Korah (Hasidism)

Korah and Determinism

As we did last week, we shall once again present a Torah from the Izhbitzer Rebbe, who was fascinated with the more paradoxical sides of Torah (for more on the Izhbitzer and his milieu, see HY IV: Mishpatim). And what more suitable Torah portion than that of Korah, the arch-rebel against Moses’ authority and, some say, supreme religious individualist and iconoclast? Mei Shiloah (Korah; Vol. I, p. 154)

“And Korah took…” [Num 16:1]. It says in the midrash [Numbers Rabbah 18.2]: “Why is the chapter of Korah adjacent to that of tzitzit? Because Korah took a tallit that was entirely blue and asked, “Is it exempt or is it required [to have tzitzit]?” The matter here, is that the color blue (tekhelet) signifies fear, and orah argued that the fear of God, may He be blessed, is understood by him with great clarity, and he understands that all is in the hand of Heaven, even fear of God. Hence how can a person come and do anything that is against God’s will, since [human] will and acts are all from Him, may He be blessed? How then can he do anything against His will?

A central concept of Mei Shiloah is that human free will is illusory, and that everything that happens is ultimately predestined. Hence, carried to its logical conclusion, the idea of a person consciously acting out of “fear of God” is logically impossible: whether or not a person will be God-fearing is itself in God’s hands. This, in a nutshell, was Korah’s argument: the blue thread, which symbolizes and is intended to remind people of “fear of God,” is superfluous. Here, the Izhbitzer carries the notion of quietism, found in early Hasidism, to its extreme conclusion.

And for this reason he argued that it is exempt from tzitzit, because tzitzit allude to fear. And in truth, God’s will in this world [potentially?] visible to human eyes. And this is what is stated in the Talmud [Hagiggah 13b], that Ezekiel prayed concerning the face of the ox, and it was turned into a cherub. For the ox alludes to greatly clarified wisdom; for in depth all is in the hands of Heaven, and man’s [free] choice is no thicker than a garlic skin, and is only according to his own perception. For God has hidden His way from human beings, because He seeks man’s service, and if all were revealed to him there could not blossom any service from it.

The aggadic passage alluded to here (which, incidentally, is from that chapter of the Talmud which deals most extensively with esoteric wisdom) tries to resolve a contradiction between the description of the “four faces” of the Divine chariot: in Ezek 1:10 these are described as having the faces of “a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle”; while in Ezek 10:14 they bear the faces of “a cherub, a man, a lion, and an eagle.” The transition from ox to cherub is explained as a result of Ezekiel praying for mercy for him (that is, to turn it into a figure who would intercede to bring mercy upon Israel—thus Rashi). The ox is assumed to symbolize Judgment, perhaps because of his enormous brute strength. In any event, this is interpreted by the Izhbitzer as equivalent to “clarified wisdom”: that is, knowledge of the inner workings of the Divine economy, of the lawfulness and fixity of the cosmic order and of God’s dealings with human beings, leaving no room for transformation, for free will, for teshuvah, or for appeals to love and intimacy between man and God.

In general, the Izhbitzer’s answer to Korah is peculiar: though there is predestination, it is hidden from humankind, and people think that they have free will, so that they can serve God with a feeling of genuine choice. (But if this choice is ultimately unreal, how can God take pleasure from such predetermined “service”? There seems something a bit illogical in this position.) This view, we might add, is a minority one in Jewish thought. For example, in a famous passage about how God could have hardened Pharaoh’s heart, Maimonides struggles to reconcile the principle of Divine omniscience with human free will (Hilkhot Teshuvah 5.5). The notion of predestination seems particularly at odds with a movement like Hasidism, which so much emphasizes man’s inner life and the cultivation of religious emotion and kavannah, service of the heart and not just of the limbs. If it all depends upon God’s arbitrary will, why bother? Moreover, Mei Shiloah here opens a very controversial door, more explicit in some other of his teachings, for providing justification for transgressions. “A person who removes himself from the Evil Urge, and guards himself from sin with all his strength, until he cannot guard himself more than this: when his lust then overcomes him and he performs an act, he may know for certain that this is God’s will” (!!; Pinhas, p. 165). This seems to me an extraordinarily dangerous doctrine. And, some cynics might add, perhaps it is passages such as these that are one of the more problematical and less pure sources for his popularity in this, our anarchistic and undisciplined age.

