beans, lentil, millet and spelt as spelled out in Ezekiel 4:9. “Rav Hiyya bar Avin said that Rav said: One may establish an eruv with lentil bread.” The Gemara determines that there was a bread made like this in the days of Mar Shmuel, and even his dog wouldn’t eat it. So, the food put out for the eruv must be edible to humans (and dogs) and taste good!

The rabbis refer to the Torah and decide that the manna the Jewish people received while wandering in the desert was about an omer (two litres) each. There’s some dubious calculating to determine how much food is “enough.” The most helpful information I found was repeated by multiple sages over more than a thousand years.

In Sue Parker Gerson’s introduction of Eruvin 83 on myjewishlearning.com, she offers some context for understanding the talmudic text. The sages say, “One who eats roughly this amount [an omer] each day is healthy, as he is able to eat a proper meal; and he is also blessed, as he is not a glutton who requires more. One who eats more than this is a glutton, while one who eats less than this has damaged bowels and must see to his health.”

Maimonides, a physician and a Torah scholar more than 800 years ago, wrote a lot on healthful eating. In Gerson’s article, she includes eating tips from him, as well as from Rashi and Adin Steinsaltz. Regarding Maimonides, he said, “One should not eat until his stomach is full. Rather, he should stop eating when he has eaten close to three-quarters of his full satisfaction.… Overeating is like poison to anyone’s body.”

It’s only natural to use food to celebrate, to comfort and to cope during this crazy time of upheaval. How can we combat this temptation? The rabbis advise: remember not to overeat, eat only what is edible and healthy, and practise moderation.

This is hard. We live in a world of plenty, possibly even including leftover Halloween chocolates. But there are Jewish teachings, over generations, about avoiding overeating. Weight gain could make us more susceptible to complications from COVID-19, and so many other illnesses. It’s not good for us, but, knowing how much food is “enough” isn’t a new issue and, like everything else, it’s a Jewish one. The rabbis probably didn’t have leftover candy or sweet potato pie, but they knew the temptations we might feel to make, or eat, too much of them.

Explore Torah’s secrets

“People tend to read biblical stories like they do mythology,” said Chabad Richmond’s Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman, one of the local Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) instructors. “Our course invites participants to look deeper and discover the underlying themes and relevant life lessons these stories were designed to convey.”

Baitelman is talking about a new six-session JLI course called Secrets of the Bible: Iconic Stories, Mystical Meanings and Their Lessons for Life, which starts Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m. The course will be offered both in-person, to a limited audience, at 4775 Blundell Rd., in Richmond (following COVID-19 restrictions), and online via Zoom. All classes – which are one-and-a-half hours long – will be recorded on Zoom and accessible online for six days after each class. For Vancouver Islanders, the course will be presented by Chabad of Nanaimo, 5450 Oceanview Terrace, in Nanaimo, starting Nov. 3, 7 p.m.

The course presents a unique way of reading the stories of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge, Noah and the great flood, the lifelong feud between Jacob and Esau, Joseph’s multicoloured coat, the golden calf, and Korah’s rebellion. For each of these stories, three questions will be answered: What is the deeper meaning behind the story? How does it shape the Jewish worldview? What wisdom does it hold for us today?

Throughout the six sessions, Secrets of the Bible explores major life themes, including human subjectivity and bias; the underpinnings of relationships; negotiating spiritual growth with practical impact; why inspiration is fleeting and how to make it last; understanding equality and privilege; and navigating parallel spiritual and material life paths.

Secrets of the Bible is designed to appeal to people at all levels of knowledge, including those without any prior experience or background in Jewish learning. This course is open to the public, and attendees don’t need to be affiliated with a particular synagogue, or other house of worship.

“These biblical stories come alive as their deeper meanings and insights are revealed. They hold the key to life lessons for us all,” said Baitelman. “I encourage you to sign up for this thought-provoking course that’s sure to deepen your understanding of Judaism and enrich your life. You are welcome to try the first class for free with no obligation.”

To register and for more information about the Chabad Richmond course ($95/person or $160/couple), call 604-277-6427 or visit chabadrichmond.com/jli. For the Nanaimo course ($95/person or $152/couple), call 250-797-7877 or visit jewishnanaimo.com/secrets.html.

