Dear Members & Friends of Kehilat Shalom Calgary,
This week’s parasha, Korach, holds powerful relevance for the political and social divisiveness of our times. Korach is the iconoclast, the populist political rival, with ambitions to lay claim to Moses’ leadership. His words are those of timeless protest against authority: “The entire assembly is holy, and they embody the Lord. So why should you have power over G-d’s people?” He manoeuvers to gather an alliance, to rally a host of people to his side, and to set up a potential coup to overthrow Moses and Aaron.
Political power is a necessary tool that can be used for good or evil. There is ample room within Judaism for the wielding of power, for dispute and protests of opposition, and for negotiation between parties. The traditional rabbinic view of Korach is that of a usurper and schemer, whose power interests were self-motivated rather than driven by a genuine concern for the Israelite people. Yet it is understood that those in authority, even those anointed by Hashem, are challenged to negotiate their leadership with the people they govern.
My longtime friend Abba Brodt, Head of School of Hebrew Foundation School in Montreal, recently shared the following story in which his late father, Rabbi Shalom Brodt z”l, demonstrated beautifully how to overcome the separations sown between us, and bring our hearts back: back to one another as a Jewish collective, back to Hashem, back to what matters most.
May this be a very, very, VERY special Shabbat for you all.
****************************************

I have to tell you a story about my father, Rabbi Shalom Brodt, z”l, brought on, as it were by the timing of the events of this past week - Fathers Day, Gimmel Tammuz (the Rebbe's yahrtzeit), and Parshat Korach.
It’s how I remember it. Not sure what is entirely accurate, and what is my faulty memory. But I’m telling it like I remember it.
And while the story is a story about my father, it is about so much more than him, as you’ll soon see.
In the late nineties, early two thousands, when my father was in the early years of having made Aliyah, he was doing his travelling Best Midrash thing, visiting small communities across America, and teaching and learning Torah with people from across the Jewish spectrum. He made some especially strong links with some wonderful holy people in Vermont, and developed connections through those relationships that radiated outwards to so many other small Jewish communities in the region.
He began to be invited to be a scholar-in-residence / lecturer at the Conference on Judaism in Rural New England, an annual gathering of New England’s rural Jews on the campus of Lyndonville State University. You see, there are thousands of Jews living in small, rural communities across New England, Maine, upstate New York, many of whom left larger communities, some to get away from it all, and others in search of a different kind of life. More a gathering of progressive-minded tribe members than traditional or practicing members-of-the-tribe, the conference was a lifeline for so many, a powerful gathering of community and an opportunity to connect to tradition and a shared heritage.
My father would sometimes invite me, my brother and my sister to come with him to the conference, which is like blending Take Your Child to Work Day with being at Woodstock. And so, fresh off the plane from Israel and having spent some time at his mother’s house in Montreal, he set off to get ready for the conference. First stop would be New Victoria Fish Store, on Victoria and Van Horne, where he would greet Frank, the gruff Greek fisherman, with enormous respect and affection. Frank, when finished with slicing the best smoked salmon in Montreal for the customers, would take my father to the other corner of the store, and pack him up a few whole smoked white fish. Then it was off to the kosher bakery, for a half-a-dozen large water challahs. And finally, he packed a Sefer Torah in the trunk of my grandmother’s car, and off we went, driving from Montreal to Lyndonville, Vermont.
On arriving in Lyndonville, my father just had to stop in the "mikvah" before Shabbos began. By the mikvah I mean he scouted out the best actual watering hole in the middle of nature, and in true Neo-Chassidic style, went skinny dipping, as much at home in the waters of New England as he would be in the Skver mikvah in Montreal. And then he’d be ready for the conference.
Owing to the quirks of the Jewish calendar, the conference often took place over the weekend when the Torah portion of Korach was read. Korach is a very complicated figure in the Torah, someone who, on the surface, wanted individuals to see the greatness they possessed, that spirituality and Torah is not just for the privileged. As he famously stated, “We are all equally holy and God is within us all”. In progressive Jewish circles, Korach is very much viewed as an anti-hero, someone who sticks It to the man, and challenges the authority of the Torah, rabbinic leadership and organized, hierarchical community (which made him a not unsympathetic characters to those in attendance at the conference). The Friday night panel discussion, which often had Korach as a central theme, was excruciating. My father, up on the dais, would be trying desperately not to nod off and fall asleep, a function of his jet lag and his wicked sleep apnea, all while trying to present Korach as the rabbis saw him, as someone with ulterior motives that were not at all noble. Needless to say, my father’s perspective was not widely accepted. Not an auspicious start to the conference. Exhausted, he wished the attendees a good Shabbos, and went off to sleep.
