It's hard to argue with Korach's challenge to Moshe. Moshe seems like the unelected leader-for-life, and Korach makes the case that all the people are holy. Moshe is theocracy, Korach is for not quite democracy, but a wider shared leadership.
This is hard to rebut. Just this week, in fact, I gave a lecture on "Jews, Utopia, and Civil Rights." I opened by contrasting the Bible with ancient religions in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It's a point I often make, and I owe it to one of my professors, Paul Hansen at Harvard. The religions of the first settled civilizations linked the gods to the kings, to the powerful. Pharaoh was a god; the Mesopotamian kings worked hand in hand with the gods. For Israel, God was on the side of the slave, not the master. For the Hebrew prophets, even in the Jews' own land, God was on the side of the oppressed, not the king who looked the other way.
So Korach should be right, or at least he shouldn't deserve to be swallowed up by the earth!
This bothers the midrash. In order to make it right, the midrash imagines more of a story to the conflict between Korach and Moshe. Korach is depicted as a student of Moshe's, who is very attentive to the teachings Moshe has been conveying hot off the press from his conversations with God. Korach asks, "If it's a mitzvah to have a tallit with four threads of blue in the tzitzit, what about a garment that is entirely blue but has no tzitzit?" Or, "What if a room in my house is full of scrolls of Torah -- do I need a mezuzah?" (What's the connection? Tzitzit is the law given right before Korach's parasha begins, and mezuzah is linked to tzitzit through the Shma.)
In these stories, Moshe answers by standing up for the laws as given. Korach blows his top and complains that the laws are too irrational to follow, if they don't allow for his alternatives.
Again I think many Jews today nod their heads to the questions the midrash puts in Korach's mouth. Okay, if you're not deliberating all the time about tallit and mezuzah, the questions might be about kashrut and its purposes, and whether all the details are important, and whether if kashrut is a path to ethics why not just have the ethics without the kashrut. Or you could Korach-like questions about prayer and why it has to be a certain way.
I give credit to the rabbis of 1500-some years ago that they allowed themselves into the minds of those who asked questions about the mitzvot and challenged them. In the midrash, Korach is not faulted for asking the questions. He is faulted for not letting Moshe's answers sink in. And he is faulted for accusing Moshe of being self-serving. Korach thinks that having so many laws without good reason is how Moshe keeps control. No one can argue with Moshe, no one can reason with him. Korach gathers a mob, makes these accusations against Moshe, and Moshe has no choice but to stand up and defend himself, Aharon, and God's Torah as written down to the last detail.
When I read Parashat Korach, I'm less interested in vindicating Moshe than in understanding what Korach did wrong. After all, never again do the Jews have a Moshe-like leader, who is both the religious and the national president. We don't expect our rabbis or our Israeli prime ministers to be like Moshe. So we can say that Korach's general point is good -- not just one person with a direct line to God, leading the rest of us.
But the Korach who cuts off discussion, who incites against a well-intentioned leader -- that doesn't work. Korach isn't remembered for being a religious reformer or a religious philosopher. He's remembered as a dangerous person.
Later on, Pirkei Avot contrasts Korach's challenge with the debates of the sages. Hillel and Shammai, who disagreed on all but a handful of matters, were peers with different personalities, but they hung in there with one another. They left groups of students who continued to vie. About their conflicts -- which were about everything! -- a heavenly voice once said, "Both these and these are the voice of the living God."
Groups and philosophies, even religions, can welcome and grow from questions of the sort the commentaries attribute to Korach. But we don't grow when we are tense, afraid, or threatened. We freeze. If Korach was trying to help the group grow, his manner ultimately was a setback for his own cause.
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