So why, nevertheless, did the Izhbitzer adopt such positions? After all, we must remember that he was a very pious Jew; it was he, and not the Hiddushei ha-Rim, who abruptly left his beloved rebbe, fleeing as if from fire, after that strange Shabbat when the Kotzker performed a shocking, possibly non-halakhic act. My own reading is that the central axis in the Izhbitzer’s thought is simple, total faith in God. For him, the faith that everything comes from God, and that we are like passive tools in His hands, somehow strengthens faith in God’s greatness, in our dependence upon Him, etc.

And it was concerning this that Ezekiel prayed. And it [the ox] was changed to a cherub, so that the way of God should be hidden, and that it seem to human beings that they have free will. And through this the service [of God] enters into their hearts. And this is the meaning of “the cherub is the small face.” The Talmud’s explanation as to how Ezek 10:14 can include both a cherub and human being alongside one another is that one is “the great face” and “the cherub is the small face.” But the “small face,” in Kabbalistic thought, is also Ze’ir anpin, that Divine configuration which epitomizes “mercy of mercies.”

Moses and the Ambiguity of Personality

We now turn to a totally different reading of this parashah, one brought in the name of the founder of Hasidism himself. Sefer Baal Shem Tov, quoting Degel Mahaneh Efraim, Ki Tisa:

“And Moses heard and he fell on his face” [Num 16:4]. And our Sages, of blessed memory, asked [Sanhedrin 110a], “What things did he hear? R. Shmuel b. Nahmani said in the name of R. Yonatan: [He heard] that they suspected him of consorting with married women.”

And I heard from my master, my grandfather, z”l, concerning what is said (Bekhorot 5a), “Moses your Teacher was a qubyustos (swindler or gambler) or a kidnapper.” In order to understand this, and also to understand the matter of “and they looked after Moses” (Exod 33:8; and cf. Midrash Tanhuma, Tisa §27), and in particular that they suspected him of having relations with a married woman. And he, z”l [i.e., the Baal Shem Tov] interpreted it thus: that when Moses our Teacher was born he was destined to be entirely evil, and had every conceivable negative trait. But he changed himself and broke all of his bad traits, and he made efforts to bring himself only into the good attributes. Thus far his words.

Here we have, if one can put it thus, a diametrically opposed position to that of the Mei Shiloah. Moses is portrayed here as the very quintessence of the exercise of free-will: he was born with an overwhelming propensity toward evil but, by dint of hard ethical and character work, turned himself around to the good. Nay, he became the father of all prophets, the Teacher par excellence, the great lawgiver, the selfless, “faithful shepherd” of the Jewish people.

I am reminded here of a hesped, a eulogy I heard some thirty years ago for a woman named Ms. Sonn, a member of the Bostoner Rebbe’s community in Brookline, Mass. I expected to hear the eulogist (the deceased’s son-in-law, a Rabbi Ciment), praise her for her hesed, her innumerable acts of caring, of kindness and generosity to others, and her famed hospitality to the numerous students and meshulahim (fund-raisers) who passed through the community, etc. He did so, but stressed that she became what she was not because of any inborn virtue, but because she constantly worked on herself to improve her character and to conquer her faults. The lesson: that anyone, by dint of a conscious choice to exert will power, devotion and tenacity, can do the same.

And one must interpret his holy words: for it is know in the mystical intentions (kavvanot) of the incense, that the name Moshe in its fulness is the same number as mavet (death). And it was sweetened and made into Ha-Emet (the Truth).

This change is explained in technical Kabbalistic terms by means of a particular form of gematria—the inner life of words, expressed in the numerical value of their letters—known as miluy, the numerical value arrived at by spelling out the name of each component letter. Thus, Moshe is broken down to mem - shin - he: m-m = 80; sh-y-n = 360; h-aleph = 6. The total, 446, is equivalent to both mavet (m-v-t: 40+6+400) or ha-emet (h-a-m-t: 5+1+40+400), two diametrically opposed opposites.

Therefore Moses incorporated both aspects: good, which is the truth; and total evil, which is death. Therefore they did not understand and did not look at the truth, and only saw the evil aspect that was therein, that is, the combination of the word mavet alluded to in his name. Therefore they gazed after Moses; that is, they only gazed at the aspect of the back of Moses, and even suspected him of relations with a married woman, as mentioned above. For he was born with all the evil traits.

Korah as Rebel Against Institutional Religion

I will conclude with some of my own reflections on this parasha. The conventional reading of this incident is as a black-and-white dichotomy: Korah is the villain, Moses the good guy. But another reading is possible: that both Korah and Moses each represent a certain truth, both of which have a certain validity—albeit, ultimately, that of Moses is clearly seen as more proper.