Shabbos morning was even worse. If you thought two Jews, three opinions was bad, try getting a diverse group of Jews to daven and pray together. There were multiple options for prayer services. Egalitarian, Conservative, Reform, Jewish meditation, I swear, there was even a tantric yoga minyan, or a drum circle, but that could just be my memory playing tricks on me. And nebach, in the middle of all this, there was my father, trying to run the Traditional minyan, rustling up nine other men to take part in his minyan, most of them kicking and screaming. It started late, it ran very late, and we were always late to lunch - everyone else’s prayer service finished far earlier. You get in between a Yiddel and his vegetarian gluten-free Shabbos lunch, and there will be hell to pay. For the life of me, I did not understand why my father was putting himself through this; as the safe Orthodox choice to be invited, he seemed so radically out of step from everyone else.
A word about the conference attendees. They were an incredibly diverse, disparate group, with differing needs, practices and beliefs, not to mention theological and political differences. I met such amazing, interesting, beautiful people, who, in living off the grid of larger Jewish communities, had to fight for every shred of their Jewish identities; I am smiling from the memories, even as I write this down all these years later. Apart from the shared experience of being Jewish in rural communities, there was very little in the way of common ground or shared Jewish experiences, even during the Shabbat we were all sharing.
Then came seudat shelishit, the Third Meal of Shabbat, the holiest time of Shabbat. And my father, who seemed to struggle to find his footing up until that point, transformed into something else entirely, and transformed everyone else in the process.
He led the Third Meal, for everyone at the conference.
Out came the smoked white fish. He tore it with his hands and passed around the morsels.
Out came the water challot, and like a chassidic rebbe distributing shirayim, he pulled it apart, and gave out the challah, wishing each person a Good Shabbos in the process.
He shared deep chassidic stories.
He led the singing of soulful, wordless niggunim.
People sang their hearts out.
They cried, they laughed.
They flew.
It was the high point of the Shabbaton conference, the unifying moment.
That moment stayed with me - indeed, it imprinted on me. It taught me from then on that when you do or share something Jewish that is genuine and meaningful, with few barriers to access for others (e.g. who is or isn’t counted in a minyan, or requiring a certain level of Jewish knowledge or literacy), then everyone can find common ground, and plug in to the moment or the experience in their own way. There are so many things that divide us, that cause conflict - find the moments that bring us together, build a positive connection to Yiddishkeit around that.
I think about this story a lot these days. There is so much that is in upheaval in this world now - coronavirus is wreaking havoc with every facet of our lives, and exposing and widening every fault line in society. The virus’s devastating reach is forcing us to reassess and reevaluate most everything.
Synagogues, Jewish Day Schools, Jewish summer camps, afternoon schools, organized trips and missions to Israel, every single Jewish spiritual and communal delivery system is in serious crisis, exacerbating already existential challenges they were facing in terms of cost and affordability, access and demographic changes, division and lack of achdut.
When the dust settles, what will be left?
Whatever the future state or new organizational models, our mission is to get to work, not to fall apart, but to find the common ground and spaces, where we can come and learn and be and share and give and love. And as my father z”l would say, if we are going to do this work, it has to always be done b’simchah u’vetuv levav, with joy and goodness of heart.
Miss you Tatty. Good Shabbos, good Shabbos!
▪Abba Brodt_________________
Rabbi Leonard Cohen
Kehilat Shalom, Calgary
(403) 850-0106
leonardecohen@gmail.com

Dear Members and Friends of Kehilat Shalom Calgary,
This is a very, very, VERY special Shabbat! It brings to mind a memorable event of my childhood.
