Oshra Koren: ‘If this is not redemption, I don’t know what is’

RABBI DR. BENJI LEVY. Rabbanit Oshra Koren, it is such a privilege to be sitting with you here in the hills of Jerusalem. You are the rosh beit midrash, the head of the house of study and leader of Matan HaSharon in Raanana, teaching women from really across the country and around the world. Thank you for joining us.

RABBANIT OSHRA KOREN. Thank you for hosting me.

LEVY. So, what is Jewish mysticism?

KOREN. Jewish mysticism is the spirit of the Torah, the heart of the Torah, the soul of the Torah.

LEVY. And how did you connect to this?

KOREN. Well, from a young age I connected to the spirit of the Torah. I mean, the halacha [Jewish law] is the body, and Jewish mysticism is the soul itself. That’s what makes the whole difference.

LEVY. Was there a specific moment, experience, or exposure to anything or anyone that really helped that journey?

KOREN. Well, I think over the years I connected to it through music, through dance, through experience, and through Hasidic stories. And when I was sixteen I met Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and I was very inspired.

LEVY. In an ideal world, would all Jews be mystics?

KOREN. I don’t know if all Jews would be mystics, but all Jews should be connected to mysticism, connected to their soul.

LEVY. What do you think of when you think of God?

KOREN. Gaagu’im, longing.

LEVY. Is there like an image that comes to mind? Is there a certain experience or feeling?

KOREN. Experiences of all good, of awe, of wonder, and longing. Longing, because how can we really conceive who God is?

LEVY. Wow. And what is the purpose of the Jewish people?

KOREN. Tikkun olam, making this world a better place, love, spreading love.

LEVY. How does prayer work?

KOREN. The truth is Rabbi Kook says that prayer is something that we do all the time. Our soul is yearning all the time, we just don’t know that. But prayer itself, as he says, is like a flower that during prayer opens up to God. It is like the actualization of that prayer comes at the time of prayer itself.

LEVY. And what’s the goal of Torah study?

KOREN. The goal of Torah study is to make us better, to make us discover who we are, better versions of ourselves, understanding the world.

LEVY. You lead a beit midrash, a house of study, that really influences so many, but at the heart of it basically sit women, and you teach in such a deep way. Does Jewish mysticism view women and men as the same?

KOREN. It doesn’t view women and men as the same. Jewish mysticism doesn’t, but the truth is we have to understand about Jewish mysticism when they use the feminine and the male, the zachar [male] and nekeva [female], what they are saying is that everyone has that feminine side in them and that male side in them.

LEVY. So should Judaism be hard or easy?

KOREN. Wow. Judaism should be joyful. It should be more love. I would say less hard than easy, but when you understand what it does for your life, it becomes easy. I would say more than easy, it becomes something that you breathe, that you can’t be without.

LEVY. And why did God create the world?

KOREN. Because God is good. He just wanted to give. That is why He created, and He put us in this world to make it a better place, to do tikkun olam [making the world a better place], because a melech [king] without people, a melech, a king, needs the people to lehamlich oto [to crown him]. And without that, there wouldn’t be meaning. I feel like human beings give meaning to the world.

LEVY. So if He put us here in order to do good things, can we not do good things? Can we go against His will?

KOREN. God gave us free will as the midrash [expansive biblical exegesis] says. God put us in Gan Eden [the Garden of Eden] and He said: All of what I created, I created for you. Make sure that you don’t destroy the world, because if you corrupt the world, nobody can fix it after you. But definitely God gave us free will.

LEVY. What do you think of when you think about Mashiach [the Messianic Era]?

KOREN. Wow. I think about unity, peace, healing.

LEVY. Is the State of Israel part of the final redemption?

KOREN. Of course it is. As the navi [prophet] Ezekiel says in Ezekiel 36, it says, “Ve’atem harei Yisrael anpechem titenu uferyichem tisse’u le’ami Yisrael ki kirevu lavo.” What the prophet says, that the sign of geula [redemption] is when Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] is flourishing and fruitful and preparing itself for the people. And in our own eyes we see how in a hundred years this land that was desolate has become so fruitful, and we see the gathering of the exiles in Eretz Yisrael, which is unbelievable. I am thinking about how I came with my family in 1971 and the Sochnut [Jewish Agency] tried to convince my parents not to come. We were eight kids and both my parents [worked] in chinuch [education].

