Rav Chaim Lifshitz
Parashat Korach

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 Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai

Parashat Korach
(Written 2005)

Although they anulled the yetser hara that leads to overt idolatry, our Sages never uprooted the underlying yetser hara that is the basis for all covert idolatry.  

THE SIN OF SYSTEMIZATION GIVES BIRTH TO –
THE DEMOCRATIC FRAMEWORK.

Chazal anulled the "urge to create evil" that leads to the sin that tops the scale of all sins – the tendency to idolatry.  They anulled this urge in recognition of the fact that it is a tendency is too difficult to overcome.  It is a temptation too great and too unrelenting.  It is a tendency that does not derive from any specific rational or emotional source.  Rather, it comes from laziness, from a weakness of character and of midot – and these exist at the very infrastructure of human character.  Their source lies in fatigue, caused by the incessant need to confront – and it is a confrontation that is unrelenting – man’s spiritual part as it is forced to live the life of coarse and materialistic physical matter.  Not only is man compelled to live with it, as its neighbor, but also to confront it and to conquer it, until coarse physical matter shall become the container and the indentured servant of the spirit.

One of the expressions of weakness, of allowing inertia the upper hand – is reducing the scope of the problem, to the point that one “pronounces the insect kosher.”  One proclaims that a certain force of nature is proper and fitting to the point of turning it into one’s chosen life style, one's optimal modus operandi, one of life’s necessary and inevitable rules, an elemental need without which life is impossible.  Temptation endows this rule with a law-governed, legitimate coloration.

This tendency to turn a temptation into a law exists, and cannot be ignored, because there is a need for method and for order, without which life is nothing but hefker, chaos and abandon.  Man accepts order and method upon himself in order to spare himself the need to make a decision about every detail.  A generalized attitude toward everything spares him the need to weigh and to relate to every aspect of every arbitrary detail.  This is indeed a more economical approach, for the sake of efficiency, and it does indeed prevent a state of hefker.  For without law, everything is given over to the worst method of all, the state of hefker, or worse yet – random, arbitrary chance.  The Torah after all would be the first to object to this, to the random anarchy of “no judgment and no judge,” and Rabbi Yochanan long ago warned his students of this: “Pray for the peace of the regime, for were it not for the fear of it, every man would swallow his fellow alive.”

“All is foreseen” after all, and anything that has any value is designated within a plan, and this assists man to predict things in advance, for it is written: “All is foreseen.” 

Some tend to forget the second part of this mishna: “And permission is granted.”  This means that while it is true that all is foreseen, it is not to such an extent as to strangle an individual’s personal view of things.

If the rule that “all is foreseen” diverges from its framework, which is charged only with the duty of imposing order, if it prevents a necessary, creative divergence, then it has invaded the private domain, and then it obliterates this domain, and then – better had the framework never been born.

In our own era, we have witnessed the danger of the all-consuming order, in Nazism and in the disasters it brought upon the world.  Presenting the rule, or the nationalistic ideal, or any ideal as valuable as it may be, as being so all-important as to consume the private domain – there can be no exaggerating the peril this poses for the human race.

We are witness to this plague of idolatry in the modern era, for it is a plague that managed to survive Chazal’s annulment of the yester hara, the evil urge of idolatry.  This teaches you that while our Sages did succeed in abolishing the form of idolatry, they did not tear out and uproot the essential elemental tendency toward laziness, superficiality, and the denial of the private individual.

The response is oft-repeated, though the details vary, in reply to the claim that the educational system must consider every student’s individual needs, and that such consideration is every student’s basic right: It is not practical, the cost is too high, there are not enough teachers, etc.  What is to become of that weak student, and what is to become of that other gifted one?  The reality is that their qualities are to be sacrificed for the good of the superficial majority, in whom no qualitative product lies hidden: Banality’s victory over quality.

Such laziness, which has no right to exist, relies on the tendency toward order and method, in the name of practical utility, and pragmatic reality, which brings results, and you shut your mouth and leave everybody alone.  It’s no mitzvah to be always criticizing everyone. 

Even this claim exists in the name of practicality, and it even has a rule attached to it: Don’t be right: Be smart.  Do not demand your right to individuality.  Do not express – your own needs.  Merge with the masses and get off your – personal quality.  That way you won’t be a nuisance and you won’t arouse the ire of the masses.