Growing up, I had the privilege of attending a Jewish summer sleep-away camp, Camp Massad, in the Laurentians near Montreal. The camp summer was structured around a variety of major events on Israeli and Jewish themes. One thrilling event each summer was Ma’pilim. The entire camp was awoken in the middle of the night, to re-enact a daring immigration into the land of Israel in the time of the British Mandate. The oldest campers acted as British border guards and police, trying to catch and imprison the younger would-be olim (immigrants). All other campers were divided into small groups, each led by a counsellor, who would try to secretly make their way into Israel. Starting in rowboats in the middle of the lake, the kids would land on shore, and traverse through a 1.5km route hiding in the forest or behind cabins and buildings. When a camper was caught and “imprisoned”, the group had to free their fellow group-member by breaking into the jail area and tagging them free. Eventually, after a 2-hour adventure, all campers arrived safely in Israel – where they were greeted with hot chocolate around a warm bonfire, and a chance to go back to bed and sleep in late the next morning.
The source of the term Ma’pilim is from this week’s parsha, Shelach Lecha. The parsha recounts the transgression of the “twelve spies” - the tribal leaders who went out to scout the land of Israel, ten of whom came back saying the land’s occupants were too mighty for the Jews to conquer. Despite the pleas of two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, to proceed boldly into the land, the Israelites panicked. They decided to go back to Egypt (!), and threatened to kill Caleb and Joshua as well as overthrow Moses and Aaron. Before this could happen, Hashem’s glory overwhelmed and silenced the people. Hashem punished the Israelites, decreeing that they would remain in the desert for forty years (until their generation died out and a new one arose), before entering the land.
In the midst of this, a group of remorseful Israelites decided to go up to Israel straightaway. Despite Moses’ warnings that they would fail, they went ahead zealously, climbing to the top of Mount Hormah – where they were slaughtered by the Canaanites and Amalekites. This group became known as the defiers – the Ma’pilim.
Why did the biblical Ma’pilim fail, where the Israelites later succeeded, in making their way successfully into Israel? Rav Yoel Bin Nun suggests that, on a practical level, the Amalekites and Canaanites had established a solid, fortified hold of the south of the land – an ancient Maginot Line, as it were. Any small force attacking directly from the south was doomed to fail. Instead, the Israelites’ eventual journey southward then to the east of Israel, led them to a less fortified position from which they could successfully attack and penetrate the land.
In the early years of the Zionist movement, Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik recast the ma’pilim, no longer as failed reactionaries, but as bold heroes and spiritual progenitors of the Zionist movement. In his 1902 poem “Metei Midbar” – The Dead of the Desert – Bialik writes:
Mighty warriors we!
The last of the slaves,
The first of the free! . . .
We and heaven’s eagles have sipped freedom at its source!
Who is lord over us? . . .
In the face of heaven and all its spite,
Here we are, ready to storm, to conquer!
And if God has withdrawn from us,
If His Ark will not move from its place--
We will conquer without Him!
(Translation from Bialik’s Hebrew by Raymond Scheindlin)
As a result of Bialik’s reframing, the Ma’pilim became a source of inspiration for the Zionists. Twenty years after Bialik, Levin Kipnis wrote “El Rosh Hahar” – “To the Top of the Mountain!” – building on the theme of Ma’pilim as exemplars of zealous determination:
To the top of the mountain! To the top of the mountain!
Who will bar the path of those saved from captivity?...
Arise brothers!... The summit is near!
We will surely see the way we have mounted!
One suddenly falls to the depths;
the first sacrifice, he will surely not be the last.
Defiantly! Defiantly! To the top of the mountain, we shall rise!
(Translation my own)
The refrain, “Ha’pilu!” recalls the defiantly bold nature of the ancient Ma’pilim in their failed quest. Set to music, this poem became a powerful song for the Zionist movement; click here to hear a recording of El Rosh Hahar as sung by Ora Zitner.
Were the Ma’pilim heroes or failures? R. Tzadok Ha-Kohen of Lublin viewed the boldness of the ma’pilim as indicative of the chutzpah that our Sages say will increase and succeed in the time of Mashiach (Talmud – Sotah 48b); the same chutzpah, perhaps, that led ideologically determined Zionists to re-establish a Jewish state in the homeland of Israel.
