(Num. 16:1 – 18:29)
Dvar Torah delivered on Friday evening 6/19/20
This week’s Torah portion is Parashat
Korach. It tells the story of a major
rebellion against the authority of Moses that takes place within the Israelite
camp during the second year after the Exodus from Egypt.
Korach’s rebellion is really two
stories in one. Literary critics theorize that there were two separate stories
passed down through the ages. One story was a story of Moses’s and Aaron’s
cousin Korach and his Levite followers complaining that they should get to be
Kohanim/Priests like Aaron and his family.
A second story is about Datan and Aviram,
from the tribe of Reuben leading a revolt on behalf of a varied constellation
of Israelites who are entirely fed up with Moses’s leadership and want to
return to Egypt.
Later editors synthesized the two
stories into a single narrative. In the
synthesized narrative, Korach is portrayed as the leader of both camps.
Or, from a more traditionalist
viewpoint, this is all one story about one rebellion encompassing varying
subgroups, each with their own grievances.
However we approach the genesis of the
tale, the standard, mainstream, traditional rabbinic line on what to make of
this story is that it is a paradigm for the concept of makhloket shelo
beshem shamayim. --- a dispute that is not for the sake of Heaven.
As it says in Pirke Avot in the Mishna: "Any dispute which is for the sake of
Heaven will ultimately be of enduring value, and one which is not for the sake
of Heaven will not be of enduring value. What is a dispute for the sake of
Heaven? This is a debate between Hillel and Shammai. What is a dispute not for
the sake of Heaven? This is the dispute of Korach and his assembly."
(Pirke Avot 5:20)
What did the rabbinic era sages have
against Korach? They regarded him as a power-hungry
demagogue. They thought he was simply
lusting after power and was not being honest when he complained to Moses:
רַב־לָכֶם֒ כִּ֤י
כָל־הָֽעֵדָה֙ כֻּלָּ֣ם קְדֹשִׁ֔ים וּבְתוֹכָ֖ם יְהוָ֑ה וּמַדּ֥וּעַ
תִּֽתְנַשְּׂא֖וּ עַל־קְהַ֥ל יְהוָֽה׃
“You have gone
too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and Adonai is in their
midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above Adonai’s congregation?” (Num. 16:3)
As for the masses of people following
the ringleaders in rebellion against Moses and Aaron, their complaint ---
expressed by the words of Datan and Aviram --
is even more pointed:
הַמְעַ֗ט כִּ֤י
הֶֽעֱלִיתָ֙נוּ֙ מֵאֶ֨רֶץ זָבַ֤ת חָלָב֙ וּדְבַ֔שׁ לַהֲמִיתֵ֖נוּ בַּמִּדְבָּ֑ר
כִּֽי־תִשְׂתָּרֵ֥ר עָלֵ֖ינוּ גַּם־הִשְׂתָּרֵֽר׃
“Is it not enough
that you brought us from a land flowing with milk and honey to have us die in
the wilderness, that you would also lord it over us?” (Num. 16-13)
Yes, I know it seems crazy that they
would refer to EGYPT as a “land of milk and honey” – but for them it seemed
like Moses and Aaron’s leadership was only going to result in death and more
death. Egypt was looking better by the
day.
You can read the story for yourself,
but the denouement is that those who dare to question the ruling authorities
wind up either consumed by fire or swallowed up into the bowels of the earth.
That’ll teach ‘em.
One wonders how it all came to this.
Certainly, the people have been a
bunch of complainers and kvetchers from the very start --- both before and
after the departure from Egypt.
However, this time around they’ve
reached the end of their patience. In
last week’s Torah portion, Parashat Shelakh Lekha, after the pessimistic report
of the spies had angered God, God had decreed that the entire generation who
had left Egypt (or at least everyone age 20 and over) would die out in the wilderness, and only a
subsequent generation would get to complete the journey to Eretz Yisrael.
And then, after that, in a chilling
incident that we tend to gloss over when we read Parashat Shelakh Lekha each
year, an Israelite man is stoned to death for the crime of gathering sticks on
the Sabbath. As we read in Numbers
15:32-36.
“Once, when the Israelites were in the wilderness, they came upon a man
gathering wood on the sabbath day. Those who found him as he was gathering wood
brought him before Moses, Aaron, and the whole community. He was placed in
custody, for it had not been specified what should be done to him. Then Adonai said
to Moses, ‘The man shall be put to death: the whole community shall pelt him
with stones outside the camp.’ So the whole community took him outside the camp
and stoned him to death—as Adonai had commanded Moses.”
Rabbi Elyse Frishman in an essay in the volume “The Women’s Torah
Commentary” observes:
“The punishment of stoning the wood gatherer is the first and only incident
of capital punishment actually applied in the Torah. The episode must have been devastating for
the people.” [1]
The poor wood gatherer remains nameless in the Torah. But a later midrash says that the wood gatherer
who was stoned to death was Tzelophchad, whose daughters would later be moved
to activism against the inequities of the inheritance system.[2]
Sure, the rules were set out for all to hear, but the killing of the wood
gatherer always strikes me as more of a lynching than any preservation of law
and order.
So maybe those who joined Korach in a struggle against the status quo were
infuriated by the lynching of the wood gatherer. Just as today, multitudes of Americans are
rising up against the status quo in fury over the police killings that amount
to lynchings in our own day.
The wood gatherer is unnamed in the Torah – but as for those of our day –
we can and should say their names. Those
names include, among others:
Eric Garner
Ezell Ford
Michelle Cusseaux
Tanisha Anderson
Tamir Rice
Natasha McKenna
Walter Scott
Bettie Jones
Philando Castile
Botham Jean
Atatiana Jefferson
Eric Reason
Dominique Clayton
Breonna Taylor
George Floyd
Rayshard Brooks.
No doubt, Parashat Korach presents us with a complicated and ambiguous mix
of ambivalent messages when it comes to questions of authority, hierarchy and
justice.
But this time around I’m rooting for the rebels.
Shabbat shalom.
© Rabbi David Steinberg
June 2020/ Sivan 5780
[1] Rabbi Elyse Frishman, “Korach: Authority, Status, Power” in The Women’s
Torah Commentary: New Insights from Women Rabbis on the 54 Weekly Torah
Portions, Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, editor (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2000),
pp. 286-87.
[2] Numbers 27: 1-11; T.B Shabbat 96b.
