Democratic Rhetoric

Korah

Num. 16:1 - 18:32

Précis: Korah foments a rebellion, claiming that Moses and Aaron have taken too much power for themselves. Datan and Abiram also attack Moses’ leadership, claiming that Moses has brought them from a land of milk and honey (Egypt!) only to let them die in the wilderness. A test of fire offerings is arranged, and Korah and his followers are destroyed as the earth opens and swallows them. The People continue to complain, God threatens to destroy them once again, but Moses and Aaron intercede. A plague takes the lives of 14,000 people. A final test, that of staffs, is performed, and when Aaron’s staff miraculously blossoms on the following morning, it is clear that his status as High Priest is secure.

Num. 16:1-3 “Now Korah…with Datan and Abiram…took themselves up against Moses and against Aaron and said, ‘You take too much upon yourselves, seeing that all in the congregation are holy….’”

As I reviewed some of the d’vrei Torah I have penned over the years, I find at times that some insights which were timely a decade or more ago remain remarkably so today. The story of Korah is one such example. Chancellor Ismar Schorsch, writing in his weekly d’var Torah (7/2/05), notes that Korah and his followers protest against Moses’ authority using “democratic rhetoric” and imply that they are merely seeking equality and that they want to share power. As readers, we see their acts as those of dangerous demagogues. Moses, on the other hand, remains humble. He understood that power can corrupt.

            Korah was viewed by tradition as venal and materialistic. One midrash suggested that he was very wealthy, having held the keys to Pharaohs’ treasure house.  Our tradition has a healthy disrespect for extraordinary wealth. We don’t devalue wealth, since the important mitzvah of tzedakah assumes wealth is needed for good purposes. However, without cultivating the spiritual side of life, we become like Korah: obsessed with things and unfit for leadership.

            Some might assume that I am about to go on a tirade against our extremely wealthy President, who has assembled around him advisors and a cabinet composed of other extremely wealthy individuals. I will not say that he is a modern-day Korah, although sometimes it does seem that the government has become a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.

            I would note that like Korah, President Trump campaigned with a rhetoric aimed at those who feared the change that were occurring around them. The Israelites lived at a time of enormous change (freedom from slavery, the experience of Sinai and the gift of Torah) and much of Trump’s core support comes from those experiencing tremendous change (globalization, same-sex marriage, the threats they imagine from immigration, and their pending loss of perceived majority status which comes with population changes). Some of the Israelites rallied to Korah and were destroyed. We can only pray that those who rallied to Trump inherit a far better fate, along with all Americans.

Can we be modern Joshuas and Calebs?

Sh'lach

Num. 13:1-15:41

Num.13:33 “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”

In this week’s parasha, Sh’lach (the 27th of 54 parshiot, marking the half-way point in the yearly reading cycle), Moses is ordered to “send out” (sh’lach) 12 scouts (some call them spies), one from each tribe, to examine the Promised Land. They go out and search the land, from north to south, from east to west, before they return and report their findings. They inform the Israelites that the land is indeed bounteous. However, 10 of the party give fearful reports of the dangers posed by the inhabitants. They are quoted as saying “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them” (Num. 13:33). Only Joshua and Caleb state that that with faith in God, the People would in fact take ownership of the Land promised to them.

The People are frightened, and their “murmuring” turns into something close to panic. God tells Moses that He will destroy the People, but Moses intercedes. The punishment is, however, severe: the People are sentenced to spend 40 years in the wilderness.

The 10 scouts demonstrate a basic human emotion: fear. They have only recently been released from slavery, and they lack the confidence to confront the opposition. They also display a second human emotion: a lack of faith in themselves. Finally, they reveal a third all-to-common emotion: a lack of faith in God. Fear, a lack of faith in themselves, and a lack of faith in God join to doom them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, where the generation of the scouts (and their slave mentality) will die out, leaving the entrance to the Land to the next generation, a generation raised in freedom.

            The Sages suggest that the 10 scouts were guilty of yet another error. While Caleb and Joshua expressed confidence in the ability of God to see them through the difficulties of conquering the Land, the scouts spread their message of fear, self-denigration, and a lack of trust in God to the People. 

            Today, the Jewish People around the world as well as those who reside in Israel face an ever-rising tide of hatred and opposition, filled with slander and violence. This is a new kind, or perhaps a re-emergence, of anti-Semitism unseen for many decades. And today, we have among the Jewish People the equivalent to the 10 scouts: those Jews who out of a sense of opposition to the Israeli government’s positions on certain issues (settlements, as an example) support the BDS Movement, which has as its goal the discrediting of the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Israel, like Joshua and Caleb, often seems to be left quite alone and virtually friendless.

The Jewish People of this century have a choice. We can choose to be like Joshua and Caleb, and reject fear, have faith in ourselves and faith in God to secure a bright future for us and for Israel. Or, we can act like the 10 scouts, be fearful and speak doom and gloom, and cast doubt on ourselves and on the legitimacy of the Jewish People’s right to a state of our own. Joshua and Caleb demonstrated faith, patience, and a refusal to be downcast by the size of the opposition. Can we do less today?