Rabbi Stephen Weiss
Parshat Korach 2020
Choose to live a life of holiness.
On this coming Shabbat, we will read the story of Korach’s rebellion. Korach and his followers gather around Moses and Aaron and challenge their leadership, seeking to replace them. Gathering against Moses and Aaron, they exclaim: “You take too much upon yourselves, for the entire congregation are all holy, and the Lord is in their midst. So why do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?”
God will ultimately provide a test and prove through miraculous signs that Moses and Aaron are indeed the ones most qualified to lead. Korach and his followers will be swallowed up by the earth in a sign of God’s displeasure with their revolt.
But what exactly was wrong with Korach’s claim? After all, did not Jethro also tell Moses that he had taken too much upon his shoulders? Jethro suggested to Moses that he appoint a system of judges to aid him in settling disputes between people rather than handle every problem himself. Is Korach’s claim so different?
The flaw in Korach’s argument can be found in his justification for his claim to leadership: “for the entire congregation are all holy.” Korach was arguing that the people of Israel have an inherent holiness. We are holy, and pure, he claims, by our very nature. But that statement directly contradicts one of the most fundamental commandments in the Torah. God instructs the Israelites, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy.” That verse is not a proclamation of our state of being. It is a commend regarding our way of being. It is written in the future tense to express the imperative. God is telling us: you shall make yourselves holy, by the way in which you live. Choose to live a life of holiness.
What is a life of holiness? It is a life devoted to the fulfilling of God’s commandments. It is a life which is built around what Rabbi Akiva called the greatest principle in the Torah, “Love your neighbor as yourself. It is a life which follows the dictate of Hillel, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.” It is a life that answers God’s call as expressed by the prophet Amos: “to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” It is a life in which we see ourselves as God’s partners in creation and in which we seek to engage in the sacred task of tikkun olam, of healing our shattered world.
Korach assumed that everyone is already holy. If that were true, God would expect nothing more of us. We could be satisfied with who we are, and there would be nothing more that we needed to do. But the Torah recognizes that we are imperfect beings, prone to error and sin. For this reason, God lays out for us a path for atonement and reconciliation. We are given the ability to engage in self-examination and to strive to change and improve ourselves, raising ourselves up higher, drawing ourselves closer to each other and to God.
Korach’s sin, then, was being satisfied with who we are, and not striving to be more. His sin is also accepting the world as it is, and not seeing it as incumbent upon us to work for the creation of the world as it should be.