It is said that while the words of Torah itself—the verses we read week to week, year to year—are constant, the text is renewed day by day, since we and our world are ever changing.
This week, our Torah tells the story of Korach’s insurrection. According to rabbinic tradition, he endeavored to take power from Moses and Aaron not for the sake of improving the lives of his fellow Israelites, but rather to satisfy his own ambitions and ego.
That such a cautionary tale coincides this year with the dramatic testimony we heard this week in Congress as part of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack invites us to reflect on the insidious ways that self-interest can infect our leadership to the detriment of our society and nation. In the eyes of our tradition, leaders who put their needs, ambitions, and desires before those of the people they serve commit an act known as hilul ha’Shem (חילול השם), the desecration of God’s name. It is the sacred obligation of a leader, our tradition says, to put the needs of the community before their own.
Moses powerfully demonstrates this in our parasha when he prays that God be merciful to the Israelites when God’s anger is kindled by the insurrectionists and their supporters. Instead of encouraging God to annihilate those who threaten Moses’s own authority, status, and station, he instead asks that God be forgiving.
That forgiveness, however, is not without limit. Korach and his ilk—those who sought to undermine Moses and Aaron and the authority that had been rightly granted them—are held to account and punished for their acts of sedition.
Rabbi Rachel Cowan (z”l) invites us to read this story of Moses and Korach in a radically personal fashion, as aspects of our own selves. As she puts it, “The Korach in all of us gets triggered by different emotions: fear, anger, anxiety, greed, or doubt. When this happens, we lose sight of the whole and become caught up in our own inner dramas. Our needs eclipse the needs of others.”
Thankfully and hopefully, our tradition reminds us that we can transcend self-interest by embracing, as it were, our inner Moses. As Rabbi Cowan teaches, “Moses’ path— and ours— is to move from the narrow place of doubt, fear, anger, and jealousy to an expansive covenanted life in a community of mutual care and responsibility.”
The path of transcendence is through community. We embrace our responsibilities to others fully so that we can be God’s partners in serving others, so that we might realize our most exalted purpose of bringing tikkun, repair, to our world.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi