Parashah Ekev: Blessings and Beneficence, Gratitude and Giving  

For the Lord your God brings you into a good land… you shall not lack anything in it… You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. Beware lest you forget the Lord your God, in not keeping His commandments, and His ordinances, and His statutes, which I command you this day. Lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses, … your silver and your gold is multiplied…that your heart becomes proud, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage- Deuteronomy 8:7-14 (excerpts)

In this paragraph, the Torah introduces the commandment of Birkat HaMazon, the grace after meals, the only Torah-mandated blessing. The irony of the reaping of success is the real danger that we forget our blessings, and thereby forget God.  Therefore, we are encouraged after every meal to recognize the source of our sustenance and the blessings of the land.  We are to remind ourselves of our lowly beginnings and our sojourn in the wilderness, and to never lose perspective of the source of blessing itself.

Living in Florida, where the highest elevations are really just large trash mounds, I always take the opportunity every summer to get to the mountains.  Generally, I go up to the high country of North Carolina right near the historic Blue Ridge Parkway. Right near the beautiful town of Blowing Rock is the Flat Top Manor and Moses H. Cone Memorial Estate, now run by the National Park Service.  The large white colonial revival home sits atop miles of carriage trails, dotted with fishing ponds and forests, as well as the remnants of what was an apple orchard below.  Today the manor itself is home to numerous local crafts groups, which display their beautiful products.  However, at the turn of the last century this was the home of Moses H. Cone and his wife Bertha, the children of German- Jewish immigrants. ^[1]

Moses Cone’s family originally emigrated from Bavaria, and Moses was born in Jonesboro, Tennessee.  Following the Civil War, the family moved to Baltimore in 1871,  buying a grocery store: Moses and brother Caesar served as traveling merchants. They soon realized that the local population required sturdy and rugged clothing and the brothers began buying local textile mills.  By 1890 Moses had dominated the textile industry in the region, being given the name ‘the Denim King.’  The White Oak Denim factory in Greensboro, NC, at the turn of the century was the largest in the world, supplying denim even to Levi Strauss.  This family truly embodied the gilded class, with a meteoric rise to the top of the social order.

They became the most prominent philanthropists of the region contributing to the founding of Appalachian State University in Boone and opening a hospital in Greensboro, which has expanded to a regional health care system still bearing the family name. Caesar’s daughters built a sophisticated and curated personal art collection, including masterworks of Matisse, Cezanne, van Gogh and Picasso.  The majority of this collection was bequeathed to the Baltimore Museum of Art, and a wing bears the family name.

The Manor, begun in 1899 and completed in 1901, was the summer home of the family, a place of repose and reflection; sadly, Moses died only a few years later at the young age of 51 in 1908, but Bertha continued to care for and manage the estate until her death in 1947; they had no children. Moses himself is buried on the mountaintop, overlooking the majestic surroundings. The estate included an active apple orchard, cultivated nature path and trails, and ponds stocked with various fish.  As a conservationist, Moses planted pine forests and hemlock hedges.  He bought the land from the local farmers, and many were invited to stay on the land and help create the estate it is today. The land itself was always open to the public to come and enjoy. With the exception of the Biltmore estate in Ashville, the manor was the largest estate in North Carolina.

When visiting the estate this year,  I was inspired by the deeply philanthropic tradition of this rather acculturated Reform Jewish family. Upon the 1951 cornerstone laying of the hospital of the Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro, NC, his brother Bernard gave tribute, quoting an article from 1917.  “When North Carolina’s historians shall have counted the material assets of this generation, he will find no one citizen has contributed more to its awakening and upbuilding in proportion to his opportunity than  Moses H. Cone.”^[2] His obituary in the Charlotte Observer in 1908 had this to say about him:  he was both ‘large minded’ but also ‘large hearted’.  He was known to ‘uplift his employees’ and others around him and ‘making their lives worthwhile’.  “His [premature] death, while a keen personal bereavement to hundreds, especially those of his own family, his intimate friends and the two communities where he had his homes [the Manor and Greensboro], has a wider significance, and it is a blow to North Carolina and the South, for there are few men who have done so much for their advancement in material and other ways or who have as large planned and high ambitions connected with the future.”^[3]

In considering the small exhibit in the manor describing his life, I had asked myself if his Jewish faith had anything to do with his humanistic commitment to his community and his clear beneficent nature.  Indeed, he was not a particularly religious man.  Yet, in the foyer of the Manor was a print, the translation of a German letter sent to Moses’ father, Herman Cone (1828-1897) .  The letter was sent by Herman’s brother-in-law  Joseph Rosengart when Herman left Allenstadt, Germany to come to America in 1846.  The very informed National Park Ranger, who knows members of the large extended family, shared with me that this letter has been preserved by the family from generation to generation. The letter, while not a traditional Jewish ethical will, reads like one, as Herman departed his native country not knowing when he would return. ^[4]

The letter blesses Herman on this new journey, and celebrates America, a place where ‘you will not be deprived of all the political and civil rights.”  In America, Joseph continues, you will find a real homeland, ‘where you as a human being may claim all human rights and human dignity.’  For Joseph, America clearly is a land of opportunity, a place of blessing, and the Jew can truly succeed.

