.^AaOROERS
■I »
Remember the Louis Brier Home and Hospital In your will
with a bequest to the
Louis Brier Jewish Aged Foundation
Telephone: 261-5550 Fax: 261-5565
Relatives and Friends are advised that the
UNVEILING OF HEADSTONE
in loving memory of the late
STANIB/Y
will take place Sunday, April 16 at 1 p.m. at the
Schara Tzedeck Cemetery
Rev. P. Bregman will officiate
DEATH ANNOUNCEMENTS
IDA TAYLOR March 29
7^
ObMes
Sari Corbin
SARI CORBIN Nl^E RABKIN
Sari Rabkin was bom in Winnipeg, Man., February 1913, the eldest daughter of Russian immigrants to Canada. At a young age, she displayed a breathtaking array of talents from athletics to painting to scholarship. She earned post-secondaiy certificates to teach Hebrew and English while she was actively painting and designing.
However, it was the gift of voice that shaped her Hfe. She won many singing competitions some even as a yoimg girl before she had taken voice lessons. Her love of singing and her dedication to it enabled her to convince her parents that she should go to New York. She studied at the Julliard School for music.
Singing the pop songs of the day in resort and nightclubs in New York and in the CatskDls earned her the money to continue to study opera at Julliard. Winning a vocal contest on the Arthur Godfrey Slow gained her an audition at the Metropolitan Opera in New York However, her career in New York ended when she had to return to Canada in the late 1930s.
She returned to Winnipeg and married Tafiy Corbin. They moved to Vancouver in the 1950s, where Taffy practised dentistiy for many years. Sari was a devoted wife and cared for her mother who liv^ with her for parts of the year. She sang on the Canadian Broadcasting Network, the predecessor of the CBC, for years and gave small concerts into the 19503. Thereafter, she sang for a while in the Beth Israel choir.
Corbin grew up in a household where Yiddish was spoken and she had a special affinity for these songs, which she sang with passion and tenderness. Corbin was an artist who wore elaborate clothing or stunning jewelry but most of all she was dramatic, dramatic in her si)eech, in her song and in the way she dressed. She soared like her voice; a yoimg Jewish woman from Winnipeg who, in the 1930s, sang at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She was in control of her life almost till the end, when she succumbed to cancer. Her brother Roy Rabkin and sister Hilary Thomas predeceased her. Her sisters Selma MackofF, Myra Borovick, brother Fred Rabkin and 14 nieces and nephews, survive her. □
Chess champion passes
Abe Yanofsky/grand master and Winnipeg politician.
Abe Yanofeky, a child prodigy at chess and a Winnipeg politician, passed away March 5, at age 74. Yanofeky began playing chess at age eight and became one of the world's most noted players after bursting on the scene by winning two diess tities at a Dominion championship in Toronto in 1933.
Bom in Brody, Poland, in 1925, Daniel Abraham Yanof-sky came to Canada with his parents when he was an infant He attended Winnipeg public schools and received a Jewish education in the evenings at Talmud Torah, where his father was a teacher."
Yanofsky became the family provider after his father died when Abe was 13, but he still found time to play chess and study at luiiversity, completing a law degree at the University of Manitoba after which he com-
pleted a two-year post-graduate program at Oxford University. While there, he won the umver-sitys gold medal in law and, in his spare time, took the British chess championship both years he was at Oxford.
Returning to Canada, he practised law in Wiimipeg from 1951 to 1997 and was elected mayor of the Wnnipeg suburb ofWest Kl-donan in 1961. Ailer the city of Winnipeg amalgamated with its suburbs in 1970, Yanofslqr continued as a councillor and served as the city's finance chaiiman until 1986.
Yanofsky won Manitoba's top chess title so many times that he was asked in 1942 to stop competing and was given the trophy for life. He became Canada's first chess grand master, earning the title in 1964 in Tel-Aviv.