Be smart!  The great danger of systemization, aside from being the basis of idolatry, is that it takes over and devours every expression of value. 



A Degenerate with the Torah’s Permission
Even man’s Godly expression, systemization wishes to devour.  Even religion is comprised of rules, laws, ceremonies and customs.  These exist on the external side of religion.  They have nothing to do with the personal connection between the Creator and the work of His hands.  The whispered yearning of a private individual’s prayer is worth ten times the value of a ceremonial participation that is hollow and meaningless. (See more on this distinction as seen in Rabban Gamliel’s formalistic approach to the requirement of the prayer of “eighteen blessings,” which he stipulates as replacing the sacrifices, whereas Rabbi Eliezer’s objects to this approach.)

The Jewish religion aspires to the art of symbiosis, the art of creating balance between the private domain and the public domain: Between prayer from the depths of an individual’s heart and the participation in public prayer – without the latter taking the place of the former, God forbid, for the private individual’s prayer is the truest and most direct expression of the connection between God’s servant and his Creator.  It rises out of the knowledge that the Master of the universe and all it contains is able to bend His ear to the distress and yearning of every individual at every level.

As the Creator, so the creant, who is commanded to attach and to cling to the characteristic traits of the Creator.  Just as He encompasses both the group and the individual, so you too, do as He does.  Protect your personality and its private quality within the general public of Israel.  This is a blessed cooperation that goes against superficial logic, which often sacrifices one side at the expense of the other.

Korach was the first to discover and to teach and to preach the priority of the group over the individual.  Korach even sought to obscure and to void the uniqueness of the universe within the group, seeking thereby to prioritize the general public of Israel over the Creator of the universe – to cancel out quality through quantity.  He preferred rules that require the ‘everything and everybody’ approach over the authority of the Creator of the Universe, which is above everything and above everybody.

Korach was espousing authority by the group, which would erase within itself the uniqueness and quality of a leader such as Moshe, and erase even the authority of the Creator of the universe: “All of the group, everybody is holy, and God is within them.”  Within them rather than above them.  Korach “who was clever” does not deign to bestow supreme authority upon God.  In his great kindness, he accepts Him with open arms – within the group.

One of the leaders of the Religious Kibbutz movement once told me – during the era when there was not a rabbi to be found in the Religious Kibbutz for love or money – that they would agree to a rabbi, but they would not grant him any priority or authority.  His opinion would not weigh more than the raised hand of any one of the kibbutz comrades at any general meeting – held in the lunchroom.

Korach’s cunning expressed itself in an ability to garb himself beautifully in the values of the group and the rights of equality – for the private individual.  These beautiful garments envelop one in their suffocating embrace, strangling the needs of the private individual. 

In the western world, talk about the rights of the individual rules the airwaves: The private individual’s right to dignity and to freedom.  However, they impose these rules of appropriate behavior by force – the rules of what is acceptable.  Whoever deviates from them is punished by a rejection that borders on excommunication and even outcast status – by the group, by society.  Under such circumstances, the rights of the individual are pushed aside and shelved.

Korach even sought to trample “what is between man and God” in the name of democracy, the goal of which is supposedly to benefit the private individual.  “God is within them.”  The glory of the omnipresent One is given equal rights with the last of the idiots.

Moshe sensed the danger hidden in this shrewd strategy and asked of God that He too act accordingly, and teach Korach a lesson that would diverge from any of the predictable, accepted punishments. 

The punishment of being swallowed by the earth would be a swallowing that would not strangle his private, personal place.  Korach and his congregation are alive and well and fully conscious, learning the lesson of their error.  Chazal tell us that from inside the earth they can be heard professing: “Moshe is true and is Torah is true.”

Indeed, “there is such a thing as a degenerate with the Torah’s permission,” says the Ramban.  He is a degenerate because of his strange intention, which he has covered and concealed with a mantle of Torah.

Strange Incense
Moshe acts out of character in face of the danger threatening the individual through society’s stranglehold embrace, but he acts with no feeling of bitterness or vengefulness.  It might seem that he was tricking them into stumbling, by suggesting that they offer “strange” (not commanded by God) incense.  Such offering transgresses a severe prohibition, and indeed they were burned by the fire that broke out.