LEVY. Why didn’t they want them to come?

KOREN. Because, they said, “How are you going to make a living in Eretz Yisrael through education, through chinuch [education]?” And in the interview, we were interviewed in the Maariv [evening newspaper], the first page of the magazine, we still have it, and they asked my parents, “How are you going to make it?”

And my father said, “There are two million Jews here. They make it, how will we not make it?” And I think of it, in 1971 there were two million Jews, and look at Eretz Yisrael today. How many Jews do we have here?

LEVY. More than six million.

KOREN. Much more. Might be eight. And look at this land and baruch Hashem [thank God], my whole family, it is a shevet [tribe], I mean, we are over 150 descendants of my parents in Israel. So if that is not geula [redemption], I don’t know what is redemption.

LEVY. How many siblings do you have?

KOREN. Nine. I am one of nine.

LEVY. And how many children?

KOREN. How many children do I have? I have four children and fourteen grandchildren. So there are many, many. And that is geula [redemption], families coming and rebuilding. I don’t know if that is part of the interview, but it is okay. Can I say another thing? I want to talk to you about geula [redemption] also. When we came on aliya [immigrating to Israel], my parents wanted to get to the Kotel [Western Wall]. And at the time, maybe we were already nine kids because the ninth was born here. All stuffed in the car. And there was no Waze at the time, and my parents needed to get to the Kotel [Western Wall], they didn’t know how to get there. And they stopped a policeman on a white horse, and they asked him how to get there. And the policeman is speaking in Hebrew. And my mother, who is a music teacher in HALB, remembered this song from 1925 of Avigdor HaMeiri, a Hebrew poet, a sofer Ivri, about ha’ir [the city] Tel Aviv, “shebchol pina omed shoter ben brit, vehu medaber Ivrit,” [that on every corner stands a policeman of the covenant, and he speaks Hebrew] And my mother from New York, who remembered the Irish cops, was crying and she says, “If this’s not ge’ula and redemption, I don’t know what is redemption, that we have Jewish policemen.” 

And he just said to us, “Come after me,” and he took us straight to the Kotel [Western Wall]. That is geula [redemption].

LEVY. Beautiful. What is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish world today?

KOREN. Achdut [unity]. Not the outer enemies, the external enemies, but ourselves, respecting one another, unity, love to one another. And that is what we try to spread in the world. And I believe that Jewish mysticism, Pnimiyut HaTorah [the inner dimension of the Torah], can do that because at the end we are all connected at the core. And you know what I want to tell you also, that today we see it. We see the music that there is. We call it pop emuni. How would you say that?

LEVY: Faith pop music. 

KOREN: We call it faith pop music. I was at a hofaa [concert] in Caesarea of Hanan Ben Ari. The majority of the people weren’t religious, and everybody was singing his religious songs, songs of emuna [faith]. That is geula [redemption], and that is the pnimiyut [inner dimension] of the Jew, the neshama [soul] of the Jew. You can have a lot of external clothing and a lot of different things, but inside the neshama [soul] is yearning for its Creator.

LEVY. How has modernity changed Jewish mysticism?

KOREN. So I would say starting from Rabbi Kook already, the connection to the world, and that is why I am so connected to Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Kook took Pnimiyut HaTorah [the inner dimension of the Torah] and applied it to science, to philosophy. He spoke about Spinoza, he spoke about Darwinism, He spoke about art. He spoke about sports, the sports that the Jewish athletes were doing, and he got a lot of criticism for that, he saw the inner light in all of it. But I feel like modernity, the connection to modernity, brought Pnimiyut HaTorah [the inner dimension of the Torah] outside of the shtetl [small Jewish town] to all the realms of Israel and the world.

LEVY. What differentiates Jewish mysticism from other mystical traditions?

KOREN. I have to study more. I haven’t studied other mysticism so much. I am more into the mysticism of Judaism. What I must say is very important with the mysticism of Judaism is that it is about tikkun olam [making the world a better place] and not just about bettering your own self.

LEVY. Does one need to be religious to study Jewish mysticism?