Fences and walls can be good

My household is facing a lot of upheaval. The 100-year-old house next door was recently demolished, as the new owners wanted to live in an “old house neighbourhood” but in a new house. Their choice has been hard for us. It doesn’t preserve history and it’s not environmentally sustainable. The demolition and excavation are loud, and the shaking and vibrating has damaged our house and the neighbours’ homes, too. It’s a hard situation and we’ve got nowhere else to go, especially during a pandemic.

Years ago, when our twins were toddlers, we built a sturdy wooden fence around our front yard, to match the taller fence in the backyard. This fence has been a blessing. It’s kept kids and dogs safe, not to mention balls, badminton shuttlecocks, and more. Anything that strayed over the fence in any way – like, say, squash and cucumber vines – were completely trashed during this construction, which left a bare, muddy cavern on the other side. It’s been unsettling.

This physical boundary reminds me of other ones with which we’re all reckoning. As the pandemic continues, mask wearing and physically distancing from others has to be absolutely ingrained in us. Yet, articles online mention parents who hate having to enforce mask wearing with their kids, or how friends must make difficult decisions about whether to hang out with others who won’t wear masks. Our public health officials warn against mask shaming but these boundaries, these masks, are part of what keeps us safer.

This goes further, when considering how people manage remote school, work and public interactions where, frankly, all the rules have changed. Every family home, workplace and even transportation has changed. We set up boundaries – we build both physical and imaginary fences, through Plexiglass partitions and dots on the ground, to keep ourselves safe.

As Jews, none of this should be new to us, because the rabbis loved a good boundary! Whether it’s deciding what can or can’t be done on Shabbat, or how to manage keeping kosher, there are rules everywhere in Torah and rabbinic teachings. The rules, however, aren’t always clear or easy to follow. It requires both study and thought to decide what will work – and it isn’t always obvious how a Jewish person should interpret those rules or what’s important to follow.

Lately, I’ve been reading about how an eruv can work, because I’m studying Daf Yomi (a page of Talmud a day) and have been working through tractate Eruvin. What’s an eruv? Well, a simple definition (straight from the internet) is: “An urban area enclosed by a wire boundary which symbolically extends the private domain of Jewish households into public areas, permitting activities within it that are normally forbidden in public on the Sabbath.”

If you’ve wondered why it’s OK, in some traditional Jewish neighbourhoods, for people to push strollers or carry food over to a friend’s house on Shabbat, well, it’s because they’ve created this special ritual space. This creates a single “private space” that connects a whole community of homes. The eruv is so important in some places that it causes housing prices to go up within its borders.

Many times, I’ve heard complaints from people about how “there are too many rules” in some context or other. Whether it’s “fences cut up the landscape in our neighbourhood,” “Why can’t we eat in this room in the community centre?” or, from parents, “It’s so hard to make kids wear masks or stick to this rigid schedule.” However, for many, creating routine, structure and boundaries, physical or psychological, helps us in so many ways.

The example of the Shabbat and festival eruv is a way to see rules in a positive light. If the “rules” state that we cannot do something in the public sphere on Shabbat, look at how we can get around this by using an eruv, the rabbis say – we create a huge private “home” out of all of our homes. What a rich way to build community, belonging and togetherness!

Even if we’re not Shabbat observant or using an eruv, this is a reminder of why fences and boundaries can be used for good. Without our sturdy wooden fence, I suspect our kids and dog might fall into the enormous excavation hole and construction site next door. Without those masks or social distancing rules, we’d have to stay home completely during the pandemic.

It takes all of us to make boundaries work effectively. As Robert Frost writes in “Mending Walls,” there is a lot of resistance to walls. From hunters to animals to elves – “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

However, Frost’s neighbour reminds us, “Good fences make good neighbours.” A boundary can keep us inside a rich and loving community. It can also keep us physically safe from harm or psychologically safe, by creating structure and limits to our days.

For now, we all need to embrace these boundaries. We must use these fences and walls to bolster us onwards, as we shelter through the winter and pandemic, even beyond the temporary walls of Sukkot.

Do we care about being fair?

In its decision on Uber Technologies Inc. v. David Heller, the Supreme Court of Canada determined that the freedom of contract is not so absolute in its technical application as to undermine its purpose of allowing people to craft their own destinies. (photo from wikipedia)

Does fairness play a role in how we interpret and apply law? After all, doesn’t a person have the right to make bad decisions?

The Torah gives us the written law, similar to legislation, and the Talmud gives us the oral law and commentary, similar to the doctrines and jurisprudence of common law.

