Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on Parashat Korach 5784
Who was Korach? Korach is barely mentioned in the Torah: besides our parashah his name appears twice in the genealogy of the heads of the Israelite clans, right after the description of the calling of Moses in Exodus chp. 6. Ibn Ezra summarizes his place in the Israelite society in his comment to Exodus 6:21:
AND THE SONS OF IZHAR (Korah, Nepheg and Zichri). They are mentioned because of Korah who quarreled with Moses.
Apart from the above his name does not play any role in Israelite history. Thus, it looks like Korach is just coming out of nowhere. Yes, he was born an Israelite, to the tribe of Levi but he had no history of involvement in anything regarding the Israelite journey through the desert, except the conflict with Moses. No real merit and no particular position in the Israelite society. The only thing that he and his cohort have seems to be entitlement. Entitlement coming simply from being of high birth, resulting in the desire for power, fueled by jealousy and, perhaps – as it is often the case in situations like that – resentment.
Entitlement, as such, doesn’t exist in times of trouble and struggle. Entitlement is an end-product of times of affluence and, like decadence, a symptom of cultural decay. History knows many examples of disastrous effects of entitlement: this phenomenon occurs periodically in human culture. Entitlement was one of the cultural factors (along with economical, political and environmental) that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. As an American classicist Victor Davis Hanson puts it:
The pernicious effects of affluence and laxity warped Roman sensibility and created a culture of entitlement that was not justified by the revenues or the creation of actual commensurate wealth.
It all led to gradual impoverishment of the State and made it vulnerable, especially in the context of the invasions of barbaric tribes from the north. Does it sound familiar? Too much affluence, laxity? A belief that wealth is simply a part of life rather than something that needs to be created, earned with hard work? Yes, it does sound familiar in our times, especially in the North-Western part of our planet.
Entitlement in any area of social and economic life leads to collapse. It’s a demoralizing force that leads people to live in denial and detachment from reality. When it becomes widespread it leads to erosion of all fundamental values – Jewish values we all cherish so much, with the three paramount among them: education, work and community life (expressed in deep and meaningful relationships between people). It seems that Korach and his cohort wanted to “skip” all of that and acquire power and position without any real work or merit. Had Moses and Aaron allowed for that, it would have been a dangerous precedent for the Israelite society, that might lead to a whole epidemic of attitudes like that which would definitely lead to the collapse of the society and its institutions. Instead, Moses asked God to intervene and to ‘solve’ the problem before it became a real issue. This lead to a dramatic and, in a way, a colorful catastrophe:
[…] If יהוה brings about something unheard-of, so that the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, you shall know that those involved have spurned יהוה.”
Scarcely had he finished speaking all these words when the ground under them burst asunder,
and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, all Korah’s people and all their possessions. They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them; the earth closed over them and they vanished from the midst of the congregation. (Numbers 16:30-33)
- a catastrophe that may be seen on the allegory level as a fundamental warning to all of us living in times in which attitudes of entitlement become more and more widespread.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Mirski
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