Korah (Midrash)

Korah is every preacher’s or midrashic author’s dream text. It centers around an obvious dramatic conflict, with good guys and bad guys; miraculous, impressive events, beginning with the great-grandfather of all “deus ex machina,” in the earth opening up and swallowing the evildoers alive. And, in fact, there are many colorful and interesting narrative midrashim on this parsha.

But therein lies the rub. Precisely because these midrashim are so colorful, and so familiar to many, having heard them over and over again since childhood, they are often seen as hackneyed, and it is often difficult to get beyond the surface meaning. Hence, they deserve a closer reading, paying attention to the less obvious aspects. Numbers Rabbah 18.3:

“And Korah took” [Num 16:1]. What is written prior to this subject? “And they shall make for themselves fringes” [15:38]. Korah jumped up and said to Moses: shall a garment which is entirely blue be exempt from tzitzit? He said to him: It is required to have tzitzit. Korah replied to him: a garment which is entirely blue does not exempt itself, yet four threads exempt it?!

Our midrash addresses the opening verse, which is rather opaque, somewhat later. The obvious question is: what prompted Korah’s rebellion to begin with? Here he is shown launching a vulgar attack on religion. “It’s illogical; it’s absurd,” he shouts, clearly playing to the grandstand, rather like a columnist is some free-thinking English magazine in the late nineteenth century, with the first emergence of the modern trinity of Darwin, Freud and Marx. Or perhaps he was a champion of religion as a source of “inspiration.” The readers of this midrash surely knew the midrash we cited last week (HY III: Shelah), in which the blue thread leads to a series of lofty associations with the sea, the heavens, and the Divine Throne. Korah may have been playing to the aesthetic sensibilities of his audience: let us have religious ceremonies, but filled with beauty and harmony, evoking mystery and elevated feeling, but without worrying about the exact details. Let us have impressive azure robes, not a handful of miserable, scruffy threads! (Years ago, the Rav gave a talk on this theme, citing many parallels between Korah and contemporary arguments against halakhah, and religion generally. Korah then reiterates his attack with another example of the putative absurdity of Moses’ law:

Shall a house full of books [i.e., Torah scrolls] be exempt from mezuzah? Moses replied to him: It is required to have a mezuzah. He said to him: the entire Torah, with its two hundred seventy-five sections, does not exempt a house, yet the one portion found in the mezuzah exempts the house?! He said to him: you were not commanded concerning these things, but you made them up from your heart.

Here Korah gives the coup de grâce: you didn’t really hear these things from God, but you made them up yourself! In short, his goal was to undermine not only Moses’ personal authority, but the concept of Torah as such:

Concerning this, it is written: “And Korah took.” “Taking” is none other than language of divisiveness, for his heart took him, as is said, “Why did your heart take you” [Job 15:12]

Here the midrash presents its rebuttal to Korah’s argument, simultaneously explaining the difficult opening phrase, “and Korah took” (the verse leaves this verb hanging, without a direct object). The midrash does not answer Korah’s argument, but points in another direction: an exploration of Korah’s true motivations. “Why did your heart take you?” Korah, clever demagogue as he may have been, was at the mercy of his own tumultuous, unexamined inner feelings: frustration, jealousy, ambition, anger. Mirkin comments here (citing Targum Yerushalmi and R. David Luria ad loc., and Gen. Rab. 34.10), that Korah was led into heresy by his heart, citing the well-known adage of Hazal that “the evildoers are ruled by their hearts; the righteous rule their hearts.” In short, he was lacking in emotional control, in the ability to subjugate his emotions to the clarity of reason and a priori moral imperatives. Precisely what these emotions were is already suggested in the previous midrash (which we have not translated), in which Korah felt left out because the families of Amram and Uziel were given all the choice positions, while he, son of the second-in-line within the Kehath clan, should have been made prince of the Kehatites! Hence, the answer:

That is what Moses said to them, as is said: “Is it a small thing that the God of Israel has separated you…?” [Num 16:9]. The Sages said: Korah was a great sage, and was among those that carried the ark, as is said, “and to the sons of Kehath he did not give [i.e., wagons], for the holy service was upon them [they carried upon their shoulders]” [7:9]. And Korah was the son of Yitzhar, who was the son of Kehath.

Korah ignored the privilege that he already enjoyed as a member of the Kehath clan, who among all the Levites were designated for the sacred and honored task of carrying the ark and the other sacred vessels. Korah, in simple words, saw the cup as half-empty rather than as half-full.

And when Moses said, “they shall place upon the tzitzit a thread of blue” [ibid.], he [Korah] immediately ordered that they make two hundred fifty garments of blue and that the two hundred fifty heads of the Councils wrap themselves in them, for they rose up against Moses, as is said “And they rose up against Moses, two hundred fifty men from among the children of Israel, princes of the congregation, renowned men” [Num 16:2]. Korah went and made a feast, and they wrapped themselves in blue garments. The sons of Aaron came to take their [priestly] portions, the breast and the thigh. They stood up against them and said: Who commanded you to take this? Was it not Moses!? We shall not give anything, for the Omnipresent has not spoken thus!….

Here, the scene again changes, and there is a new set of accusations against Moses: not that the Torah is absurd, illogical, or unaesthetic, but rather the classical Marxist argument: religion is a device invented by priests to gain wealth (and psychological control) at the expense of the rest of the people. Once again, Korah’s disciples rail against Moses: “God has not spoken it; Moses invented it.” You packed the priesthood with your own family, because what you really want is power and wealth.

