Korach’s Challenge: The Balance Between Humility and Arrogance
Korach, Numbers 16:1−18:32
Korach is easily caricatured. Josephus, the Jewish historian of the 1st century CE, paints the picture well:
Korach, a Hebrew of principal account, both by his family and by his wealth; one that was also able to speak well; and one that could easily persuade the people by his speeches; saw that Moses was in an exceeding great dignity, and was uneasy at it, and envied him on that account. He of the same tribe with Moses, and of kin to him. He was particularly grieved because he thought he better deserved that honourable post, on account of his great riches; and not inferior to him in his birth. (Antiquities of the Jews, 4:2)
In the biblical text of Parashat Korach and in much of the Jewish interpretive tradition, Korach is a jealous demagogue, stirring up rebellion against Moses and Aaron in the desert. Having challenged Moses and Aaron’s leadership, he agrees to the "Great Israelite Bake Off": Korach and his followers are to offer incense on fire pans, alongside Moses and Aaron — and God’s acceptance will show the chosen leader. Not surprisingly, Moses and Aaron win; Korach and his followers (along with Dathan and Abiram and their followers — we seem to have two rebellion stories here) — are either consumed by fire or swallowed up by the earth. God strikes the people with a plague, Aaron bravely intervenes, and the people stop complaining — at least until the next parashah.
We could easily compare Korach to flawed would-be leaders of our own time, pretending to be speaking for the people while really grasping for power themselves. But Korach’s rebellion is the most famous of the Book of Numbers, and perhaps the entire Torah. Moses and Aaron take this rebellion seriously, as does God. So much so, that the rebels’ fire pans are hammered down to make a metal plating for the altar, integrated as a sign for all time (Numbers 17:3). What is the deeper nature of the challenge that Korach poses and what is it supposed to teach us?
An excursion into another field might shed some light. Many rabbis come from a long line of rabbis. I come from a line of engineers. My earliest memories include seeing a thin iron ring on my father’s pinky finger, as a marker of his professional status; and to this day I feel a kinship with anyone I meet who wears one. These rings are particular to Canadian engineers. The institution goes back to 1922, following a Canadian bridge disaster in which 75 people died due to an error of design. Legend has it that the rings were made from the metal of that collapsed bridge, and Rudyard Kipling was called upon to write an “Oath of Obligation,” to be said by new graduates when receiving their rings. In taking on this obligation, the engineers commit to avoiding, “Bad Workmanship or Faulty Material in aught that concerns my works before mankind as an Engineer, or in my dealings with my own Soul before my Maker.” There is also a commitment to “strive my utmost against jealousy or the belittling of my working-colleagues in any field of their labour.” Finally, the engineers ask forgiveness for any future failings, “praying that in the hour of my temptations, weakness and weariness, the memory of this my Obligation and of the company before whom it was entered into, may return to me to aid, comfort, and restrain.” The rings are meant to remind them of this obligation.
I quote this at length because I think it speaks directly to the double challenge posed by Korach. First, Korach claims to have achieved perfection: “all the community are holy” (Numbers 16:3). The Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz1 aptly notes that Korach confuses achievement with aspiration; he does not understand that holiness is a process, and perfection is perpetually around the corner and just beyond our grasp. Second, Korach is motivated by, and feeds into, jealousy of Moses and Aaron: “Why then do you raise yourselves above the Eternal’s congregation?” (Numbers 16:3). He sees leadership as a right rather than as a responsibility (though at this point in the narrative, it is hard to imagine anyone wanting Moses’ job). Korach is in dire need of the engineer’s iron ring, to remind him both of his own fallibility, and the need to resist jealousy.
In contrast, Moses and Aaron exhibit true leadership. When Korach accuses him, Moses falls on his face. According to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi,2 he does this, “to examine whether the accusations against him had any basis.” And Aaron, when facing a plague resulting from God’s anger at the uprising against him and his brother, takes his fire pan in hand once more, not to defend his authority but to defend his people.
It is easy to demonize Korach and valorize Moses and Aaron. But Rabbi Rachel Cowan3 suggests that each of us “live with an ongoing conflict between an ‘inner Moses’ and an ‘inner Korach’ — between humility and arrogance, between selflessness and selfishness.” It is for this reason that the fire pans are incorporated into the altar as a reminder: to keep us from the arrogance of assuming that we are immune to arrogance! As the poem that follows Cowan’s essay so evocatively reads:
Moses sure of God’s voice
and Korach sure of his own —
each trying to tell the difference
between arrogance
and righteous anger —
a line so thin
thin as a flame
in a fire pan.