Nonetheless, Joseph exhorts Moses’ father to hold on to their Jewish faith, and not forget God.  He tells them to hold fast to their faith and not ‘sacrifice your faith for worldly good.  They will disappear like dust and must be left behind in due time.’  He continues that one must not allow the pursuit of wealth to get in the way of the observance of the Sabbath, for it is the pillar upon which our faith is built.

He reminds Herman that the accumulation of wealth is not an end in itself but must be used as a means to acquire eternal happiness. Toward the end of the letter, he admonishes the young Herman with words that are essentially a paraphrase of our parashah.

If you should be lucky enough to become wealthy in that distant land, do not let it make you proud and overbearing.  Do not think that your energy and knowledge accumulated that wealth, but that God gave it to you to use it for the best purpose and for charity… However, if you should not become wealthy, be satisfied with what you do have and try to be as comfortable and happy as if you had the greatest treasures…  Do not be stingy but live according to your position and your finances and be particularly liberal towards the poor, and charitable to the needy. Be glad to help and give part of your bread and give assistance to the distressed.  Do not let anybody call you a miser but be known as a philanthropist.

Whether Herman followed the instructions to spend time every day in prayer and study is hard to know, but it is clear that Herman instilled in the family these values, values found in our parashah.  Like the land of Israel, for these Jews America was a place of prosperity and opportunity. If God were to shine His blessings upon them, they were to know how to effectively use these blessings for the betterment of all around them.

Sadly, many Jews have moved away from Jewish traditions, and yet the ethos of the Cone family, a commitment to community and philanthropy, is very much resonant.  This tradition goes all the way back to our parashah. Wherever Jews have resided throughout our history, part of our success is rooted in a tradition of sharing, of seeing the other and reaching out. In the generation of plenty in which we live, we have the potential to make transformative and meaningful impacts in the lives of so many.

It is now political campaign season. (Although to be honest, it seems that our country is in a perpetual state of campaigning, detracting from the real work of governing.) Ideally, this is a time to speak about vision- for us and for our country. Often the political discourse of our era in America is often one emphasizing scarcity, lack, and decline – although often these concepts are wrought as a dagger to charge the other side as the core of our problems. While there is indeed deep economic and class inequalities that must be addressed, Americans also need to engage in conversations about our responsibilities to one another, an expression of the gratitude for the gifts we have in this country.  It is undeniable that we live in times of radical uncertainty, with tectonic economic, technological and political shifts creating a sense of dislocation and disruption.  The real antisemitism many American Jews experience ultimately is a symptom of this cultural and economic anxiety experienced by so many. Nonetheless, one of the great ironies of the era in which we live is the fact that while we have never had so much, never before have we had such a psychology of scarcity.

The spiritual idea of grace after meals is that our lives unfold under the canopy of Divine providence and care.  This mindset helps us to contextualize our own personal narratives and self-understanding.  When we recognize gifts we have in this world, we are more likely to share with the other.  We are led to understand the  notion that we live in societies in which we are mutually interdependent, and these chords bind, helping us to cope with life’s uncertainties.  The ultimate scarcity we face in this country is not one of means, but rather a psychological scarcity of religious and moral imagination as to what belief can mean for ourselves, our families, and the world around us.  This is the message that the Torah tells us in this week’s parashah, and this is the charge that was given to Herman Cone in 1846 and continues generations thereafter.

Shabbat Shalom

[1] Much of this is taken from the history done by the National Park Service in 1987.  moses_cone_estate.pdf (nps.gov)

[2] Ibid, p. 19

[3] Ibid, p. 20

[4] The small museum gave me a printed English translation of this letter.  As they did not provide the German letter, I am unable to tell if this is a completely accurate translation.  In a conversation with my relatives Gayle and Eugene LeBauer of Greensboro, NC, she related to me that the family is close with many of the descendants.  She mentioned to me as well that the family cherishes this document, and she knew all about it.