S.O.T.R.U. Essay 2: The Footprints of Marty Chernoff

“It must be acknowledged as true that those capable of great insight are also capable of the most grievous of errors.” – Descartes

I. IN THIS ESSAY

Trying to talk about Messianic Judaism after 1970 without talking about Marty Chernoff is like trying to talk about psychology after 1890 without talking about Sigmund Freud. Not everyone agrees with Freud, or even affirms his theories are valid; but no one can deny his impact on his sphere.

In regard to the global Messianic Jewish Movement, Marty Chernoff did one highly impactful thing very, very right – and one highly impactful thing that was in my view terribly, terribly wrong. The thing he did right continues to be perhaps the landmark positive ideology breakthrough of the entire modern movement: the thing he did wrong continues up to present moment to be morally poisoning the entire spiritual sphere to which he devoted his life’s work.

Believing as I do what is summed above to be true – I have a moral obligation to state it. (Ezekiel 33:6) 

Once it is offered for consideration, what happens afterwards is God’s affair. I am offering it because it seems to me no one other than Marty’s children are talking about him, and when they do – they reduce him to a monolithic figure, all one substance – an unerring prophet who was the Moses of the modern era. Marty was not all one thing, and the differing aspects of his impact need to be discussed dispassionately and understood clearly if Two Testament Judaism is to become more healthy in the coming decades and beyond.

II. MY STANDING TO WRITE

  I knew Marty chernoff personally, and well. 

He was the leader who raised me into teaching ministry in elementary and secondary formal education, and later teaching of adults, and later, as a yeshiva instructor to clergy in training. 

Marty Chernoff was the first rabbi to ordain me as a spiritual leader. He invited me to stay over for days at a time often in the home of his family during the last year and a half of his life, and I continued at the invitation of his family to live full time in their home with their mother and a two other boarders for the five years that followed Marty’s death. Sitting in the family’s kitchen, I helped his widow write the Hebrew epitaph that would go on his grave monument. When I was readying to marry my wife, Debi – Marty’s youngest son, David, approached me personally about buying his town-home, which he sold to me privately, and thus his former house became my family’s first home. 

For David and his wife, Debbie, my wife and I rushed over late at night at their request and baby-sat their daughter in their new home while he and his wife went to the hospital for the birth of their second child. Marty’s other other son, Joel was my foremost mentor and colleague, with whom I jogged several days a week, spoke on the phone a few times a day, and traveled doing ministry all across the USA and Israel in word and in music. His former partner, Rick “Levi” Coghill was co-producer of my record albums as well as Joel’s. I wrote Marty’s daughter Hope’s wedding song, at her request. David’s wife Debbie sang back-up vocals on my duet album and at my wedding. And so on, and so on.

In sum – I was close enough to Marty and his family to know him and them very, very well.

For the sake of better health in our Movement via better understanding of what influenced and still influences it … my aim here is to deconstruct Marty - but not defame him.

I want Marty to be understood – not erased or wantonly disrespected.

Sorry to disappoint his enemies, but I am not out to wreck him. Marty’s children and their misdeeds in the decades following Marty’s passing are a different matter; and I will deal with them later. In this essay, I mostly confine my remarks to Marty, himself.

Marty’s family treat him since his death as unidimensional –an all-wise, all-good tower of spiritual power and impact – a kind of “Moses” of the modern Messianic Movement – a prophet, having said and done prophetic things; and supposedly having left behind “a designated Joshua” (his son, David) to pick up where he left off. However - Marty Chernoff was not the one-substance being as which he is treated; and his son, David, being some kind “Joshua” seems to me a grievous error Marty made as a father (simply trying to insure his youngest son had a livelihood), that ruined the Philadelphian synagogue and harmed everywhere its influence touches.

Marty Chernoff was a man with facets.

Some were good – some were neutral or dual – and some were not so positive. 

I do not begrudge him his imperfections: I have too many of my own. I write here because the main negative aspect of his unanalyzed footprint is crushing people – and it needs attention repair before it goes along its unexamined and high-impact trajectory any further.

Let’s try to understand Marty Chernoff’s major footprints.