Biblical Hebraism and Political Theory, Then and Now

As the Korah incident exemplifies what may be considered the first “political” conflict within the Jewish people, while the haftarah (1 Samuel 11:14-12:22) describes a defining moment in the emergence of the ancient Israelite kingdom, this seems an appropriate occasion to address certain issues of political theory within, and inspired by, Judaism. The new issue of Azure, a journal published in both Hebrew and English by the Shalem Center, a research center for Jewish and Israeli social thought with a generally neo-Conservative orientation, contains an important paper on this subject by Fania Oz-Salzberger: “The Jewish Sources of Inspiration for Western Concepts of Liberty” (Azure 13 [Summer 2002], 88-132).

Oz-Salzberger relates to 17th century European Hebraism, specifically among Christian thinkers. She finds that such thinkers as John Locke, John Selden, and others, turned toward the Bible as a source of inspiration for their own political models. Specifically, they found in the ancient Israelite kingdom a source for three basic ideas of “republican theory”: the nation-state as a clearly defined entity with specific borders; “ethical economics”—the responsibility of society and the individuals composing it for the welfare of its weaker members; and the federal principle—i.e., a diversity of ethnic and cultural groups within the state (in the biblical model, the amphictony of the tribes). These thinkers saw the period of the Judges, up to Saul, or possibly until the split of the kingdom after Solomon’s death, as an ideal model. The concept of God as the supreme ruler implied limits on human tyranny, as well as an ethical model that guided the state. The Torah as constitution is greatly interested in such areas as agricultural laws, and the sabbatical and jubilee years—all of which order the economic life in an ethical, equitable way.

Only later—among such thinkers as Hobbes and others, who secularized Western political thinking—did Locke’s interest in the Bible come to be seen as dated. These thinkers advocated radical individualism, the concept of homo economicus. In this view, what makes the state work is not the ethical quality of its leader or citizens, but the structure itself. The individual people constituting it may even be evil, so long as they are rational and behave according to their own “enlightened self-interest.”

This study, in its author’s words, reflects a certain contemporary trend or movement within academic political thought, what she describes as a “revolution” in 17th century and Locke studies over the past thirty years. What I found most significant in the paper, bringing me to mention it here, is that between the lines I see a rejection of the amoral assumptions that have dominated late 20th century capitalism: globalism, the proliferation of multi-nationals, the ruthless takeovers of corporations, the fascination with instant wealth among many young people during the 1980’s and ‘90’s, the destruction of many of the gains made by organized labor during the first half of the twentieth century (through the hard work of people like my parents, z”l) through the imposition of draconic conditions upon ordinary working people and the proletarization of many middle-level professionals. Alongside that, there is a return to the search for some decent human values in the organization of society.

On the other hand, socialism is clearly also in disarray. After the 20th century, and the disastrous history of Marxism in Soviet Russia and elsewhere, it is difficult for any intelligent person to accept the socialist model without asking hard questions: What went wrong? How is one to avoid the pitfalls of state socialism with its creation of a calcified bureaucracy, coupled with vicious tyranny (justified by the theory of revolutionary elites, etc.)? Locally, there is deep disappointment in the Labor Party and in its institutions—the Histadrut, the kibbutzim, etc. (not to mention its loss of oppositionary nerve in the present Intifada and its bastard offspring, the “national unity” government). Clearly, there is a profound need, first and foremost, for some ethical anchor for social theory. What Oz-Salzberger here renews the central concept of society as a basic ethical anchor of human culture. In my view, this must occur in opposition to capitalism as we know it, with its glorification of the individual, and the total absence of limitations on wealth, on aggressiveness, on the acquisition of property. Liberalism essentially emphasizes the rights of individuals, without any commensurate duties, including the duty of each person to participate in the life of the polis (in this respect, liberalism is a very un-Jewish idea). But the Left, too, has embraced the concept of state as, essentially, a bland, neutral framework for “all its citizens,” rejecting the idea of the nation-state as having any distinctive or particular ethnic character; essentially, a policy of cultural laissez faire. Or else, it sees the central motor of society as being the class conflict (i.e., the classical Marxist concept), in which man’s natural loyalty is to his own class interest. Where Oz-Salzberger seems to call for a renewal of liberal social thought, I would like to see a renascence of democratic socialism—likewise, based on many of the same sources in the Torah as mentioned by her Hebraist social philosophers.

In the same issue of this journal, there appears the second half of an article by Yoram Hazony, controversial head of the Shalem Center, on the need for the nation state. He presents a conceptual analysis of the nation-state as the basic societal framework—as lying at the Archimedean point of balance between “empire,” with its tendency toward hubris and conquering all, and the “tribal,” which he describes as anarchic or based upon purely personal loyalty. I found this typology particularly relevant and enlightening for understanding the Islamic world, with which we are engaged in such a painful and bloody conflict. It is based either on hamulot, clans and small groups—this provides, essentially, the social basis for the structure of the militias among the Palestinians; or else on Dar al-Islam, as a kind of imperial, all-embracing idea that seeks to convert all to its truth. Arafat [who was alive when this was written, 2002] has not succeeded to date in building a nation-state on anything other than hatred of the Jews, and violent revolution, dressed largely in traditional rhetoric of “a million Shahids marching to el-Quds.”