Korah (Rambam)

Korah and the Corruption of Torah Sages

In an essay written some years ago, Rav Soloveitchik describes the Korah incident as “the first rebellion against Torah authority.” Korah, the quintessential “bad guy” of peshat and midrash alike, was more than a simple rabble rouser. A major and oft-repeated midrashic motif describes him as a great sage, one of the wisest minds of his generation. He was clever, charismatic, articulate, had a quick and supple mind, and thus had the potential to be a valuable leader within his people. But all this was as naught because of his equally great character faults. His talents were harnassed to an all-consuming personal ambition and pride, which led him to utter demagogic half-truths to gain power and popularity. By the end, it was no longer clear whether he was guilty of deliberate dishonesty or whether he had himself lost the ability to perceive the truth. Rather than using his wisdom and rhetorical power to elevate the ordinary Jew through the light of the Torah, Korah knew how to play upon each person’s deepest, most hidden frustrations and desires, conveying upon them legitimacy with a mask of spirituality and high-sounding values. In that sense, Korah is still very much alive—indeed, he may even have found a new lease on life in the ”anything goes” intellectual atmosphere of recent decades.

Rambam, in his Laws of Torah Study, discusses some of the pitfalls confronted by the person who wishes “to be adorned with the crown of Torah.” We already presented extensive selections from this treatise in our pages for Bamidbar and Shavuot, but due to time pressures we were unable to expound it fully on that occasion. Hence, we would like to take this opportunity to return to certain passages which are particularly germane to Korah, together with several others. As we have already presented both the Hebrew text and the translation, we will limit ourselves here to brief selections from the text, in English, followed by our comments. We will begin with a passage that can be read as particularly germane to the “Korah” type—Hilkhot Talmud Torah 4.1:

1. One does not teach Torah save to a student who is proper and decent and pleasant in his acts. But if he has gone in a bad way, one must return him to the good path and teach him to behave in a good way, and then one examines him, and thereafter brings him into the Study House and teaches him. Our sages said whoever teaches a student who is not good is as if he threw a rock to Mercury [i.e., engaged in idolatrous practice]…

Similarly, a teacher who did not walk in the good path, even if he was a great sage and all the people need him, one does not study from him until he returns to the good. As is said, “For the lips of the priest shall teach knowledge, and you shall seek Torah from his mouth, for he is an angel of the Lord of Hosts” [Mal 2:7]. Our Sages said that if the rabbi is similar to an angel of the Lord, seek Torah from him; if not, do not do so.

An important difference between academic study and religious studies, at least in theory, is the insistence in the latter upon the ethical standing of both student and teacher. (Actually, the idea of a completely secularized, neutral and value-free university is a relatively new one. As recently as the beginning of the 20th century, if not later, most American universities were church run, and had certain Christian ideals, for better or worse; likewise, the ancient philosophers were engaged in the rational pursuit of the good and the true; similarly, one could plausibly argue that the humanities or Great Books curriculi at such places as Columbia or Chicago wee introduced to exert a civilizing, refining affect on the student’s character.) The Torah teacher is not only a repository of knowledge or information, but also a kind of model for his students; perforce, the “rebbe” or “rosh yeshivah” is a model for emulation, from whose acts one learns because he is assumed to be a living embodiment of the ideal Jew, a “walking Torah scroll.” Hence, if a teacher does not go in the right path—no matter how erudite or brilliant he may be—he must be shunned. Unfortunately, there are far too many such negative examples in our own day.

But a certain fundamental decency of character and sincerity of commitment is demanded, not only of the teachers, but also of students. This question relates obliquely to a debate between Hillel and Shammai (see Berakhot 24; Yoma 72): does one admit to the Beit Midrash only those who are display moral integrity (“his inside is like his outside”), as well as showing signs of achieving success in learning, or does one accept all; is the Beit Midrash an elite institution, or a popular one, open to all? (“Take care of the sons of the poor, for from them shall come Torah!”). The School of Hillel opened the doors to all, saying that even if a given person initially comes for ulterior motifs, he will eventually be turned around in his own way of looking at things, for “the light therein [in the Torah] will return him to the good.”

