The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, September 20, 1984-Page 9
ifiion
Doesn^t want to lose touch
By
SATYADAS
EDMONTON -
Tevie Miller is probably the only senior Canadian judge to wear a Grey Gup ring.
He got it in 1976, the last of his six years as a director of the community-owned Edmphton Eskimos football club.
But that work is only a small part of the community service record of the 56-year-old Miller, Associate Chief Justice of Alberta's Court of Queen's Bench.
He has served everything from the United Way. to B'nai B'rith, from the Commonwealth Games to the World University Games.
"Commuhity service is important for those of us who have a good education paid for by the state,'' he said recently in his spacious office atop Edmonton's Law Courts. "We have an obligation to put something back into it."
Such service has been a way of life in his fa-mily.Father Abe was a member of the Alberta legislature and a city alderman, so there was "a natural evolution."
As a senior Vice-president of the Commonwealth Games in 1978, Miller helped lead the remarkable volunteer effort that made the games a success. Later, he used that expertise to bring Uniyersiade together in a very short lead time — less than three years.
He has served as president of the Edmonton Symphony Society, of the Edmonton Jewish Community Council and of B'nai B'rith Lodge
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During his distinguished career on the bench, he has set electoral boundaries, hiring and firing guidelines for policemen, determined salaries for Edmonton city council. : '
He had a run at politics hiniself as a Liberal, losing to Tory Marcel Lambert in the 1968 federal election.
Chief Justice Tevie Miller
Miller says community work has always been important to him, as a judge. "If you want to learn about what goes on in the community, that's the jplace to learn."
The last thing he wants to do is to lose touch by immersing himself in the often solitary life of a judge.
Miller distinguished himself at the University of Alberta, where he was presidertt of the students' union. Wh^n he followed in his father's footsteps by graduating from the U of A law school, he became the first child of a graduate
to do so. A generation later, his daughter Catherine Dolgoy became the firsU-generation graduate in law.
When Miller was appointed to the bench in 1974 as a district court judge, he had practised law for nearly 25 years. "Fourteen of those years were in practice with my late father, which was particularly satisfying," he said.
He was ready for a change, because the practice "wasn't quite as rniich fiin as it used to be."
Two years later, he was named a justice of Alberta's highest court, then known as the Supreme Court of Alberta, since changed to Court of Queen's Bench.
He is widely respected for his work on the bench, and many senior lawyers emerge from his court feeling is though they 're students again.
Turning to the history of the Jewish community in Edmonton, Miller noted that although it is less than 1 % of the population, "its impact has been far greater than its size."
It has * * always had individuals who have volunteered their talents," and "we have had some very prominent people over the years."
Maintaining Jewish traditions and culture is a problem in most parts of North America, and Edmonton is no dil^erent. But one thing that helps is the relative lack of prejudice. "Because of the cultural mix of the (citizens), Edmonton is a very unique place," he says. "Because of this open community^ there was no segregation here, people were not refused entry to clubs or organizations. That's one of the reasons I've felt warm toward this city."
Unlike Edmonton native Miller, his wife Arliss grew up in Vancouver. A graduate of the University of British Columbia, she too is active in community work. She is a past president of the National Council of Jewish Women, is on the board of the Edmonton Opera Association and is an executive of the CitadelTheatre's board of directors.
Daughter Catherine got a BSc.in nursing before her law degree. Married to a city lawyer, she lectures on legal and nursing problems to the Alberta Association of Registered Nurses, in between raising three children.
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Peonle are
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Son Joshua completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in New York before heading to Los Angeles to try launching a career as a screenwriter. He's still trying to sell his first wOrk in that tough market. ■.
Daughter Lisa is known to nearly every Ed-montonian who watches sports on television. She's a sportscaster on CFRN TV, one of the few women in that branch of journalism. ' 'People come up to me and ask if I'm Lisa Miller's father," laughs the justice.
Miller says he has no plans to leave Edmonton and will finish his career here. It's a very interesting period for the administration of justice, he notes.
"There's a far more knowledgeable public, people are more aware of their rights."
All this is for the good, he says. "People are less passive about things than they used to be."
English version liow available
ARNOLD AGES
We are indebted to Pinchas Peli, professor of Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University (and author of a weekly commentary on Torah in the Jerusalem Post) for bringing to the English-reading public Joseph B. Soloveitchik's magisterial views on repentance.
The origin of the current text is as interesting as the content! Rav Soloveitchik, the dean of Talmudists in North America, has published relatively little in English.
This is a pity for the "Rav," as he is known by the thousands of disciples who have studied with him, is the possessor of an encyclopedic knowledge of all the classical Jewish sources as well as a mastery of the major philosophical texts of Western civilization.
His lecturing over the past several decades has. been done in Yiddish, Hebrew and English. His listeners have described with awe how the Rav lectures, on occasion, for four hours without notes — always presenting his arguments with coherence, cogency and symmetry.