KOREN. Definitely not. Definitely not. Everyone has a neshama [soul] and everyone has to connect to Hakadosh Baruch Hu [the Holy One, blessed be He]. And who is to say who is more religious than others?

LEVY. So can it be dangerous?

KOREN. Definitely. It can be dangerous because if you think you can only be mystic, sometimes you can lose your connection to reality. You can just be in that spiritual world, but we were brought here to do tikkun olam [making the world a better place], to take the spirituality and to fix this world, Olam Haasiya [the World of Action].

LEVY. How has Jewish mysticism affected your personal relationships? You have got so many siblings, and children, and grandchildren, and students, and colleagues. On a relational level, not just as a text.

KOREN. It helps to see the shoresh [root]. It helps to see the good, the spark in each one. That’s what it helps, the inner, Jewish mysticism.

LEVY. Is there a practical example, like when you’ve stopped and you remember, hang on a second, Jewish mysticism teaches this, and it changes how you look at it?

KOREN. For instance, I’ll give you an example. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov teaches that “veda ki tzarich ladun et kol adam lechaf zechut.” One has to judge each human being in a good way. And he says, and even if you see a person who is totally a rasha [wicked], who is totally not good, it can’t be that he doesn’t have that good spark in him. And if you find that goodness in him, that nekuda tova, that good point, and you discover it, you help that person to elevate himself and expand the goodness in him more and more. So that helps me with my relationship, and it helps me with my relationship with myself also, because Rabbi Nachman says just as you have to judge your fellow man favorably, you have to judge yourself favorably too. And you have to believe in yourself. Once you believe in yourself, once you love yourself, you have room to love everyone else.

LEVY. To close off this wonderful conversation, is there any teaching that you think of right now that inspires you that you can share with us?

KOREN. So I love stories, Hasidic stories, and I love to tell stories. And I have learned that from Rabbi Nachman and also from, of course, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. But Rabbi Nachman says that the world thinks that stories come to put people to sleep, and I say, says Rabbi Nachman, I tell stories to wake people up. And everyone has a part in his neshama [soul] that is asleep, that hasn’t been actualized in the world. As Rabbi Nachman says, people are walking around, they seem like they are awake, they are eating, they are drinking, maybe they are even learning Torah, but they are asleep, their neshama [soul] is asleep. And he said, through stories I wake people up. 

And one of my favorite stories is the story of Bat HaMelech Haavuda, the Lost Princess, where there was a king that had six sons and one daughter, the princess, and he loved the princess very much, and every day he would play with that princess. And one day he was angry with her and he said, “shehalo tov yikach otach,” let the not good take you. He woke up in the morning and she disappeared. And he was so sad, and he was sad because he loved the princess. So his minister went out to look for the princess. And he went in deserts and fields and didn’t find the princess until he came to this desert and he saw this castle. And there are guards in the castle and there are walls, and he said, “I am sure they won’t let me in.” But he starts going in, and he goes in and he goes in and he goes in until he gets to this beautiful ballroom and there’s singers and there’s beautiful vessels and there’s musicians and he sits on the sides and waits. And all of a sudden the king walks in and the queen. And he looks and he sees, “Wow, that is the princess, that is the lost princess.” And I won’t tell the whole story, but one point that I wanted to bring, a teaching that Rabbi Nachman says when this person thought that they wouldn’t let him in, when the minister thought he wouldn’t let him in, it was in his mind. As Rabbi Nachman says, people have obstacles, meni’ot [barriers] he calls it, walls, things that stop them from going forward. And he says “hameni’a hagedola mikol ze meni’at hamoach,” the biggest obstacle from moving forward is what you tell yourself. And once you just jump forward and take that leap of faith, you can change. The most important thing is that a person believes in himself that he can go forward. And that is a Torah that is very dear for my heart.

LEVY. Well, I think that you are able to teach that because you do that in your own life. You have traversed so many paths despite any meni’ot obstacles, you’ve pushed through, you’ve created such wonderful institutions and synagogues and communities and students, and we give you a blessing that you continue to do that every step of the way and inspire so many others to do the same.

KOREN. Thank you. Thank you very much.

LEVY. Thank you.