Torah and Money

It is likewise important that study not be tied to any pecuniary motivation, but be for its own sake. Talmud Torah 3.10:

10. Whoever imagines that he shall engage in Torah and not perform labor and will be supported by alms, such a one has profaned God’s name and shamed the Torah and extinguished the light of religion, and caused evil to himself, and removed himself from the life of the world to come. For it is forbidden to derive benefit from words of Torah in this world….

Here Maimonides harshly criticizes those who study Torah while living off public funds. The same idea appears, at greater length, in his Mishnah Commentary to Avot 4.7. I do not know what the specific background was for these remarks within Rambam’s historical context, but in our own day it is certainly one of the greatest ills besetting the Jewish people. It is no exaggeration to say that the system in the Haredi community whereby the entire society is set up as a hevrah lomdah, a society in which everybody is expected to study Torah full-time for as long as possible without working for a living; in which virtually every individual is expected to study in yeshiva and kollel, whether or not he has the powers of concentration and mental equipment to benefit from such a regimen of study; in which the resources both of the community and of the larger society are marshaled towards this goal—wife, father-in-law private donors, and the ordinary Israeli tax-payer; in which the basic concept, stipulated in the halakhah and written in the ketubah signed by every bridegroom on his wedding day, that the husband is required to work to support his wife, and not vice versa, is a dead letter; in which the yeshivah often serves as a refuge from the challenges of the secular world, and from those of earning a living—all these add up to a hillul hashem that, as Rambam writes here, “extinguish the light of religion.” The special privileges enjoyed by the Ultra-Orthodox community—in special budgetary funds granted their institutions and its students, and in the blanket exemption from military service in a country that is effectively at war, and in which solders are in fact regularly killed during ordinary tours of duty—are a constant source of hatred and resentment on the part of the secular community, who rightly ask, “Is their blood redder?” Worse, because this world presents itself as the spokesman for “authentic Judaism,” the hatred and resentment they elicit are too often directed against Torah and Judaism per se. Those few who try to make it known that these things are in fact a perversion of the spirit of the Torah, are like voices crying in the wilderness.

In the interest of fairness and intellectual honesty, I must note that Rambam’s approach to this issue aroused a storm of criticism. The Maggid Mishneh, on this passage in the Yad, presents a lengthy, point-by-point critique of Rambam’s argument, as given both here and in the Mishnah Commentary. The position of the contemporary Haredi world, which I criticize above, must be understood as one that began as a reaction to the destruction by the Nazis of the thriving centers of Torah study in Eastern Europe, and a feeling that the highest imperative was to rebuild what had been so cruelly destroyed. But at a certain point this became a self-perpetuating system that continued of its own inertia, and its leadership failed to see the ills that it had spawned.

But let us leave aside the polemics and the charged emotions it elicits, and turn to the basic idea underlying Rambam’s position— namely, that Torah is a value in itself, indeed, the highest possible value. A clear distinction must be drawn between instrumental acts—i.e., those performed to fulfill some human need, such as working to earn a livelihood; and value acts—i.e., those that are perceived as a good or an end in themselves, such as the various aspects of service of God, including acts of kindness towards others, or the pursuit of knowledge of God, which Rambam describes as the ultimate good. Just as no one expects to be paid for davening, for wearing tefillin, for making Kiddush, or for visiting a house of mourning, so it is absurd to be paid for studying Torah. By taking money for learning, one is essentially confusing and obscuring this basic distinction. There is a certain sublimity, a sense of what used to be called idealism, expressed in the fact that one does certain things without any self-interest. More generally, this concept may be related to the idea of serving God without thought of receiving any reward, but because of the love of God alone: “one does the truth because it is the truth—and in the end the good shall come because of it” (Teshuvah 10.2)—albeit there Rambam is referring more to the idea of supernal reward, such as a share in the World to Come, and not to benefits derived from other people.

All this is especially important in contemporary culture, where money has assumed an ever-greater and more central role in our culture—something I’ve observed even in my own historically-brief lifetime. So much so, that many people find it difficult to imagine a person investing time and effort in some project without some financial benefit at its end. Even “creative” people—writers, artists, musicians, who in an earlier day were often perceived by themselves and others as engaging in their art out of love—are now perceived as creating “a product.” The idea of Torah lishmah, of Torah-for-its-own–sake, is a powerful antithesis to all that.

