KORACH
Korach (Numbers Chapter 16-18) is the description of a challenge to the leadership of Moses. This challenge is about both spiritual leadership of who can serve YHVH and how within the context of disgruntlement about wandering in the desert away from the comforts of Egpyt. It might be tempting to think this is a challenge to Moses’ spiritual and secular leadership, but I don’t think that our ancestors divided things that way. Moses led the march of the people, established a court system and judged what we would think are secular legal issues precisely because and only because of his intimacy with YHVH.
Korah’s challenge is of course defeated in a highly memorable way. Here’s the story. Moses responds to Korah’s challenge by proposing a test to see who has YHVH on their side. This is a familiar theme: we saw it in the contest with Pharoah’s Egyptians, we will see it later in Chapter 17 when Aaron’s staff blooms and no one eles’s does proving that he is blessed by YHVH (17:17-23) and in the famous story of Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal.
“In the morning, YHVH will make known who is His and who is holy…and he will bring the one he chooses close to Him. Do this, take incense burners, Korah and all his congregation, and put fire in them and set incense on them in front of YHVH tomorrow. And it will be that the one whom YHVH will chose, he will be the Holy one.” (16:5-7).
They all assemble the next morning in front of the tent of meeting “and YHVH’s glory appeared to all the congregation” (16:19). Then Moses says “But if YHVH will create something and the ground will open its mouth and swallow them and all that they have, and they will go down alive to Sheol, then you will know that these people have rejected YHVH.” (16:30). That’s precisely what happens, the earth opens us and swallows the rebels and their families and all of them die. (16:31-34)
I will approach the questions raised in this challenge to Moses through the following themes.
Is there one right way to worship the divine? What makes something a wrong way to worship?
The inherited nature of the priesthood.
Proximity to the divine as dangerous
The persistence of the sacrality of the incense holders and their protective function.
Is there one right way to worship the divine and what makes something a wrong way? Korah says to Moses and Aaron “You have much. Because all of the congregation, all of them are holy and YHVH is among them. And why do you raise yourself up over YHVH’s community?” (16:3). Nahmanides, a prominent medieval commentator, argues that what has been taken from Korah, Dathan and Abiram is the right to offer sacrifices that they used to be able to offer as the eldest in the family (commentary on 16:3). Korah is a Levite, but he is not a priest (16:8-10). This apparently means that he is not part of Aaron’s family, and thus there are priestly things that he cannot do because they are reserved to Aaron’s family. Dathan and Abiram are from the tribe of Reuben who were able to offer sacrifices as clean heads, but are disenfranchised from making offerings in this new way of worshipping YHVH.
Korah, it seems to me is NOT rejecting YHVH, but rather a certain way of worshipping YHVH, following Nahmanides. We’ve seen this with the Golden Calf. The community absolutely believed they were worshipping YHVH by dancing around the Golden Calf—they declared it a festival for YHVH (Exodus 32:5). Aaron and Miriam’s complaint in Numbers 12 is the same—they are not rejecting YHVH but complaining about how Moses, in their perception, is hogging the attention of YHVH and acting as the only prophetic spokesperson of the divine (12:2)
Korah and his followers, and previously the people in the Golden Calf incident and Miriam and Aaron—they are all rejecting a change in the worship of YHVH. Indeed, the day after Korah and his immediate followers are swallowed up by the earth, “and all the congregation of the children of Israel complained the next day against Moses and against Aaron, saying “you killed YHVH’s people.” (17:6). This sounds much more like a rejection of a certain way of worshipping YHVH than a rejection of YHVH.
