August 7, 2026 CBI Boca
I came across the most interesting story the other day. It is a story about a man you probably never heard of- Morris Cohen. Here is a bit of his story:
Moishe Abraham Cohen was born in London’s East End in 1887, to poor Orthodox Polish immigrants. “Fat Moishe” was a bad youngster, a pickpocket and street kid who ended up in a reformatory, but stuck to his criminal ways.
Indeed Moishe was such an embarrassment to his family and the community that at age 16 he was shipped off to a relative in Saskatchewan, Canada, in the hope that he would come right. But that didn’t happen. Instead he became a peddler and gambler, and even potentially violent gun-toting crook.
Now, at the beginning of the 20th Century, a number of poor Chinese immigrants came to Canada to work on the railways and to seek out a better life. They suffered much discrimination and misfortune and Morris, as he was now known, having lived a similar experience as a Jew in England, felt a sympathy and close cultural bond with these people, becoming something of a protector to them.
According to legend, he once protected a Chinese laborer from some thugs in a bar in Saskatchewan and immediately became a celebrity in the burgeoning Chinese community.
Now, fast forward a couple of years to 1908 when Dr Sun Yat-sen, the charismatic Chinese revolutionary leader who was striving for the independence of his people from the corrupt Imperial system, came to Canada to enlist the support of the Canadian Chinese community. He was referred to Morris Cohen and he found in him a trusted ally and a personal bodyguard.
Now a little side story about Morris Cohen: In 1912 the Chinese Imperial Government had been toppled and a few years after World War 1 (in which Cohen fought in the Canadian army), in 1922, Sun Yat-sen persuaded him to come to China, where he made him his aide-de-camp, bodyguard, arms buyer and friend and promoted him to the rank of colonel.
After grazing his right arm during a battle, Cohen realized that he had to become adept at shooting with both hands and thereafter toted an automatic in his shoulder holster and a Smith & Wesson on his hip. Hence the nickname ‘Two-Gun Cohen’.
The Chinese, however, had come to regard him with immense respect, referring to him as Mah Kun, or General Mah.
During this period, Two-Gun Cohen played an instrumental role in advancing the economy, political status and intelligence arm of the Chinese Republic.
Now, this is where history takes on a bit of twist. As the Zionist dream became crystallized, Two-Gun sought Chinese support towards the creation of the State of Israel. So much so, in fact, that Sun Yat-sen wrote, “I express my sympathy to the movement which is one of the greatest movements …” offering support “to restore your wonderful and historical nation which has contributed so much to the civilization of the world and which rightly deserves an honorable place in the family of nations.”
His life was filled with Indiana Jones style adventures, but the most interesting part happened during the vote by the 5 member Security Council on whether the motion for the partition of Palestine into two states – one Jewish and one Arab – should be put before the General Assembly. One veto would “scuttle the debate’, and while the USA, the Soviet Union and France were for it and no veto from Britain, the “entire Arab orbit’ would be trying to secure the veto of the 5th member, the Republic of China.
The outcome was by no means certain, with intense last-minute lobbying on both sides.
Two-Gun Cohen was called in to meet with a General Wu who led the Chinese delegation to the UN. Two-Gun smiled knowingly and announced that it was he who had appointed Wu a general. Cohen met with Wu the following morning – and the rest is history. China did not vote against the partition, but instead abstained, contributing to the passage of the motion.
Bizarre story….but true. So why am I sharing this tidbit of Jewish and Chinese history?
We see it reflected in this week’s Torah portion. One person’s private choice radiates into the public square in ways that we can never anticipate.
Let’s look at the text from this week’s portion. “Re’eh, anochi noten lifneichem hayom bracha u’klala” — “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse.”
Look at the Hebrew grammar for a second, because it’s doing something sly. “Re’eh” — see — is singular. Moses is looking each of us in the eye, one at a time. But “lifneichem” — before you — is plural. Before all of you. Singular seeing, plural consequence. The individual eye, the collective fate.
Torah tucked a whole sermon into two words of grammar. Let’s see what it’s trying to tell us.
Why would Torah address the single “you” — re’eh, singular — and then immediately widen the lens to all of “you,” lifneichem, plural?
I have said it before from this bima: The Torah understands something about human nature that we keep forgetting. We like to imagine our choices are private. What I say in the car, what I click on my phone, what I let slide when no one’s watching — surely that stays mine, tucked away, harmless.
But it never does. Not really. The rabbis of the Talmud have a phrase for this — they say a person should see themselves, and the whole world, as perfectly balanced on a scale, and one act — one single act — can tip it either toward zechut, merit, or toward chov, debt, for the whole world. Not just for you. For the whole world.
That sounds dramatic until you remember: gossip becomes culture. One vote becomes policy. One kindness, quietly done, becomes the story someone else tells for the rest of their life. There is no truly private choice. There is only a choice that hasn’t reached the town square yet.
That’s the grammar of consequence. Re’eh — singular. Lifneichem — plural. See, singular soul. It lands, plural world.
And here’s the turn, because Torah doesn’t leave blessing and curse as some abstract idea floating in the air. A few chapters later, Moses gives it a body: half the tribes stand on Mount Gerizim, half on Mount Eival, and together — together — they answer each blessing and curse out loud. Not privately. Not silently, each in their own heart. Out loud, as one voice, standing on a mountain, choosing together what kind of people they were going to be.
That’s the real teaching hiding under the grammar. The blessing was never something handed to individuals to sort out alone in their tents. It was a mountain-top ceremony. A communal yes.
So when we make our small, quiet, unglamorous choices this week — the email we send or don’t, the neighbor we check on or don’t, the argument we let go of or don’t — we are, in miniature, standing on that mountain all over again. Every single day is a small Gerizim, a small Eival. And none of us stands there alone.
I am not suggesting we get quite as dramatic at Two-Gun Cohen. Those kinds of derring-do are probably long over. What I am suggesting is to keep in mind that what we say may ultimately change the world – sometimes for good. Sometimes, not so much.
So let’s do that. Right now, together, as a congregation: let’s choose one blessing we will actually practice this week — not as individuals scattering to our separate corners, but as a community, out loud, the way they did on Gerizim. Let’s commit, together, to one act of chesed, of kindness, toward someone in this room or beyond it, before we gather again.
Not “go think about it.” Choose it. Together. Because the blessing set before us today was never meant to be seen alone. Re’eh — see it. Lifneichem — all of us, together. Ken yehi ratzon. May it be so.