Nechama Leibowitz points out, however, that the Ma’pilim of Torah, unlike those of Zionist poetry, were not a trailblazing vanguard. Had they been truly foresighted and inspired, they would have championed Joshua and Caleb, and mobilized the Jewish people prior to their panic and G-d’s punishment. Instead, they reacted after the fact, when it was no longer the time, and without the people’s unity. The Torah states that the Ark of the Covenant did not go with the Ma’pilim; their quest was doomed from the start in the absense of divine support.
I find it nonetheless remarkable that the Zionist movement transformed a little-known, tragic event in the Torah to a source of steadfast inspiration. As Jews, we continually re-engage with the stories of our people, casting new light on them, drawing new knowledge and perspectives. It is our challenge, in times of distress, to ever seek meaning in the very difficulties we have faced, and to draw on the wealth of our Jewish legacy and connection to Hashem’s Torah, in order to discover meaning and inspiration for our lives.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Leonard Cohen
Kehilat Shalom, Calgary
(403) 850-0106
leonardecohen@gmail.com

Dear Members and Friends of Kehilat Shalom Calgary,
​
This week’s Parsha, Beha’alotecha, provides helpful insight to guide us in negotiating the challenges of our current times. The parsha follows a thematic arc: it begins with light, leads up to distress, and concludes with healing.
From Hope and illumination…
Beha’alotecha begins with the great Jewish symbol of illumination, the Menorah. Hashem tells Moses to instruct Aharon, Moses’ brother, to mount the lamps of the Menorah – the great seven-branched at the center of the Mishkan (tabernacle) and later the Beit Hamikdash. Not only was the Menorah’s light necessary for the Kohanim/priests to conduct their sacred service, the menorah represents the illumination, both physical and spiritual, which Hashem provides to humanity and the world. Beha’alotecha goes on to describe the purification rituals and the paramters for the Levites to serve in the Ohel Mo’ed – the Tent of Meeting encompassing the Mishkan. These various sections depict the lofty heights of religious observance which the Jewish people had attained with the dedication of the Mishkan.
The parsha describes how the Jewish people in the desert stood ever at attention to G-d’s command to travel. When I consider the Jewish people’s journeys in the desert, I recall the television show M*AS*H about a military hospital in Korea. M*AS*H stood for “Mobile Army Surgical Hospital”, and at any given time the entire hospital would be commanded to take itself down and deploy elsewhere. Similarly, the massive Israelite camp in the desert – the Mishkan and all of the twelve tribes’ encampment – could at any time be commanded by G-d, through the signal of the rising of the column of cloud, to pack themselves up and journey on elsewhere. The military analogy is underscored by the Torah’s description of the silver trumpets used to sound the calls for leaders to assemble, or for the people to prepare to journey, at a moment’s notice. The length of such stays varied greatly; they could be for “two days or a month or a year” (Bamidbar/Number 9:22). In all, the Jewish people traveled between and camped in forty-two different sites during their time in the desert.
As Rabbi Nechemia Krakover observes, the readiness to journey or to camp at G-d’s command required an enormous commitment on the part of our Jewish ancestors. While it relieved the Jewish people of the challenge of their own independent decision-making, it must have strained them greatly to have no control, and to endure such continual upheaval, throughout forty years.
… To unrest
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that our ancestors in the desert often show tremendous unrest. As Beha’alotecha unfolds, the Jewish people complain about the manna which sustains them, and
turn to a blinded nostalgia of their time in Egypt: “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat for free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.” (If there is anything we Jews ever talk and complain about, it’s food.) Beyond the absurd myth that they ate like kings in Egypt, the claim that they ate food “chinam”, for free, absurdly ignores the price they paid living in perpetual slavery.
Moses responds with despair. Rather than have to bear the burden of leading such an acrimonious and ungrateful people, Moses tells G-d he would prefer that G-d kill him right away. To alleviate Moses’ distress, G-d has him appoint seventy elders to share the burden of leading the people, and essentially to provide Moses’ companionship in his leadership.
Amid the distress, a strange incident occurs: two random laymen, Eldad and Meldad, are struck with the Divine spirit and begin prophesying in the camp. A young lad runs to report this to Moses, and Joshua reacts by calling out to Moses to arrest them. Moses, maintaining his cool, sees no such need; not only does he perceive no threat, but he even adds, “If only all the L-rd’s people were prophets!”
