Parshat Korach Drash 5786

“The Candy Store”

Korach was one clever cookie.

By dangling plums of power and glory, he cobbled together a rebellion from the most improbable group of malcontents: (1) some firstborns among the various Tribes of Israel, who sought the restoration of the traditional priesthood to the eldest sons; (2) some Reubenites, who, as descendants of Jacob’s firstborn son Reuben, felt entitled to the priesthood; and (3) some Levites, who were dissatisfied with the support role they were assigned in G-d’s service, and coveted the priesthood for themselves.

These rival factions had competing interests and could agree on nothing – except that the High Priest Aaron (and his sons the Cohanim) had to go. We see this same phenomenon today in Israel, where political enemies, who would otherwise be attacking each other, find themselves rallying around one cause – anyone but Netanyahu.

Korach knew that he couldn’t possibly keep his promises to them all, but no matter: like most slick politicians, he never intended to anyway. They were merely useful idiots, props in the advancement of his secret ambition: a coup d’etat to topple Moses, to be replaced by none other than – Korach himself. 

And why not? Korach was rich where his first cousin Moses was not; charismatic where Moses was reserved and serious. (Korach probably had whiter teeth, fresher breath and could bench press twice his body weight, too.)

But for all his advantages, Korach, as his name implies in the Hebrew, was cold as ice and just as slippery and calculating. Wealth made Korach insufferably arrogant (as wealth invariably does), and his natural charisma drove his limitless ambition.

At the heart of Korach’s rebellion is a question which bears heavily on Jewish life to this day: What is the purpose of religion? To serve G-d, or is religion meant to serve us?

Korach stroked the egos of the insurrectionists by arguing that the purpose of religion was to serve them: after all, “kulam kedoshim,” all the people are holy. Accordingly, Moses’ Lawbook should be edited to conform to the evolving needs and aesthetic sensibilities of the people. 

In this view, the synagogue is a spiritual service center, where people turn to have their afflictions comforted, their marriages sanctioned, their dead buried, their children bar-mitzvahed. And just like the local tire shop or dry cleaner, you don’t give the place much thought when you aren’t in need of the services they provide.  

This consumerist view posits that religion is like powerful medicine: good to know it’s there when you need it, but who takes antibiotics if you don’t have a bacterial infection? Who takes Dayquil if you don’t have the flu?

In the spiritual marketplace, the customer is king – and it’s a buyer’s market. Is your rabbi coming down a little hard on your lifestyle choices? No problem, go rabbi shopping! There are boatloads of others, one of whom is sure to grant religious sanction to anything – and I mean absolutely anything – your little heart desires, and all for the most reasonable of fees. 

As savvy consumers, Korach and his motley crew were merely trading up – on both Moses and Aaron.

By contrast, Moshe, the eved Hashem, the servant of G-d, embodied the opposite view: that the religious life is a life devoted to service, first to G-d and, by extension, to our fellow man.

Avodah, service, is all about performing G-d’s mitzvot with joy. Avodah is recognizing that the mitzvot come from G-d through Moses, but not from Moses himself. (This, by the way, was one of Korach’s accusations against Moshe: that he was making all these laws up himself and was not in communication with G-d at all.) It’s about performing the mitzvah even if we don’t fully understand why (and even as we resolve to gain deeper understanding) because we trust the Source. Avodah is about loving G-d by doing His mitzvot with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. (where have we heard those words before??)

In other words, true piety is not about calculating the take, the benefits that we extract from our religious experience as a spiritual consumer. It has been said that everyone’s favorite radio station is WII-FM – What’s In It For Me?  Not so in Judaism. Rather, it’s all about the moment-to-moment hard work of spiritual growth and development, of giving our hearts to G-d, quietly and without fanfare.

“Antigonus the leader of Socho said: be not like servants who serve their master for the sake of reward; rather, be like servants who serve their master [out of love and] without expectation of reward.” (Pirkei Avot 1:3)

This contrast between Moshe’s and Korach’s view of the utility of religion is explicitly reflected, again, in Pirkei Avot (5:17):

“Every argument that is for the sake of heaven is destined to endure. But if it is not for the sake of heaven — it is not destined to endure. What is an example of an argument for the sake of heaven? The legal arguments between Hillel and Shammai. What is an example of an argument not for the sake of heaven? The argument of Korach and all of his followers.”

Korach wasn’t casting his eyes heavenward, in the service of G-d, he was casting his eyes downward, dispensing candy to the Israelites. Moses had nothing to offer them but spinach and hard work. 

Which is easier to sell?

Tragically, there is a lot of candy on offer in the Jewish world today. We live in a time when it has become fashionable to modernize Judaism with all kinds of updates and tweaks and improvements. 

The thorny problem is Moses’ Lawbook, which is an insurmountable obstacle to the new-and-improved Judaism version 2.0. So “Job One” must be to delegitimize the Torah, undercut its authority. Then we can begin crafting a Judaism more adapted to our own likeness and image.

Is the wording of a particular prayer giving you heartburn? A little liturgical nip-and-tuck is in order. Trim the fat. Cut out the parts you don’t like, or better yet, write your own prayer book, which reflects your uber-sophisticated modern sensibilities (because let’s just come out and say it – it’s all about you.)

Don’t like a particular mitzvah? Cut and paste it out of the Book. Better yet, chuck the Torah out the window altogether and design your own customized faith system. Invent your own mitzvot. Environmentalism replaces kosher. Feminism in place of Shabbat. Gay Rights instead of Circumcision. Then head out to the marketplace where you’re sure to find a rabbi to call it “Judaism.” 