(Laurie Patton, in The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p.913)
My teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman, writes:
The plating on the altar, then, is not simply a reminder of Korach’s sin. It is even more a reminder of the sin that lurks in the heart of the pious within all of us, a perpetual warning that it is not at all clear who is the saint and who is the sinner, that each of us is both saint and sinner, and the line separating the two is very murky indeed. (Gillman, Traces of God [Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2006], p.24)
Or, as my father wisely put it when I asked him to share with me what he remembered about the engineer’s ring: “The fact that I’m certain doesn’t mean that I’m correct.” A good lesson for Korach, and for us all.
1. Cited in Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, v.2 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press; Philadelphia: JPS, 2017), p.139
2. Aharon Yaakov Greenberg compiled, quoted from Tanya, in Torah Gems v.3 (Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1998), p.84
3. Rabbi Rachel Cowan, in Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, ed., Andrea L. Weiss, assoc. ed., The Torah: A Woman’s Commentary (NY: WRJ and URJ Press, 2008), p. 911
Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, D. Phil., is senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal, Canada. Rabbi Grushcow is the author of Writing the Wayward Wife: Rabbinic Interpretations of Sotah, the editor of The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality, a contributor to The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, and a regular columnist with the Canadian Jewish News. She serves as co-president of the Montreal Board of Rabbis.
The Quest of a True Leader: Hope and Renewal
This week’s Torah portion, Korach, reminds us that the bitter partisanship and political infighting that typify the contemporary political scene are as old as the Bible itself.
We read how Korach — who clearly longed for Moses’s job — lambasted Moses for elevating himself above the rank and file. Pushing back hard, Moses impugned his challenger’s motives by suggesting that what Korach, a Levite, really wanted was more power! Moses surmised that Korach was angling to become one of the high priests — a position of greater privilege and authority (Numbers 16:10).
Dathan and Abiram, two of Korach’s political allies, also challenge Moses’s authority by refusing to meet with him. “We will not come!” They defy Moses and accuse him of exploiting “those [who are your] subordinates” (Numbers 16:12-14).
The history of American politics is littered with recapitulations on this same theme. From the beginning of the republic, the competence and rectitude of governmental leaders have been impugned by their opponents. The party of James Madison accused President John Adams of being “partial to the opulent.” The Federalists rejoined by referring to their opponents as a “horrible sink of treason” and an “odious conclave of tumult” (Bruce S. Thornton, Democracy’s Dangers & Discontents: The Tyranny of the Majority from the Greeks to Obama [Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2014), p. 90.
Even the leadership skill of Abraham Lincoln, one of America’s most venerable presidents, has been called into question. While in office, Lincoln’s opponents accused him of being, among other things, an imperialist, a materialist, and an overall administrative incompetent (See John McKee Barr, Loathing Lincoln; An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present [Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2014]). Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of the URJ and HUC, once criticized Lincoln for “his thousand and one demonstrations of imbecility” (Gary Phillip Zola, We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, [Carbondale, IL: SIU Press, 2014], p. 208).
Since partisanship and political posturing are as common as muck, how can we decide whom we should follow or support? After all, this is an important question: our portion demonstrates that those who sided with Korach, Dathan, and Abiram not only ended up on the wrong side of history, but also ended up on the wrong side of the earth’s surface!
Our portion offers us an answer to this question toward the end of the sedra when we learn that Aaron (the Levite) is proven to be the indisputable leader of leaders. Aaron’s stature as a leader becomes apparent to the entire community when his staff “brought forth sprouts, produced blossoms, and borne almonds” overnight. Moses placed Aaron’s fructified staff in front of the other chieftans’ staffs as a visual reminder of Aaron’s singular worthiness (Numbers 17:23-25).
What does the almond-blossomed staff teach about undisputed leadership?
According to the 11th century sage, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchak (Rashi), the almond is always the first tree to blossom (Rashi on Numbers 17:23). Its beautiful flowers and pleasant aroma are harbingers of springtime’s dawning — an insignia symbolizing the concepts of revitalization, renewal, and hope for the future.
In other words, the scepter of true leadership is forever abloom with fragrant flowers of hopefulness and expectation that should keep us focused on the vision of a land that flows with milk and honey — for all.
Rabbi Gary P. Zola, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives. He also serves as the Edward M. Ackerman Family Distinguished Professor of the American Jewish Experience and Reform Jewish History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, OH.
Reference Materials
Korach, Numbers 16:1−18:32
The Torah: A Modern Commentary, pp. 1,127−1,140; Revised Edition, pp. 1,001−1,017
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, pp. 893–914
Haftarah, I Samuel 11:14−12:22
The Torah: A Modern Commentary, pp. 1,265−1,267; Revised Edition, pp. 1,019−1,021
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