So, are we to interpret and apply law strictly, even if it seems unjust? Is there authority to temper the interpretation of law based on the circumstances? The Talmud tells us, yes. In June, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed.

Every businessperson knows that it’s a good idea to get an agreement in writing. We use written agreements to make a record of what the parties have agreed is their shared vision of their business relationship. Part of that shared vision might include agreeing that certain rights ordinarily afforded by the law of the land won’t apply to this relationship. The right to give up a right is central to the freedom of contract.

The freedom of contract is based on the idea that a person knows what’s best for them and wouldn’t agree to something if the bargain weren’t to their liking. The law doesn’t protect you from your own bad decisions, but it is supposed to protect you from bad decisions that you didn’t make freely.

In June of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada decided the case of Uber Technologies Inc. v. David Heller. Heller was an Uber food delivery driver. As such, he signed a standard agreement with Uber – the kind of agreement that is a “take it or leave it” proposition. Very few people read such contracts and, even if they do take the time to read and understand them, they don’t have the opportunity to create the “shared vision” that the freedom of contract is supposed to protect.

One of the terms of the Uber contract was that any dispute would be dealt with through a mediation and arbitration process in the Netherlands, rather than through the court system in Canada. Doing so would require up-front fees of $14,500 US, not including the cost of lawyers and travel. Heller’s annual earnings from Uber are between $20,000 and $30,000 Cdn. In other words, it would cost at least half of his annual earnings just to file his dispute, let alone pursue it.

The Supreme Court of Canada found in Heller’s favour.

If this had been a freely negotiated contract, Heller would have made a bad decision, but it would have been his decision to make and thus enforceable. However, it was clear to the court that Uber put this clause into the contract to make sure their drivers simply could not bring any dispute against them.

The court could have said that, according to the strict letter of the law, Heller agreed to the contract and is, therefore, bound by it. It doesn’t matter if you now find unfair a contract that you freely agreed to.

Instead, the court said the law in its strictest form is not always applicable, and we must determine whether it is inhumane to apply it strictly or whether circumstances demand we temper it. The court found that, rather than providing an alternative means to justice (i.e. arbitration), Uber imposed an unreasonable barrier to justice; they found a way to make sure that their drivers could not access justice no matter the merit of their complaint.

Many of us are familiar with the first three verses of parshat Shoftim in Devarim (Deuteronomy 16:18-16:20). First, a system of judges is established. Second, the judges are commanded to judge fairly on the merits of the cases. The third verse contains one of the most well-known phrases in the Torah: “Justice, justice shall you pursue.”

Why is the third verse there, and why does it use the word “justice” twice? The second verse has commanded the judges to follow the law without prejudice. Why then tell us to pursue justice? Isn’t that implicit in the establishment of a rule-of-law justice system? And what is “justice, justice” as opposed to “justice”?

In Chapter 2 of tractate Avot in the Mishnah, we are told, “warm thyself by the fire of the sages, but beware of their glowing coals, lest thou be burnt, for their bite is the bite of a fox, and their sting is the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss is the hiss of a serpent, and all their utterances are like coals of fire.”

At the distance where coals keep you warm, you can learn. At this distance, you can also see the coals in the context of providing warmth. If you are close enough that they can bite, sting and hiss, you lose sight of their purpose (warmth) and will be burnt. This applies to law.

Chapter 1 of Avot provides three interpretations of law’s purpose in the olam, world – olam also means the universe and everything in it.

Verse 2 of Chapter 1 says that the world stands on Torah (law), work (the practice of law) and kindness.

Verse 12 directs us to love peace, to pursue peace and to love all creatures bringing them closer to the Torah (law).

Verse 18 tells us that the world stands on justice, truth and peace.

The inclusion of kindness and peace alongside law tells us not to get so close to the coals that we forget their purpose is warmth.

“Justice, justice” is not only law, but law with purpose. Law without purpose may wear a badge of justice, but it is not truly just. Law used for the purpose of subverting justice is not just.

The court determined, in the Uber decision, that the freedom of contract is not so absolute in its technical application as to undermine its purpose of allowing people to craft their own destinies. In this case, Uber’s contract precisely contradicted that purpose: Uber imposed a contract that expressly denied Heller the right to craft his own destiny without his freely given consent.

Jeremy Costin is a business and estates lawyer practising in Vancouver. He sits on the board of directors and the governance committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and is a frequent guest instructor at the Law Society of British Columbia.