Why is this significant for us reading this text more than two thousand years later? It raises the key question of the boundaries of what is permissible worship and what is not. For instance, Jesus was undoubtedly born and died a Jew, but the Messianic Jews who worship Jesus as divine and wear tzitzit seem to me to be outside of the bounds of Judaism. There’s this whole group of them that belong to a Facebook group of Jewish homesteaders. Whenever they post about Jesus as Messiah, I’m like, what are you doing in this group? They may call themselves Jews and want to come and participate and proselytize at Jewish events, but the idea of calling them Jews leaves me completely queasy. On the other hand, the idea of worshipping YHVH as a male deity with his Goddess consort Asherah is something our ancestors absolutely believed in, as testified to in the archaeological evidence. This belief, to the extent that they know about it, would leave most or almost all mainstream Jews just as queasy as I feel about Messianic Jews.
What is out of bounds in worshipping the divine such that if you believed and practiced it, you would be stepping enough outside of the tradition that you would no longer be Jewish (or Catholic or Buddhist or Animist etc)?
Korah and his followers also seem to be complaining about the restriction of sacred tasks to families who inherit the tasks. Inherited sacred tasks is a common theme in many traditions. In our tradition, we know of Hasidic familial dynasties, but it is more ancient than that. Yehudah HaNasi, The editor of the Mishnah (the first part of the Talmud), the man who decided to take an oral tradition and write it down, succeeded his father, Shimeon Ben Gamliel 2 as the leader of the Palestinian Sanhedrin, and Honi the rainmaker’s grandson, Abba Hilikiah was also a rainmaker (B. Taanit 23a-b).
Our Rabbinate today is not something inherited, though there are families of famous Rabbis, generation after generation. We’d find it strange to say Jane can’t become a Rabbi because neither her mother nor father are. We value a person’s inner direction far more than their history when it comes to being a sacred worker. We believe, I certainly believe, that someone born into a Rabbinic family could be perfectly lousy as a Rabbi, and someone not born into one could be great. So why did our ancestors have sacred work be, if you will, the family business? I don’t know the answer to this. Is it simply a more rigid way of organizing society that was common to our ancestors and not nearly as operative in our day?
The obvious drawbacks to inherited work are that it forces some people into work situations that don’t suit them and excludes others who would be well suited. I believe that farming can be sacred work if done right. Being raised on a farm can give you the kind of deep in your bones connection that might be otherwise hard to develop. But Lord knows there were plenty of lousy farmers back when farming was the most common occupation.
Most of us are raised with expectations around a range of things we might do for a living. I actually think this is pretty reasonable. After all, the mama does in my backyard are busy raising their fawns to make a living eating suburban lawns; they don’t expect them to flee suburbia and head for the mountains. I’m not sure that the expectations my parents had that I would be a lawyer, Rabbi or scientist were all that different from the expectations of the mama does.
There’s a distinction that can be made between what might be called a “survival dance” and a “sacred dance”. I borrow this distinction from Bill Plotkin, who borrowed it from a Native American, Harley Swift Deer. “Survival dance” is what we do to make a living, and the sacred dance is the expression of our life’s purpose. Inherited sacred jobs, as with the Biblical priesthood, collapse this distinction. “And YHVH said to Aaron “and I here, I have given charge of my donations to you for all the holy things of the children of Israel…They shall be yours from the holy of holies, from the fire, from every offering of theirs, every grain offering of theirs and every sin offering of theirs and every guilt offering...you shall eat it ((18:8-10) Why? “And YHVH said to Aaron, “you shall not have a legacy in the land, and you shall not have a portion among them. I am your portion.” (18:20)
Today, many of us try to collapse the distinction by moving away from what we do for our survival dance to making a living through our sacred work, whatever that might be. While having the same work satisfy both dances sounds great, it often enough isn’t that simple to execute. I’m grateful I can give this away for free and that I don’t have to be concerned about the size of my audience in order to make a living. Most (all) of us want to share your sacred purpose with everyone who is interested, not just everyone who can afford to pay you.
Think of your current survival dance. Does it bring you satisfaction? What kind of things did your parents and the world around you as a child expect you to do for your survival dance. Does it bear any relationship to what you do? Now think of your sacred dance. Are you clear what it is? Are you able to do this dance, or to what extent does your survival dance interfere with your sacred dance? What’s the relationship between the two dances?
