Rabbi's Message for Shabbat Korach June 26-27, 5780

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.
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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