III. WHO WAS MARTY CHERNOFF?

Marty was a Canadian born, “born-again” Jewish Christian for the early part of his spiritual life. He morphed across time into more of a Pentecostal-style Believer and minister, focusing on “the gifts of the Spirit” and the present-tense wonder-workings of God among people, becoming what is best described in one word as a “revivalist.” Marty’s hero was Charles G. Finney, the 19th century Christian minister who led huge mass-awakenings all across the eastern United States, emphasizing intercessory prayer and confrontational preaching. Chernoff added, as Finney never had, a focus on miracle-getting from God via “laying on of hands,” being “slain in the Spirit” (falling over when being prayed for, per one reading of the scene described in 1Kings 8:11 when the Spirit of God filled the ancient Temple) and other such spiritual phenomena. 

Ordained originally as a Baptist, Marty across time disconnected from the Baptist stream and its non-phenomenal theology – and also from the social “Christian” label with all its connotations. He raised up a Jewish Two-Testament Congregation in Cincinnati, and later expanded an already-begun group in Philadelphia; and these two synagogues, along with a small cadre of next-generation youth leaders who came from them, formed the credential that gave Marty leverage as a more than local leader. He came into prominence in the “Hebrew Christian Alliance of America (HCAA)” in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s – and that was when he had what is, in my view, the greatest positive spiritual impact-moment in his entire life’s work.

IV. MARTY’S GREATEST MOMENT

Marty Chernoff was the first modern American Jewish Two Testament leader to see clearly that Jewish people holding faith in Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth as Messiah did not remove themselves from Judaism; and he was able to socialize that insight into concrete expression in communities and associations. This is, in my view, his singular positive achievement.

In Marty’s own words:

“We are not some fourth branch of Judaism. We are Judaism. We are Biblical Judaism.”

These two compact sentences changed the Western religious landscape forever. 

Marty was the first to see clearly the Bible-based faith stream in which Jewish individuals and communities holding faith in the Two Testaments could – and should – identify as endemically Jewish. He believed this Jewish group would be a steadily growing presence across time, and referred to it as “The Great End-Time Jewish Revival” –– an expectation he held based on the forecasts in places like Deuteronomy 30 and Ezekiel 36, which pair Jewish return to our homeland with a great national religious awakening. His wife, Yohanna, tended to call this “The Two Zionisms: one physical, the other spiritual.” She saw them as one expression of God’s Spirit moving on two frequencies simultaneously. Her teaching presenting this refinement of Marty’s views inspired countless Jewish young people – myself among them. As a team, Marty and Johanna were transformative on a level and with a reach no other husband-wife team in the modern Messianic Jewish resurgence has come close to matching.

Marty championed his “We Are Judaism” view relentlessly, and was the primary force in the 1970’s for causing the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America (HCAA) in existence since 1915 to change its name to what it is today: “The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America” or “MJAA.”

To appreciate this achievement, you need to understand the depth of the anti-Jewish imprint of Western Christianity beforehand – especially after the influence of Luther – which had virulently polarized the daughter faith (Christianity) and (New)Testament as representing “grace” antithetical to the parent faith (Judaism) and Testament representing legalistic bondage. Things were that bad. 

At a 1960’s HCAA Conference, a near-brawl broke out when a group of attendees starting singing the traditional Jewish fellowship song, Hinei Ma Tov based Psalm 133. Shouts of, “Judaizers!” and “Heresy!” and “Rebuilding ‘The Partition Wall!” filled the room. Somehow, Marty Chernoff was able during his tenure as President to get the Alliance to see the need to change its stripes, not merely as an advertising or public-relations maneuver – but as an expression of a fundamental change in its self-understanding. 

There were others across the years who tinkered with this idea in fragmentary form. The book, The Calling, written by one of Chernoff’s disciples, Dr. Robert Winer, is a history of the MJAA in which one can read of the other men and women who laid fragments of the groundwork for what Chernoff was able more fully to realize. Dr. Mark Kinzer’s more recent book, “Post-Missionary Messianic Judaism” (©2005 Brazos Press - ISBN 1-58743-152-1) does a scholarly, in-depth presentation of this transformed self-view and world-view.

So much for lionizing Marty’s positive footprint.

Now – to deal with his deadly negative legacy 

V. “FIERCE LOYALTY” - MARTY’S TRAUMA BECOMES ALLIANCE DOCTRINE

Marty was traumatized into his doctrine of “fierce loyalty” by a betrayal and harm he suffered in Cincinatti, when the first synagogue he planted was nearly stolen out from under him by his most trusted friend/colleague. 