Yanofsky, who died of cancer, is survived by his wife. Heather, and foiir children. □
Torah Porti
on
Towards a perfect world
Our life challenge is to purify and redeenn ourselves.
RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN TORAH COLUMNIST
Tazriah
Leviticus: 12:1-13:59 Efrat
The major subject of this week's and next week's Torah portion is that of ritual pimty and impurity. In the midst of the discussion of a childbearer's state of impurity, comes the command of circiunci-sion: "When a woman conceives and gives birth to a boy, she shall be ritually impure for seven days, just as she is impure during the time of separation when she has her period. On the eighth day, [the child's] foreskin shall be circumcised, then, for 33 additional days, she shall sit on blood of purity." (Leviticus 12:2-4)
Why is this command placed between the impure and pim; periods following childbirth? Moreover, our sages derive from this ordinance that the ritual of circumcision overrides the Sabbath: "On the eighth day, foreskin shall be circumcised - even if it falls out on the Sabbath." (B.T. Shab-bat 132a) Why express this significance within the context of ritual impurity?-
Targum Yonatan Ben Uziel links the issues by interpreting: "And on the eighth day, when [she] is permitted [to have sexual relations with her husband], on that [day] is [the baby] to be circumcised." He is thereby citing the view of our sages, who understand that the circumcision must be on the eighth day following the birth "so that everyone not be happy while the parents will be sad" if they cannot properly express their affection towards one another. (B.T. NiddahSlb)
When a woman is in a state of ritual impurity, she and her husband are forbidden from engaging in sexual relations until she immerses in a mikveh (ritual bath). This restriction demands a great deal of self-control and discipline. The major symbol which graphically expresses the importance of mastering one's physical instincts is the command of circumcision: the sexual organ itself must be tempered and sanctified by the stamp of the Divine.
A well-known midrash takes this even farther "Tumus Rufus the wicked once asked Rabbi Aki-va: 'Whose works are better, the works of G-d or the works of human beings?' He answered him, 'the works of human beings....' [Rufus] said to him, "Why do you circumcise? [Akiva] said, 1 knew you were asking about that, and therefore I anticipated [the ques-
tion] and told you tliat the works of human beings are better.' Rufus said to him: "But if G-d wants men to be circumcised, why docs He not see to it that male babies are bom already circumcised?' Akiva said to him, 'It is because the Holy One Blessed be He only gave the commandments to Israel so that we may be purified through them.'" (Midrash Tan-huma, Tazria 5)
The human being is part of the physical creation of the world, a world which is subject to scientific rules of health and illness, life and death. The most obvious expression of our physicality is that we are doomed to be bom, disintegrate and die. Therefore, the most radical example of ritual impurity is a human corpse; an animal carcass, a dead reptile and the blood of the mcnstmal cycle (fall-out of the failed potential of fertilization) likewise cause ritual impurity. A woman in childbirth has two bmshes with death - in terms of her own mortality as well as during the moment before she hears the cry of a healthy, living baby.
G-d's gift to the human being created in His image is that, in addition to physicality, there is spirituality; in addition to death there is life, and in addition to ritual impurity {tumah) there is ritual purity (taliara). Hence, the life that emerges from the mother's womb brings not only the bmsh with death, tumah, but also the hope of new life, taliara. And, while the tumah is for seven days, the taliara is for 33!
This was the message Akiva attempted to convey to Rufus. The world created by the Almighty is magnificent but incomplete. G-d has given the task of completion to human beings. Humans have the power to overcome their physical impediments and imperfections, to sanctify their animal instincts, to redeem an imperfect world. Indeed, the works of the human being are greater! And the command of circumcision belongs within the context of impurity and purity.
This is also what our sages were trying to convey when they taught that circumcision overrides the Sabbath. The Sabbath testifies to G-d's creation of the world. Circumcision testifies to the human being's challenge to redeem himself and perfect the world.
Shabbat Shalom. □
Rabbi Shiomo Riskin is cliief rabbi of Efrat, Israel, and dean ofOlir Torali institutions in Israel.