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Rebel understood holiness
Torah study
RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN
Korah/Numbers 16:1 - 18:32
Torah, the arch-rebel against Moses and the Aaronic priestly leadership, is usually regarded as an evil, if brilliant, scoundrel, who received the just desserts of his mutiny when he and his followers were swallowed up by the earth.
The very beginning of our Torah portion establishes Korah's true character: "Now Korah, son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, took ... to rise up against Moses ..." (Numbers 16:1-2). Korah was a taker, and his desire was to take the leadership away from Moses and Aaron, to take the leadership for himself.
Despite the fact that Korah uses noble and inspiring language by invoking the democracy of sanctity - "For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord's congregation?" (Numbers 16:3) - he was merely couching self-serving ambition in idealistic words.
But there is an alternate view of Korah that also exists, specifically in the Hassidic tradition. The famed Rebbe Menahem Mendl of Kotzk used to refer to him as "our holy grandfather." In his work called Pri Tzadik, Rabbenu Zadok Hakohen of Lublin (1823-1900) examines what Mendl might have had in mind when he called Korah "our holy grandfather."
The Pri Zaddik alerts us to a concept of creation found in the teachings of the Ari Hakodosh, which speaks of two ways of looking at human communities: linear or circular. In a circle, everyone is equally placed; the distance between the center and the edges is always the same, and everyone is equally important; there is neither head nor tail. But a linear format expresses something quite different. There are those who progress more rapidly and those who progress less rapidly, and those who hardly progress at all.
The Pri Zadik goes on to cite a Talmudic passage at the conclusion of the tractate Ta'anit: "In the days to come, God will hold a circle for the righteous. He will sit in their midst in the Garden of Eden, and everyone will point with his finger towards him."
The Talmud is teaching us that at some point in the future, human development will resemble a circle, in which everyone will be equidistant from or rather equi-near to God, with no need for a head table and a rear guard. The Divine Presence will rest upon every individual equally.
Although the Talmud speaks of this stage of "circularity" as being reserved for the world to come, the period of the culmination of history, Korah maintained that the thunder, lightning and divine revelation at Sinai were indeed the signposts of a new era - the exodus of a lineal society and the entrance of a new circular reality. With Sinai, Korah believed that humans had become transformed into angels, everyone had been equally infused with the Divine Spirit, from serving-maid to prophet, and equality was the order of the "new day."
Korah represents a pattern that would constantly repeat itself in Jewish history, of various figures claiming the time had come for the commandments of the Torah to be suspended. Early Christianity adopted this philosophy, insisting that divine grace equalized humanity and rendered commitment to the details of Jewish law an anachronistic and superfluous enterprise.
The Pri Zaddik - and the Kotzker rebbe - would argue that Korah felt this way because he himself was so inspired and infused, because he had indeed emerged from Sinai as the "holy grandfather." Unfortunately, however, the entire nation was not yet ready, had not yet left the linear reality for the circular millennium, was yet to serve the golden calf and refuse to conquer the land of Israel. The Jewish people were still in the desert, surrounded by a linear reality replete with successes and failures, progress and retrogress, leaders and followers, righteous and sinners.
The commandment is "You shall become holy," in the absence of a nation which has already achieved holiness. We are a people of becoming, not yet of being.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Efrat, Israel.
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