Yet it appears to me that Moshe did not intend to trick them into stumbling, but rather to demonstrate the element that proves the rank and place of the private individual opposite the Creator.  There is no expression so direct – of the bond between God’s servant and his Creator – as the offering of incense. 

Incense does not compare in any way with the other sacrifices.  With the other sacrifices, a human being offers real and tangible physical matter, which parallels the physical matter within the human being.  The blood of the animal parallels one’s own blood, etc.  Incense has only “a pleasing fragrance,” and the smoke of the incense curls upward in a direct line to heaven.  Incense expresses the uniqueness of God, through the direct intention and cavana of the offerer, whose mind and emotions are free of the weight of flesh and blood.  Only one’s thought in all its purity determines God’s uniqueness, and breaks forth to soar to the lofty heights, by way of the smoke and the fragrance of the incense.  Perhaps Moshe was reasoning – hoping – that the sanctity of the incense would open the eyes of the incense offerers, and it was for this purpose alone that he suggested that they offer incense.

(The miracle of the incense contrasts with the miracle of Aharon’s staff that blossomed.  There no new creation was innovated.  Aharon’s miracle did not diverge from any other miracle in terms of the extent to which it diverged from the routine of natural process.  A miracle that transpires within nature comes to prove the will of the supreme One: Which among the two is the sacred one who has been chosen.  Who among all the public of Israel has been chosen to serve in the worship of the mishkan, or to be more precise, who has been chosen to manage and to lead those who bear the responsibility for the sanctity of the mishkan and of God’s worship that takes place therein.)

It is important to mention, parenthetically, that systemization generally preens itself with the mantle of “scientific method.”  This is true even in the medical field, whose fundamental purpose is to extend relief and healing to the private individual.  The truth of the matter is that medicine especially serves as a guinea pig for proving “scientific” rules that are incompatible with human beings due to the nearly infinite complexity of the human being, in spirit, life force and body.  This complexity and compoundedness is constantly creating new combinations – “there are new ones every morning” – which the rules of science could harm because of their tendency to reductiveness, aspiring to shrink everything to the common denominator that creates the group and ignores the exception.

So too with the legal system, and so too with the educational system.  These systems were invented with the claim that they were there to help, yet ultimately they harm.

How deep this goes, for anyone truly impenetrated with the influence of the sin of systemization, can be demonstrated by the seductive systemization of our political government.  Based on the idol of socialism, it establishes the value of the sacred egalitarian society as being high above the right of the individual.

My son Rav Yitzchak shlita, an acknowledged expert in halacha and psak (the rulings of Jewish law) published a work of research that proves – with a rigor and thoroughness that render his conclusions incontestable – the right of the individual to the money he has amassed through honest means.  The halacha views an individual’s right to his properties and to his monies as a legitimate matter.  Society has no right to extract this private money, despite the halacha that gives society the right to compel the wealthy to give of their money to support the poor, by the authority of the mitzvah of tzedaka.

It is a common error among Israeli researchers, who have been raised in the lap of socialism and who lack a professional level of scholarship in the fundamentals of Jewish jurisprudence – to view the right of the public sector to compel tzedaka as evidence that the Torah supports socialism.  Their enraged response to the findings produced by my son, who is considered a professional scholar by all criteria, proves that they have been blinded by worship of the idol of socialism, and that no evidence in the world, as professionally rigorous as it might be, can possibly budge them from their position that is utterly without basis.   They do not budge, despite the fact that the halacha views public expropriation of private monies as robbery in every sense of the word.

Summary
Korach’s sin expresses the fundamental human tendency to remove from the rules of the game anything not subject to logical process.  Logical process is a cognitive tool that is subject to enslavement by man.  In his great arrogance, man heretically casts off the supreme authority any time it does not yield to human logic.  This tendency exists in our own day as well.  There is no book dealing with scientific description that does not open every paragraph with those charmed words: “Research has proven…” even if the topic is football.  This is not to mention the popular health and wellness books.  No one (of the masses) would take them seriously if they did not use this or a similar device. 

A preference for research, which bestows the crown of “science” upon its own head, has pushed aside not only authority, and with it, the supreme authority as well, but also common sense, the secret of human wisdom. For without a supreme authority, we are left with mere random chance, and with it come wantonness and abandon, running riot, merging nicely with logical process, which knows how to get along with any tendency man might have.