Sadly, Marty and his sons have always acted as if Marty had invented something new, called, “fierce loyalty” – or, at the least, had a new, clarifying insight into a poorly understood aspect of pragmatic theology. 

He was, in fact, installing a very old paradigm.

It is called, fascism.

Simply put, fascism is rule by a small cluster of empowered individuals who are either overtly or covertly not subject to the  normative accountability processes to which the rank and file are subject.

This is not hearsay: Marty taught this to me directly, person-to-person, while I was living in his home during my training period. He said (Italics below giving Marty’s vocal emphases):

“Bruce, if you are ever in charge of any group or even a congregation, make sure that the people you delegate authority to are fiercely loyal to you. Fierce loyalty is the most important thing about choosing people; they must fiercely loyal to you, personally, as the leader.” 

After I was ordained into the rabbinate, Marty’s son Joel told me once over a cup of coffee in Orlando, Florida – “Bruce, everybody knew you were eventually going to be a rabbi. It was like a no-brainer.” Apparently, Marty knew this about me earlier than most, and was training me on the fly while I lived in his home.

The problem with fierce loyalty as Marty espoused it is that firstly, it is an anti-Biblical concept.

In Scripture, the primary quality of leadership selection is that they be “people truth, who despise tainted gain.” This qualification is repeated in both Testaments. 

Personal loyalty is not espoused by, nor modeled in Scripture as a primary leadership trait. Even the “heroes who gathered together to make David king in Jerusalem” are seen at various times putting loyalty to truth before loyalty to David – even at risk of their own necks. Kind David was challenged on military, personal, and ethical decisions – and his people did not on any level simply look the other way in Mafia “goodfella” fashion when Israel’s leaders were caught in wrongdoing. 

Fierce personal loyalty is not even modeled within a family: the insane and evil King Saul’s son Jonathan did not follow his father in attempting to murder King David. Loyalty only goes so far. Yeshua of Nazareth warned, “a person’s adversaries can be those of his own household, a father against son, mother against daughter, brother against brother.” Truth comes first.

I have never known anyone more dedicated to following the verified directives of Scripture than was Marty Chernoff. How did a man with such dedication go so far astray?

My view is – via trauma.

King Solomon observed in Ecclesiastes that “Oppression will make a sage go insane.” (Ecclesiastes 7:7)

In Cincinnati, Marty Chernoff allegedly nearly lost his congregation to a faction led by one of his closest friends, to whom he had entrusted great access and influence. As the story was told and retold to me by the Chernoff crew, Marty awoke one day to find his congregation nearly stolen and his entire financial and ministerial future threatened. It gave him a heart attack, which was then complicated by a medical mistake in administering too much blood thinner to him, which almost killed him.

Marty came out of that experience changed.

He thereafter selected people to be closest to him who were often of markedly less-than-stellar ability and acumen – but were lavishly admiring, and absolutely loyal (and compliant) to him, personally. 

From that time forward, Marty spoke increasingly derisively of “gifts and talents,” and began teaching consistently that “God uses ordinary people, so He gets the glory.” 

Ignoring that Moses was an experienced desert-warfare general, expert at leading large numbers of people through desert – as well as being a legal expert due to his having been raised in Pharaoh’s family, where his word was law –– and despite Rabbi Saul of Tarshish having been a gifted, educated, highly experienced Jewish legal expert who was assigned by God the task of penning most of the New Testaments legal polity and theology ––– and countless other Biblical examples of talents merged by God with callings ––– Marty collected around himself mostly unremarkable people without the gifts needed for the tasks they handled ––– which often resulted in melt-downs; but they were people Marty knew were personally loyal to him, beholden to him directly for all they had –– who would never “betray” him in the manner he felt he was betrayed in Cincinnati.

This is the mechanism by which the Chernoff work-product drifted across years into flawed, cultic results. 

The above dynamics were the opposites of why I was first drawn to Marty as I was finishing college.