Incense and incense burners take center stage in this parsha. Incense has been there in describing the mishkan and sacrifices, but this is the first parsha in which it is so prominent. The test that Moses sets up with Korach uses incense burners as the means for the test. Moses, after consulting with YHVH, says “Do this, take incense burners, Korach and all his congregation, and put fire in them and set incense on them in front of YHVH tomorrow. And it will be that the man whom YHVH will choose, he will be the holy one.” (7:5-7). Obviously, Moses is chosen and Korach and company are swallowed up whole by the earth. But, here’s the really odd thing, for me. YHVH tells Moses to tell a son of Aaron to pick up all of the fire holders in which the incense offering was going to be made and instructs that they be made into plating for the altar because the fire holders are holy.
Why are the fire holders holy? “because they [Korach and his followers] brought them forward in front of YHVH, and they became holy and let them become a sign to the children of Israel.” (17:1-3). I would have thought that the fire holders would have disappeared with Korach or would have been polluted by their association. Instead they are actually elevated by Korach’s actions.
A fire holder and incense are also used to stop a plague. YHVH starts a plague amongst the people because he is mad at the people’s constant challenges to Moses and Aaron a few verses later. Moses is determined to protect the people, so he springs into action. “Moses said to Aaron “take a fire holder and put fire from the altar on it and set incense and carry it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them...the plague has begun. (17:11). Aaron does this and the plague is halted (17:13). Moses counteracts YHVH’s action through the medium of incense. We’ve seen Moses push back against YHVH’s anger before, but here he takes direct action—and he takes it using incense. Raise your hand if you thought incense could be that powerful. Not me. And this is despite the fact that I experienced more than one vision stimulated by incense in visiting Temples in Japan (but oddly nowhere else).
Many of us have experienced being smudged with sage, a Native American practice often borrowed and used in contemporary American spiritual practice. Catholic churches burn lots of incense, though in my limited experience that gets lost in the sheer size of the cathedral.
How are we to understand this protective, purifying and healing power of incense? Do you use incense in your spiritual practice? If not, experiment with burning some incense and focusing just on the smell and the smoke of the incense for at least 10 minutes.
Proximity to the divine is dangerous. This is a point that is hammered home repeatedly in the Bible. In this parsha, YHVH says “they shall not come close to the equipment of the holy and to the altar, so that they will not die.” (18:3). “And the outsider who comes close shall be put to death.” (18:7) and the parsha ends with “so you will not desecrate the holy things of the children of Israel, and you will not die.” (18:32)
I agree that proximity to the divine can be dangerous. The common in our time idea that the divine is all love and light and what could be better than being as close as possible to it—this is a limited idea. But equally isn’t this constant emphasis on the dangerousness of the divine also limited? Views of the divine are, if not infinite, at least numerous. I think we should add views of the divine as nurturing, views of the divine as suffering with us, views of the divine as remote and unengaged with humans, views of the divine as love—all Jewish views that are missing as we read these parshiot.
What views of the sacred call to you in what circumstances? Does it vary, and if so what are the variables? Should we always strive to be close to it, or do we also need to figure out how and when to keep our distance?
QUESTIONS
What is out of bounds in worshipping the divine such that if you believed and practiced it, you would be stepping enough outside of the tradition that you would no longer be Jewish (or Catholic or Buddhist or Animist etc)?
Think of your current survival dance. Does it bring you satisfaction? What kind of things did your parents and the world around you as a child expect you to do for your survival dance. Does it bear any relationship to what you do? Now think of your sacred dance. Are you clear what it is? Are you able to do this dance, or to what extent does your survival dance interfere with your sacred dance? What’s the relationship between the two dances?
How are we to understand this protective, purifying and healing power of incense? Do you use incense in your spiritual practice? If not, experiment with burning some incense and focusing just on the smell and the smoke of the incense for at least 10 minutes.
What views of the sacred call to you in what circumstances? Does it vary, and if so what are the variables? Should we always strive to be close to it, or do we also need to figure out how and when to keep our distance?
