Shabbat Gathering: About Korach.

Dear Chevra, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 963 5113 1550
Password: 1989
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

The Torah portion this week is Korach and when I was growing up in Judaism and attending Torah Study, Korach seemed like a simple parsha:

Korach and his crew give Moses and Aaron a hard time. They demand to be equal to to Aaron. G!d sorts things out. The earth beneath Korach opens up and swallows him, his crew, and all of their possessions.

Here’s the story as summarized by Meli in their newsletter Weird Jewish Digest:

Korach can be a difficult parsha for rebellious misfit souls like mine to read. Dude took 250 fellow jews and was like “hey Moses and Aaron why are YOU in charge, huh, aren’t we ALL holy, huh” and then the earth swallowed him up and fellow rebels up, and THEN hashem punished the surviving israelites with a plague that killed thousands of them. From an outside-the-story perspective, it’s easy to see what’s going on here – leadership wants to punish dissent and maintain control. From a torah-is-holy perspective, it’s harder.

Well, make up your mind, Moses.

Earlier in Torah, Moses designated a group of men to be sub-prophets who would help organize the Jews. A couple of other men outside that group began prophesying and they were reported to Moses. Moses said, it would be great if everyone could be prophets. This is what he said not so long ago in Numbers 11:29,

O who would give that all the people of YHWH were prophets,
that YHWH would put the rush-of-his spirit upon them!

So have this mixed message: Moses seems to say that he wanted the people to be independent of him and develop their own relationship with G!d. But then we get to Korach. Korach says that power should be shared and everyone deserved to serve in the mishkan. And it didn't work out.

I’m a Jewish anarchist and I look at any hierarchy with, best case, mistrust. But the power in the Jewish community was / is centered on Moses. And, undeniably, G!d wants to keep it that way. Moses might talk a good game of sharing power, but the real situation is quite different.

I think that Korach may have been asking the right question but for the wrong reason. I think it is unclear whether Korach was questioning Moses on behalf of all the people or just on behalf of himself. Did Korach truly want to decentralize power and spread it to the people or did Korach want to shift the power from Moses to himself? As long as I have trouble answering this question, I have trouble completely condemning what G!d did to Korach. I’ll have to give G!d a pass on this question.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Gut Shabbes!

All my love,
brian.

PS

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