When I moved to Philadelphia after college, I thought in Marty I had found a leader who had achieved a balance of spiritual temperance and vibrancy, and personal relationship with judicial equity. He was bent on spiritual reality, but always “testing to make sure” as Scripture commanded. He was warm and welcoming, but could be severe and judicial when needed – and forgiving of mistakes. I made a few – he handled them according to their weight and with forgiving grace – and then we moved on to become quite close as trainer-trainee. I admired that he could move on. Years later, he humbly asked me to tutor him in Hebrew, to improve his post-Baptist lack of pulpit skills that are deemed in the Jewish world as natural to a “rabbi” standing the bima. In my experience of him, Marty’s “moving on” never took the form of “winking at sin,” or abandoning the Scriptural standards: at least, not in my presence. 

As Marty was fond of saying – which I now apply to his own path: “A person can be sincere, and be sincerely wrong.”

I do not doubt Marty was trying sincerely to create a correct synthesis of what he claimed he experienced in Cincinnati; but – with respect – I believe he was deadly wrong in regard to his view of “fierce loyalty.”

VI. ANTI-BIBLICAL OPERATION OF MINISTRIES

“By their fruits you will know them,” – Matthew 7:20

The fruit of Marty’s leadership training has included a pattern of fascism in nearly all his close-disciples. Due process has disappeared from the Messianic Jewish world – and Marty’s son Joel is proud of it. He told one Messianic leader who was asking about a matter filed with the MJAA Judiciary for handling that it would not be handled according to the Constitution’s (and Bible’s) commanded protocols. His exact words were, “Oh, we don’t do things that way any more. We do them ‘by relationship.’”

The reason Scripture directly forbids this is, those will less relationship inevitably get less justice. 

  Joel Chernoff’s words describe a non-formal, back-room series of conversations outside due process and accountability. 

The obvious problem with such a process – and why Scripture forbids it – is that some people will have closer relationships with the power-brokers than others. Some will be politically or financially more useful than others.

“By relationship” as the metric makes highly likely the doom of the person with less relationship.

Handling judicial matters “by relationship” is the exact opposite of what Scripture commands. “You shall not know faces in justice. Do all things in absolute non-bias, favoring no one.” Jewish law has understood this concept across the centuries and written it down as, A judge or juror cannot either love or hate any party at the bar of justice; nor can a judge or juror have any personal vested interest in the matter. (Lev. 19, Prov. 24:23, 1Tim. 5:21)

Handling things “by relationship,” when David Chernoff was charged in 1999 with crimes that could have ended his career, the three man panel handling that case was composed of two of David Chernoff’s best friends – and one ambitious former evidence forger who was actually proven during the meeting to have served forged evidence and lied under oath about Joel Chernoff’s high involvement in fomenting the case. Of course, David Chernoff’s two best friends did nothing in regard to these massive breaches of believing judicial ethics and false witness commandment. They protected their friend from the case that could have wrecked his standing; and made sure the finding derailed the less-empowered plaintiff’s already 7-month delayed case against David Chernoff.

The Messianic organizations in North America now function more like petty-Mafias than faith organizations.

Let me be specific about the above rather sensational sentence.

Rich Nichol, UMJC Executive (when his colleague was caught in perjury) – “What can I say? These are my guys, and I don’t care what they may have done, I’m with them.”

Joel Chernoff (when his brother was caught in multiple breaches of ethics and harm doing) – “Want to know how you can make all this trouble go away? No matter what David (Chernoff) does, just keep affirming him.”

Jonathan Bernis – “There is no way around David Chernoff in the MJAA. He sees the world in black and white: you are either for him or against him; and if he thinks you are against him, he comes after you this way (back room slander attacks and influence abuse to sabotage opponents reputations and career standing).”

This is the Mafia model: this is fascism.

If you are “in” – then you can do anything you want to people who are not “in.” 

VII. HOW DAVID CHERNOFF CARRIED ON MARTY’S ERROR

Rabbinic/Overseer level authorities in spiritual communities, when an under-leader is caught in wrong-doing, is commanded by Scripture to “handle the matter in such a way as teaches the other (leaders) to fear God.” (1Tim. 5). David Chernoff has, through his handling of his under leaders being caught in massively serious sin, sent the message, “As long as the person you hurt or rob is less important to me than you, you are safe.”

It has been ruinous to the entire modern Movement.

The Mafia has redefined the word “good” – it means someone you can rely upon to obey omertà, the law of silence. If you see someone in your crew do evil, you never say anything, and you destroy anyone who tries.