And so we witness the phenomenon of so-called rabbis who possess no grounding in the sacred, primary texts of our faith; who don’t know how to read from the Torah or study the Talmud in the original. Rabbis whose rabbinic training consists of sensitivity training and advocating for the poor, hapless Palestinians and globalizing “social justice” and couching your anti-Zionism as a Jewish value. 

And the DEI thought-police demand that we treat both authentic rabbis and bubblegum rabbis with the same deference and respect. Candy corn and real corn are both corn, right?

The Edward Scissorhands routine has become so pervasive in American Judaism that it becomes harder by the day to find the simple faith of our forbears, that dedication to Absolute Truth, so nobly embodied for all generations by Moses. Those very things that have saved us alive through 18 centuries of exile and persecution are now being thrown overboard with gay abandon. Is it any wonder why Liberal Judaism is in its death throes?

To the contrary: Judaism is not consumer driven; it is not transactional. There is no pluralism in authentic Judaism. What there is is a rich and fascinating diversity in customs and traditions related to mitzvah performance. At the end of the day, though, there is but One G-d, One Torah and One Jewish People. 

Ours is a text-based faith, and our primary texts constitute the terms of our Covenant with the A-lmighty. When we live under the authority of the Written and Oral Torah, those texts having been distilled down to Halacha, the practical guide to day-to-day Jewish living, we accrue the benefits of that Covenant. Those Jews who, in their unbounded arrogance, deign to change G-d’s law to suit the prevailing cultural fads and trends fall outside the pale of that Covenant and are ultimately lost to Jewish history.

I, for one, do not believe that our liturgy requires updating. Our liturgy is 2500 years old; some prayers are even older and can be traced back to the Moshe. Every rabbi in subsequent generations endorsed these prayers. The authors of these traditional texts were far smarter, more learned and holier than anyone in this room, indeed, anyone living today. Each sentence was carefully constructed, each word deliberate. The concept is called Emunat Chachamim, a certitude that the sages have always acted in good faith and with their eyes on Heaven. Perhaps, instead of editing the texts, we should be self-editing, that is, changing and growing ourselves…

This is what Moshe meant when he inveighed us to do what is right in G-d’s eyes – rather than doing what is right in our own eyes.

Ultimately, G-d had to directly intervene in the rebellion of Korach to remind people that the heart of the Jewish faith system does not revolve around the desires of the Jewish People, but around our service of G-d. Our Covenantal relationship with G-d is a contingent one. 

To clarify that point: the bond between the People of Israel and the G-d of Israel is irrevocable. As the verse states:

“Despite all your backsliding, when you will be exiled to the land of your enemies, I will not be completely revolted by you and reject you totally to the point of abrogating my Covenant with you – for I am Hashem, you G-d. “(Leviticus 26.44)

But for us as individuals, our Covenantal relationship is absolutely conditioned on our mitzvah performance. It is a sad reflection on us that many of our non-Jewish Noahide friends understand this concept better than some native Jews. G-d bless them and may their numbers continue to grow. 

Korach was literally swallowed by his own ambition, and his rebels destroyed. But as the parsha goes on to tell, the ripples of that rebellion spread in their time and in ours. 

Candy tastes good going down, but you will get sick and die if candy is your only food. Snickers doesn’t satisfy. 

So it should come as no surprise that many Jews are rejecting the spiritually empty junk food on which they were weaned in their suburban temples and are returning to the not-so-politically-correct tenets of our faith. 

I recently met a man who felt obligated to tell me right up front that he was a confirmed Reform Jew, although he hadn’t been to temple in decades. He went on to describe his family’s horror as a favorite nephew had started keeping the mitzvot, and would no longer eat non-kosher food or work on Shabbat. He described it to me with the same shock and confusion as if the young man had been abducted by an exotic religious cult.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews like the nephew have abandoned the emptiness of liberal Judaism to discover the rich spiritual nutrition of Avodah, coming to realize that you cannot feed your soul from someone else’s garden. This, too, is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

“Behold the days are coming, saith the L-rd, when I will send a terrible famine in the land; not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but a hunger to hear the authentic words of Hashem.” (Amos 8:11)

Judaism has never been a populist movement. We are, and will continue to be, the least among the nations. It has been our historical role to stand against the ever-changing and usually debased social mores of our host cultures, NOT to give them religious sanction. Judaism was the original counter-culture, and in many ways still is. We march to the beat of a different drummer.

Abraham and his stubborn monotheistic ideas were a pain in the rear to Nimrod and the Sumerian pagans; we Jews were a headache to the polytheistic Greeks, and to the Romans after them. Today, Woke, non-binary definitions of gender are enjoying their moment in the sun; and, in so doing, have rendered the darling causes of yesterday, radical feminism and militant gay advocacy, pretty much irrelevant. Tomorrow it will undoubtedly be something new and even more provocative. And to be sure, in every generation there have been Jewish hellenizers, appeasers, reformers, modernizers; people who run with every new passing fad & trend by trying to label it “Jewish.” But in every generation these types fall away, largely forgotten by Jewish history. 

A feel-good Judaism defined by what is popular or trendy or lucrative is not Judaism, it’s mob rule. History has taught us again and again that only the Torah and its adherents endure. “Etz chaim hee lamachazikim bah,” the Torah is a Tree of Life to those who choose to cling to it. B’nai Israel Synagogue, I am proud to say, clings to those values, which is why we will not only survive but thrive.

Today as always, guided by Torah, Jews stand as the conscience of the world. The Jewish universalist vision of an ethical, compassionate monotheism has much to contribute to the ongoing social dialogue and to the ethical refinement of humankind. And if, by teaching an authentic, unadulterated Torah message, rabbis must speak in opposition to the latest and greatest cultural verities, then so be it.

“Trust in G-d; take heart and have courage; and above all, trust in G-d.”

Shabbat Shalom.