Miriam's confrontation
At this point, Miriam along with Aaron confronts Moses. In a somewhat cryptic incident, she challenges Moses about his Kushite wife. Hashem reacts by afflicting Miriam with the disease of “tzara’at”, a severe illness akin to leprosy, meted out to those who commit the wrongdoing of Lashon Hara -- speaking ill of or slandering others.
The great Jewish scholar Abarbanel examines this incident in exquisite detail, outlining and resolving ten crucial questions about it. (Unfortunately, I have not found any translated version of this in English to share.) Through reference to Midrash and other rabbinic commentary, Abarbanel explains that Miriam, accompanied by Aaron, confronts Moses for having divorced his wife Tzipporah. Miriam tells Moses that he cannot use the burdens of his leadership as an excuse, for she and Aaron have the power of prophesy to share in his leadership as well. In anticipation of a slogan that is very much current, the description of Moses’ wife Tzipporah as a “Kushite” meant two things: a) She was Black. b) She was beautiful. Miriam reprimanded her brother for not attending to her needs, and to his marital responsibility to provide her intimacy. Hashem punished Miriam, however, for castigating Moses unnecessarily and not appreciating the validity of his decisions. Moses apparently made the decision to separate from Tzipporah during his multiple stays of forty days upon Mount Sinai. From there on, he remained perpetually attuned to and attentive to G-d – who spoke to Moses not in dreams or visions, as G-d did with every single other prophet including Miriam and Aaron, but directly face-to-face. Moses’ exceptional and constant connection with G-d seems to make it impossible for him to serve as a proper husband to her. Hashem inflicts Miriam with tzara’at to signify that she failed to show the care and equanimity in speech required of someone in her elevated position.
Prayers for Healing
Seeing her peril. Moses beseeches G-d on his sister Miriam’s behalf. In heart-rending prayer, he calls out, “El na refa na lah”­ – “Oh please, G-d, please heal her!” G-d answers this most concise of prayers, eleven Hebrew letters in all, by assuring Moses that the retribution is necessary; Mirim remains quarantined for seven days before being able to rejoin, and the Parsha concludes with the camp moving on once again.
Two big questions
There are two important lessons which we can draw from this week’s parsha for our troubled times.
A) We are liable to act in ill-advised ways in times where we perceive ourselves as having no control. In this time of COVID-19, we have faced less than three months of restrictions, and yet bristle against what is asked of us. The Israelites had to endure forty years of adherence to G-d’s commands to go and stop continually while in the desert. Perhaps as a result, they resisted G-d by acting out, impulsively and recklessly, in other ways: complaining, transgressing, even revolting. Today, we are taking care to reopen our society and economy in a manner that ensure we can continue to function, albeit safely. Yet people, in their rush to return to perceived normalcy, take needless risks, or even reject the need to wear masks and maintain physical distance. This heedlessness can be seen among people protesting on the streets, and among people shopping in supermarkets.
Question #1 - As we reopen our society, will we respond in a balanced manner with consideration to the well-being of our society, or act in a manner that jeopardizes one another?
B) Thoughtless speech is dangerous. The polarization and inflamed rhetoric so evident on social media today (and reflected in political society) have not arisen solely because of pandemic; over the past decade, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have served to spark hateful movements and mobilize violence in such diverse places as Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the United States. The same risks are amplified today. There is a fine line between democratic dissent and violent uprising; between speech that validates justice, and speech that fans the flame of hatred; between kindness and cruelty. The Israelites were repeatedly reprimanded in the desert for outbursts which destroyed the people’s trust in G-d and one another. Miriam was punished for her ill-considered accusations against Moses. Moses showed presence of mind to tolerate the voices of other prophesiers, and kindness to pray for his sister who (in her rush to empathize with her sister-in-law) showed unfortunate thoughtlessness to him and his leadership.
Question #2 – In a time of strain, will we prove kind and tolerant towards one another, or fracture into distrust?
I leave these questions for you to consider over Shabbat and the coming week.
Shabbat Shalom um’vorach!
_________________
Rabbi Leonard Cohen
Kehilat Shalom, Calgary
(403) 850-0106
leonardecohen@gmail.com