Korach Never Stops
June 22, 2012
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
I am always amazed how current events intersect with just the right Torah portion. This week the torah portion is Korach. It is a Torah portion of insanity. Its narrative is sheer madness. While previously the Israelites doubt God, doubt whether Moses is His agent, and they complain about Moses leadership, about water and food, this Torah portion is open rebellion. Woven together are two separate rebellions that seek to destroy Moses and Aaron's leadership even as they also disrupt the Levitical obligations. We have previous read that the Israelite camp has been structured. Everyone knows who goes where; when to march, where to march. Everyone carrying the holy objects have their orders. The kohanic families know how to take down the Mishkan and put it back up and who is going to carry which piece. They are ready to go forward. While they will not enter the Promised Land, they have been guaranteed that their children will. Up steps Korach, Dotan, Aviram, On and two hundred and fifty important people and seek to overthrow Moses, Aaron and all the order that has been put into place.
What is the ultimate result of this insurrection? They have bitterly divided the Israelites. They have set family against family, brother, sister, father and mother against each other, tribe against tribe. All else pales into comparison. They have terribly weakened a people who just left slavery and were beginning to stand up on their own two feet. What should have been a growing unity, with ancient divisions removed, namely, which tribe had which mother with Jacob the father of all of them, would now etch ever deeper lines of partition. What is the ultimate result of this insurrection? It is death. All those who revolted, died. Israelites died because they hated each other. Korach starts a pattern that continues to this very day.
In the times of the kings, after the division of the briefly united monarchy of David and Solomon's son, we had our own Jewish "civil war," the northern ten would join an alliance against the southern two, and vice versa. It was Jew and against Jew by any name, and Jews died by Jewish hands because of Jewish hatred.
During the revolt against Rome in 66-70 C.E. there is clear evidence that the Jews would have had a real chance of holding off the Romans if the Jews could have united and not killed each other. The Rabbis reflect and say that the Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless, senseless, insane hatred of one Jew by another.
During the war for Israel's independence, David Ben-Gurion was opposed by Menachem Begin. You would have thought that with all the invading Arab armies and militia, Jews could put aside differences and unify to face the common enemy that wanted to destroy them all! It didn't happen until Jew killed Jew, newly minted Israeli killed Israeli.
I often wonder how many Jews there would be in the world if Jew hadn't killed Jew, going all the way back to Korach. Statistics are not my strength, but if from Korach to the Roman period we didn't kill each other, would there have been an additional one hundred thousand Jews to fight Rome, a half a million, a million? Certainly some mathematical formula can be devised to determine how many Jews there could have been in the world if we hadn't hated each other so much that we had to kill each other. We could have been invincible. And there didn't have to be a Spanish Inquisition, and the auto da fe that burned our books, and the Holocaust to burn our bodies. We could have been strong enough, if Jew didn't hate Jew and rob us of our power, of our strength, of our soul. This is my vision of Jewish history. It relies on continuing miracles from God for us to be here. Dayaynu that there have been enough outsiders who have sought to destroy us. Dayaynu that there have been enough members of other faiths who forced us to forsake our own. We did not need to do it to ourselves. If we are still here, only God knows why, and only because He wants us here for His purpose.
Korach intersects with current events. This week of Korach, chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel has issued an inflammatory document instigating violence against the Conservative and Reform Rabbis and synagogues.
It sounds like Korah all over again.
In this same week a woman was arrested for wearing a tallit at the Kotel at the women's Rosh Hodesh service. Our women and bnot mitzvah take it for granted that they can wear, even should, wear a tallit. Only in the state of the Jews can something so unJewish be done.
The president of the Rabbinical Assembly has spoken wonderfully with the following words:
We need to be strong Conservative/Masorti Jews, believing in ourselves, in our synagogues, in the pluralistic presentation of Judaism, where none is wrong and all can be right.
We need to follow the prayer in our siddur taken from Pirkei Avot 1:12 which was formulated by the greatest sage Hillel:
May it be Your will, Adonai, our God and God of our ancestors, to grant us a portion in Your Torah. May we be disciples of Aaron the Kohen, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving our fellow creatures and drawing them near to the Torah.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
Temple Beth-El
3330 Grove Avenue
Richmond, VA 23221
Phone 804-355-3564
Fax 804-257-7152
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