Korah’s complaint, “the entire congregation is holy,” reflects an individualistic approach, one that celebrates the religious impulse found within the heart of each person. There is an innate goodness, an innate quest for meaning, for transcendence, present within the soul of every human being, which only needs to be brought out. Why, then, the insistence on rigid, fixed structures of worship, and of a hierarchical caste of priests and holy men? The “all-blue tallit” here symbolizes the individual who feels within himself a sense of awe upon seeing the Divine vitality that fills every blade of grass; who experiences rapture by looking at the sky, which conjures up images of the Divine Throne; and who sees in the sunrise, like William Blake, not a yellowish orb, but a choir of angels singing “Holy Holy Holy.”

Moses, by contrast, represents organized religion. Significantly, throughout this parasha he is shown alongside Aaron, founder of the priesthood. There is a certain order, a certain hierarchy to the worship of God: there is a structured halakhic system, Torah, Talmud, Shulhan Arukh. Even Hasidim today say: you have to have a rebbe, and to reach a sublime level you have to attach yourself to him and accept his yoke.

Sometimes, when I read certain kinds of teachings that are filled with a sort of unctuous piety, which seem more than anything else to be so much apologia for the religious status quo, and a knee-jerk rejection of any and all criticism and questioning of standard Orthodoxy, not to mention innovation; or when I sense the rather musty and stale atmosphere prevalent in certain kinds of shuls, or even in certain Hasidic schools, I feel a twinge of understanding for Korah. “Korah our brother,” as a friend of mine once called him.

This conflict is sometimes felt very dramatically among returnees to Judaism of the ‘60s generation. It was an age of anarchism, of radicalism, of great creativity, of trying to fashion new forms, of building a better world based upon boundless love, on unlimited acceptance, openness, love, and giving. (This was of course the source of the enormous potency of Shlomo Carlebach’s message.) Some from that generation discovered Judaism, and ran head on into the sometimes drab, dour, strict world of Orthodoxy, whether of the Lithuanian yeshivot or the rather stylized and formalized Hasidic courts—and many, deep in their hearts, still seem to live within an unresolved clash between those worlds.

I can see the validity of both—but Moses‘ way is ultimately the decisive one. There are three reasons for this: 1) the Yetzer Hara, the “Evil Urge,” which I interpret as the tendency to self-deception in each individual. People are potentially good, but not automatically so. This was the bitter lesson of the ‘60s communes, which strove to build an ideal world, and in the end broke up over power struggles, sexual jealousies, leadership rivalries, crass fights over money, etc.

2) Demagoguery: Korah himself may have been a genuine seeker or, just as likely, a clever demagogue who knew how to appeal to people’s emotions, to arouse their deepest longings, to awaken long-forgotten, impossible dreams of an Edenic existence—all to aggrandize his own power. Elmer Gantry, the prophet as used-car salesman, can and does exist in Judaism as surely as he does in Evangelical Protestantism or in import-brand Yoga.

3) False dicotomy. But in fact, the dichotomy between the “living spirit” of Korah and the “desd law” of Moses is a false one. Moses and Aaron are in fact imbued with vision and with a vibrant living connection to the Almighty, symbolized by the blossoming of Aaron’s staff and the acceptance of his incense. The way of the halakhah, properly lived, is in fact a “long but short way” to a life of holiness. It is still possible to bypass the mustiness and pettiness and occasional pig-headedness to rediscover the clean, unsullied “fear of God which is pure.”

I will end with some words I said as an extension of this in honor of the engagement of my son Ika to Leeza Small, which we celebrated last night (i.e., prior to Shabbat Korah 2003). Namely, that nowhere is the tension between spontaneity and structure, feeling and fixity, heart and Law, more strongly felt than in the area of man and woman. The arguments in favor of freedom in this area are well known: love conquers all; how can structure possibly be imposed upon that which is by its very nature the most subjective, intimate relation imaginable; it is the business of the two (consenting adult) parties concerned and no one else, etc., etc. And yet: it is perhaps the most highly regulated subject in Jewish law. Of the four sections of Shulhan Arukh, the only one which may be said to have one single subject, in all its manifold aspects, is Even ha-Ezer; that entire thick volume deals with nothing but the laws of marriage and the family, in all its aspects. The point being that ultimately—and certainly for the long haul, whether for the individuals involved, for the community and people within which they are forming the smallest and most basic unit, and for human civilization generally—love between man and woman is best protected through the “old-fashioned,” formal rituals of marriage.