Admittedly, there are serious practical problems in applying such an approach in today’s world. Professionalism is a fact of modern life. Rabbis, Jewish educators, scholars, etc., obviously cannot devote themselves to their activities without receiving a reasonable salary; in many cases, the extensive period of training required is also only made possible through stipends and grants of various sorts. Then, too, there is far more Torah to be learned, in the sense of the number of books a Jew needs to know in order to be considered erudite, than in Rambam’s day—and all the more so if compared with the tannaitic age. Nevertheless, the ideal of Torah lishmah must somehow be preserved, and even a paid professional must preserve this consciousness, perhaps creating an island in his life in which he engages in Torah without any external motivation or reward.

The Night was Made for Torah

In the next halakhah we turn away from criticism of particular types of behavior, to a positive statement of the special connection between Torah study and nighttime. Talmud Torah 3.13:

13. Even though it is a mitzvah to study at day and at night, a person does not learn most of his wisdom save at night. Therefore, he who wises to merit the crown of Torah will take care about all his nights, and not waste even one of them in sleeping and eating and drinking and idle conversation and the like, but in studying Torah and words of wisdom. Our Sages said, the song of Torah is only heard at night, as is said, “Arise, cry out in the night” [Lam 2:19]. And whoever studies Torah at night, a string of grace is stretched over him by day, as is said, “By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me, a prayer for the living God” [Ps 42:9]….

The night is seen as the time for studying Torah: first of all, because people usually are engaged with work and other busy activities during the day. Second, there is a certain virtue to it because it involves sacrifice, foregoing other pleasures—whether sleeping less, or other kinds of leisure: feasting, relaxing, entertainment, or other things that people do at night. But third, and perhaps most important, Rambam hints that there is a special spiritual quality to nighttime. It is a time of silence, of darkness, during which one can perhaps feel the presence of the Shekhinah more closely. “Arise, cry out into the night.”

In Jewish imagery, night is at once a time of danger (note the Hashkevinu prayer, with its protective motif, or the Bedtime Shema), when demons and dangers lurk, when one feels a sense of vulnerability, of surrendering control; but it is also a time of hesed, of grace. Some pious people recite Tikkun Hatzot, the Midnight Prayer, with its images of Rachel weeping for her children. It is also a time when deeper emotions, hidden during the busy activity of the daytime, come to the fore. Or perhaps these two aspects are really one: surrendering control = vulnerability = exposure to danger, or it can also mean opening up to let in God, by letting go of one’s defenses, of one’s ego, turning to a total, childlike trust—like a cat lying on its back, exposing its soft belly, because it feels complete trust in the humans surrounding him.

Mark Kirschbaum, in his parsha page on the Tikkun website, offered some interesting comments about the meaning of nighttime and sleep. He cites various Hasidic thinkers who, commenting on the midrash that the Jews slept on the night before the Sinai revelation, interpret this as a positive thing:

R. Zaddok [of Lublin] presents a set of complementary readings of this sleep. The people knew that they would be receiving a whole new code of living, their entire conception of life and destiny would be altered, but they had no way of knowing what this new mission would entail. Thus, they chose total disengagement with the reality they had known until that moment, and abandoned the world to sleep, an act of self-annihilation, as it were, leaving the world in the hands of Gd. … What they wanted to achieve by sleep was the meaning behind, the anticipation and joy that ought to accompany this new revelation. They wanted to wake up transformed, and there is something about the night that has this ability. We are told that Abraham and Yaakov had significant revelations at night, as “dreams,” dreams that were more real than their waking reality. King Solomon achieves his greatness as response to a dream. There is a clarity at night that allows a more profound understanding.

The Talmud in Eruvin 65a points outs that “the night was created for study.” Perhaps the day, in which the sun casts its overpowering light, blinds one to deeper analysis; metaphorically the biblical text is referred to as “day,” for there is only one text, but the “oral law,” which is the human encounter with and transformation of the text into lived experience, in which traditionally there are “seventy readings” to every text, is compared to night, to the moon, which reflects light in variegated degrees. In a sense, this night is the greater moment, for the Jewish people are also compared to the moon, in which every individual’s life-challenges are meant to embody yet another possible reading of the text. This sublime beauty was the goal of the deep sleep that night, and thus it is called sweet…