Since David Chernoff’s influence and standing were inherited, not merited –– he frankly often has no idea what he should be doing –– and he often makes up self-contradictory stories on the spot to cover his own or his crew’s wrongdoings or lack of sound navigating capacity.

The Biblical standard voiced directly in Leviticus 5:1 is the exact opposite of the Mafia’s omertà. If a Believer knows anything about a matter of false oath or harm-doing – he or she cannot wait to be called by the authorities to testify: they must come forward on their own initiative and tell all they know that relates to the matter.

In the documentary film, The Seven-Five, about the corrupt police precinct in Brooklyn New York that became an organized crime headquarters – the phrase “a good cop” was defined the way the famed movie Goodfellas showed the redefinition of what a “good guy” was in the Mafia. In both places, the word “good” meant “fiercely loyal to all his fellow cops or mafiosi.” A guy who could be relied upon to look the other way when his fellow cops or mafiosi – any “made guy” who was in the inner-circle – did anything wrongful in any way.

Good came to mean bad.

“Woe unto those who exchange good for bad, light for darkness.” (Isaiah 5:20) is what the Scriptures teach us. “Woe” means harm.

Marty’s “fierce personal loyalty to you as The Leader” precept as the prime qualification for leadership has led to creation of an under-qualified, dangerous, highly biased, layer of leaders holding power in many corners of the Messianic Jewish world. Leaders who do not have the first idea how to discharge their responsibilities honorably or correctly. They cover their friends wrongdoings even by harming their innocent victims, and they protect the power holders to whom they are beholden for their offices and positions. Details on specific cases will be present in upcoming State Of The Reunion essays.

This is all directly forbidden of leaders in Scripture.

You shall not know faces in judgment.

Seek out from among yourselves people of truth, who hate tainted gain, and make them leaders of thousands, hundreds, and tens.

Personal relationship was never to be the main point: and being “of the truth” (the very language Yeshua of Nazareth used to describe people in actual relationship with him) was the epicenter of all delegation of authority.

Marty Chernoff taught this completely wrongly.

What chance is there that the two best friends of a high office holder will be able to enact unbiased due process in regard to crimes of which their friend is accused, which might cost him his career? 

When the Plaintiff against David Chernoff heard the three-man court would have two of David Chernoff’s self-described “best friends” as judges, he appealed to the head of the MJAA’s Rabbinic association, the IAMCS. That man wrote back to the Plaintiff, enraged at the suggestion Chernoff’s two best friends should be recused (excused from serving as judges), strongly stating that they were godly men who could achieve sufficient non-bias.

As to being “godly” – one of the two men was, it turned out, in the midst of an adulterous affair that shortly thereafter wrecked his ministry and destroyed his marriage – while he was sitting as a judge of righteous conduct by another rabbi! 

VIII. WHEN HEALTHY CONDUCT IS OBVIOUSLY MISSING

In a healthy environment, if Marty Chernoff had trained his sons and other under-leaders correctly ––– those two best friends of his son would have recused themselves upon being asked to serve. They would have openly stated, “The Defendant is my best friend: I can’t serve as a judge in a case upon which his entire career depends.”  Judicial recusal is one of the standard tools by which civilized and Judeo-Christian justice prevents miscarriage of justice. 

You are forbidden to handle judicial matters “by relationship.”

Not in post-Marty Chernoff Messianism.

This must be repaired if Two Testament Judaism is to be a safe place into which our Jewish people may enter and dwell.

FLAWED THEOLOGY IN ACTION DOES HARM

When the MJAA went morally off the rails between 1997-2001, the reaction of most of the under-leaders was unquestioning support of the highest tiers of power – to the extent that even ambitious attorneys, who should know better about correct due process, were making openly unequivocal statements of support and exoneration of the accused Executives without so much as one conversation with the Accusers, or evaluation of even one piece of evidence or testimony. 

This was flunking “spiritual kindergarten.”

“The first to state his case always seems right, until his neighbor cross-examines him.”  Proverbs 18:17 – and – “It is not good to be without sufficient knowledge; therefore, a person who decides a matter without fully hearing it, it will become folly and shame to him.” Proverbs 18:13 

The people who hasted to cover up for the sinning and criminally misbehaving leaders were instantly rewarded with being raised into prominence. People no one ever heard of were instantly put on conference podia to defend the purity of the status quo: people with no personal acquaintance with Defendants were making global and universal statements of their innocence without so much as one viewing of evidence or testimony.