Felicitously some of his students have kept meticulous notes of his lectures and the current volume on repentance owes its genesis to that practice.
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Pinchas Peli, one of Soloveitchik's most ardent admirers, first published his version of the repentance text in Hebrew and now the Paulist Press in New Jersey had issued an English version called On Repentance: the Thought and Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph B; Soloveitchik.
The timing could not be better: it appears in most book stores in the month of Elul,' a time for Jewish introspection.
Soloveitchik's thoughts on repentance are wonderful exercises in private meditation which can
assist the Jewish worshiper in both understanding the dynamics of repentance in Jewish law and lore and help him in adjusting to the demands of the High Holiday season.
His intellectual canvas is exceptionally broad. His citations are drawn from the Torah, talmud-ic literature, the Kabbalah, chassidic texts, Nietzche, Spinoza, Maimonides and a host Of private sources, including family anecdotes from the Brisker dynasty.
The result is a stunning overview of traditional ideas on the age-old question of sin and repentance, but mediated through Soloveitchik's absolutely unique expository skills.
He notes, for example that in the Conununist dialectic there is no word for sin; there is merely error and deviation. In Judaism, however, the concept of sin as "metaphysical impurity" or "psychic pollution" is an integral part of the religious perspective.
In his discussion of the mechanisms through which the Jew goes through on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Rav makes a number of telling points. There can be ho repentance by proxy, he informs us. Moreover, there are two aspects in the repentance scenario. One involves "kapparah" — that is acquittal, the first stage in the process, and the other "taharah" — purification, without which the repentance exercise is incomplete. -
In his excursus into Maimonides's Hilchot Teshuva, (the great medieval text on repentance) Soloveitchik concentrates oh such questions as the intent of the worshipper, his sincerity and the utter, dependence of man On divine grace.
We are informed, for example, that seeking forgiveness is basically an irrational act, one that even the angels cannot understand. The Jew bypasses the uitermediaries and goes straight to the heavenly abode to seek the direct intervention of the Almighty.
Among the most penetrating insights offered by the Rav are his comments on the nature and scope of sin. He makes the point that the Hebrew concept of Teshuva (rooted in the Hebrew Bible) can be compared to the position of a man -on a circle. As he starts out he appears to be distancing himself from the ideal position on the circumference. That is the state of sin. Yet if he continues the path he will discover that circularity permits him to come back to his pristine pure essence. '
Soloveitchik compares true confession to the act of sacrifice."Just as sacrifice is burnt upon the altar .so do we burn down, by our act of confession, our well barricaded complaceny, our overblown pride^ our artificial existence. Then
and only then: 'Be you cleansed before the Lord.' Happy are you Israel!"
Confession in the Jewish worship, Soloveitchik observes, takes two forms: private and public. They are, according to the Rav, basically different in mode and intent. i
"When the individual Confesses he does so from a state of insecurity, depression and despair in the wake of sin. For what assurance has he that he will be acquitted of his sins? And who can promise him that his transgression will be forgotten and will not haunt him till the end of his days?
"In contrast, Knesset Israel — and each and every Jewish community is considered to be a microcosm of the whole of Knesset Israel — confesses out of a sense of confidence and even rejoicing, for it does so in the presence of a loyal ally . .. before its most beloved one. In fact, in certain Jewish communities (I myself heard this in Germany) it is customary for the whole congregation to sing the al-het confession in heartwarming melodies.
"The individual does not sing al-het; he weeps. Not so the community, because it does not come to plead for stonement; it claims it as its right."
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The soul retains
its capacity for purity
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That kind of confidence, according to the Rav, flows from the Jewish persective that, despite the sinfulness ofjnan, the soul always retains its capacity for purity. Indeed the truly penitent individual, Soloveitchik points out, can build on his former depraved state and construct a stronger human personality. In some cases this will require a complete transformation in the person who has become contrite. In other cases the rhythm of life will be altered only slightly.
Joseph Soloveitchik is not merely one of the great decisors of this age, he is also an astute
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
literary critic. His explanations of the litui^ found in the traditional mahzor is both edifying and instructive. One of the finest examples of this comes in his interpretation of the word "aval" in the declaration of sinfuUness. He says that the word should not be translated as "but;" the correct translation is "indeed."
"The aval used in the confession we are dealing with signifies "indeed," or "in truth," as if to say "we can no longer evade it, we no longer have a choice: we must repent, we must make confession." Soloveitchik's comments on the way in which true repentance constitutes a re-enactment of the covenant are equally valuable.
"Repentance not only cleanses the sinner of the pollution of sin, it implies a sort of re-enactment of the covenant between an individual peirson and the Holy One, blessed be He. It follows that repentance is not only purification of character, it also sanctifies the persona, qualifying him once more to be a partner in the covenant."