Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Korah, the name of one of the Torah’s OG rebels. We’ll start with a brief recap:
Korah, a Levite and cousin of Aaron and Moshe, rebels against them with 250 supporters, claiming Moshe and Aaron are unfairly hoarding power. “We’re all holy, God lives with all of us, how come you two get to be in charge?” Moshe’s like “ok, God made this decision not me but let’s have a sacrifice-off. You bring some incense, I’ll bring some incense, we’ll see who God likes better.” Then, Moshe tries to convince the rebels to drop their cause, and when that fails, tries to convince God not to accept them. Korah spends the night riling people up, and in the morning God is, predictably, pissed at Korach and all the people who followed him. Moshe tells God to cool it with the killing everyone instinct and just do the incense-off, but God can’t resist a spectacle, so the earth opens up and swallows Korach and his followers. Moshe has the pans they were using repurposed into metal coverings for the altar, to dissuade anything else from trying this, but the people aren’t going down so easy, and complain that Moshe and Aaron are responsible for the deaths of God’s people. God’s like “Please common, let me at them”, and a plague strikes the community, with thousands dying. Aaron goes out among the community with an incense pan and stands between the living and the dead, ending the plague. Moshe wants to make it super, super clear who won the Korah power contest, so he takes one wooden staff from a leader of each of the 12 tribes, leaves it in the Mishkan overnight, and in the morning, Aaron’s staff has blossomed with flowers and almonds. God decides this staff is nice and should live in the Mishkan forever. The people are thoroughly traumatized, and tell Moshe they don’t want to go into the Mishkan in case they enter a restricted area and die, so moshe sets up guards to make sure this doesn’t happen. He also sets up a system of gifts, aka taxes, the people have to pay to support the Levites, both in this work and forever, since the Levites don’t get their own portion in the land of Israel.
Around this parsha, I start to notice a weird pattern: Moshe complains to God about his burden of leadership, but then when God’s ready to kill everyone, Moshe steps in to say “no I don’t think that’s a good idea.” What gives? Why doesn’t Moshe just stand aside, solving the problem of him not wanting to lead this kvetchy people? A potential answer comes from the Gur Aryeh, also known as the Maharal of Prague, a 16th century commentator and mystic best known for creating a Golem. He sees Korach’s complaint, wondering why Moshe and Aaron are elevated among the people, and understands that their complaint is not with moshe’s leadership, per se, because everyone needs a leader. Their complaint is with the priesthood, and the fact that Moshe and Aaron get to manage it and participate in it without the rest of the people. This, to me, feels like the most pro-democracy argument possible. It’s not that we don’t need leaders, of course we do. We need someone who, when the big stuff happens, when there is a crisis or a moment of moral question, leads us to protect us and help us grow. What we don’t need is governance that only listens to the voices of a few, who administrate everything supposedly on our behalf. We want and need leadership that listens to us, that advocates for us, not that does things without our input.
I want to offer Moshe a blessing in this parsha, for hearing this complaint from Korach and responding like a true leader. I can imagine that he heard Korach and internally thought “sure, buddy, all yours”, but knew that wasn’t what the people needed, and instead went to battle with God yet again to protect the people. I hope he is comforted in his leadership, even when it’s hard. And to each of you, who has to display leadership in different parts of your lives, I hope you are comforted in the moments when it is tough by knowing that you’re doing holy work, even when no one tells you so.