It was “rally around the monarch” time.

It was Marty Chernoff’s “fierce loyalty” policy in action.

Columnist George Will once wrote, “The problem with the younger generation is often that they have not read the minutes of the last meeting.”

Marty, for all his positive qualities, could not see that his “new” policy of “fierce personal loyalty” was not a new  spiritual positive – but a very old negative called, fascism.

The MJAA is now, for the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a fascist organization disguised as a democracy.

Is this known?

Hear other voices on it than mine.

In addition to the voices I quoted above, add these:

“No one knows what they’re doing with these charges against David Chernoff. No one has ever held David accountable for anything before. No one knows what to do.” - Rabbi M. Silberling, MJAA Executive Committee

“Well, all of us have been hearing these things about the Chernoffs for years: but no one who charges them ever sticks: they always wear them down and outlast them.” – IMJA Executive Committee Member, Virginia Exec Meeting 1999

“Well, the IMJA doesn’t have the money or qualified people to handle cases like this (that its Constitution requires be handled), so we’re going to drop it. And - the Movement can’t really afford to lose the Chernoffs or these other people accused with them. So - we won’t be handling these charges.” – Paul Liberman, IMJA General Secretary, to Plaintiff against the Chernoffs and the MJAA

“The Movement can’t afford to lose the Chernoffs,” is remarkably similar to the German nation’s justification for putting up with Hitler’s eccentricities … like murdering any dissenters. The motto became, “The Führer is good for Germany.” I offer for consideration that the thing the Messianic Movement can’t afford to be without is not the Chernoffs … but, the Spirit Of God.

Is it not by Your going with us that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from (the religions of) all the other people who are upon the face of the earth?” – Exodus 33:16

Do not grieve away the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. - Ephesians 4:30

There is a famed story about longtime US Senate leader Sam Rayburn, when he met a new congressman. He asked the young man, “Can I count on your loyalty?” The young man is said to have replied, “Sir, you can count on my support when I think you’re right, and my opposition when I think you’re wrong.” Rayburn is said to have put his arm around the young man’s shoulders, and to have said with a grin, “Son – I don’t need your loyalty when I’m right.”

“Fierce personal loyalty to the leader” is not the primary facet of lower-tier leadership selection.

Marty did the Movement much harm with this teaching.

Messianic Judaism does not dishonor him by severing this from his positive legacy, and fixing it.

He did the best he could.

He was just a man.

In regard to teachings of any human, we are told, “Go consult the Torah and the Testimony (of the Prophets). If the one who teaches does not speak in agreement with those confirmed inspired writings, there is no ‘dawn’ (spiritual truth) in what they say.” – Isaiah 8:20 targum. 

IX. DECONSTRUCTING MARTY’S INFLUENCE FOR HEALTH’S SAKE

“The priesthood shall teach Israel how to differentiate between clean and unclean, holy and unholy.” – Ezekiel 44:23

Marty’s teaching on endemic Jewish identity was spot-on agreement with the Inspired Writings: see Acts 21:18-25; and it is feeding the world-wide Jewish faith community to the present day.

Marty’s teaching on “fierce loyalty” is directly contrary to the teaching of the Inspired Writings.

If Yeshua the Messiah’s close friend and disciple, Simon Peter, could one moment be affirming Yeshua with knowledge “revealed from My Father in Heaven,” and a short time later be giving Yeshua advice so far from God’s heart that Yeshua said to him, “Get yourself behind me, Satan/Adversary! You fix your heart on man’s ideas, not God’s.” – then surely we can accord the late Martin M. Chernoff the leeway to be as human – as right – and as wrong – as Peter could be, and not need at all times to be globally one or the other.

Political commentator Bill Maher said in 2020, “America needs to be able to hold two thoughts in their heads at one time.” An environment addicted to simplifying can easily drift into over-simplifying – and thus, cause people to swallow the unclean with the clean, just to avoid the hard work of discerning how much of one or the other is present in what they are internalizing.

Concerning the influence footprints of Marty Chernoff, good and not-so-good, I think Forrest Gump summed it up beautifully: “Somehow, I think it’s both, happening at the same time.”

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

18 August 2016 & 23 June 2021