Numbers - 1601-1832 - Korach - Cycle 2

The first word of Korach is not Korach. It’s voyikach (he took). Korach took and (given the revolving vuv) there is a habit of taking. The question is… what was taken? And given the fact that we get Korach’s complete ancestral line…this is an important question.

First though let’s look a bit at Be-Ha-alotheka and Sh’lach. In both parshas we view peaks and ravines. We learn that if we love God when it’s good, we love when it’s bad. Best to see good and bad as one amorphous whole. Best to place our tents at the sacred center. It gets complicated though, especially as we watch others place their tents on peaks or porto-pottys. Let’s face it though. A tzaddick does not look down on others for not being tzaddicks (no matter his or her disappointment). And we (in emulating the tzaddick) simply move our tents and move them again because the center does change. Peaks and ravines are natural. We watch our thoughts, our words, what we eat, what we see. We witness the highs and lows in our lives in order to smooth them to valleys. One day, we don’t have to worry about tent placement. Or so we pray.

How then do we pinpoint that which is beyond the peaks and ravines? The tribal (matah) flowering to consciousness? The frightening pits of the earth? How do we know the boundary between a peak and enlightenment? Between a ravine and the vessels of darkness? No doubt, we must embrace God and bury evil into the earth. But it’s important to take care. We don’t want to under-react. Nor do we want to over-react… destroy love because of one ravine or a thousand…or raise ourselves high and mighty because of one mountain peak (or thousands).

This is what Korach is about.

Just the other day I was at a sauna in my easy and imperfect town among the mountain peaks. A German was there. I had never seen him before.

“My parents were Nazis,” he said. “I was born in 1947 after the war. But they just went from one thing to the next, never thought about any of it. Hitler was like Jesus Christ to them.”

I told him I was going to Jerusalem soon.

Then he gave a speech detailing the horrors, the schism between generations in Germany, his mother who rode her bicycle past a concentration camp to get to work. She said didn’t know.

I tried to make him feel better. After all, he was born after the war. Maybe one day I could really help, I thought. Peace after atrocity depends on both victim and aggressor. Finally, I stood to go. That’s when he said, “But if I was alive at that time, I would have been a Nazi. I wouldn’t have known anything else. It’s God. It’s fate. I would have done the same thing.”

I sighed. I was suddenly sick and tired of shooting the breeze with this Nazi descendent guilt ridden German in a redwood spa ironically owned by Jewish doctor. I didn’t cause any conflict, tell him that was a crazy destructive reflection of the denial embedded in the skin of the very parents he had just finished regretting. I didn’t hate him for a moment. I smiled at my new friend as if we were both still flying above the peaks and ravines (eroded by time) in a place of Holocaust--Consciousness, jumped off the bench and got out fast.

Here’s a question. Was his comment undeniably grotesque, a rebellion of sorts, a taking of
God? And if this is to be buried, ejected, swallowed into the earth and maybe even vomited up, then what is this? One man in a sauna in Ashland? No. A whole culture? I don’t think so. What about a fear so solid it can excuse mass murder? What about a fear seemingly backed up by the sacred entity that it threatens? Here’s a question. Was this just a ravine, or something darker?

Now let’s look at Korach, he who confuses mountain peaks for the sacred heights of the Kohanim, he who says to Moses umadua titnasu al kehal adonai? Why are you carrying yourself above God’s congregation? The mistake here is that Moses does not carry himself above others…he has been carried to those places. Korach takes those places as his own. Therefore, his ability to choose, to see the boundaries, is impaired. Is this what makes someone evil? No. As I said before, by judging we become that which we judge. It does, however, show us what not to do. And it shows us what must be done to him.

Given the danger here, God sees the need to define the places beyond. And if we can’t see the boundaries…the earth as it splits or the blossoming of the fruit on our ancestry or on the staff, if we can’t see the breath of creation as it magically bursts forth …we can still practice that sight from the outside-in until it is real. We can give tithes to those who know that vision. We can honor those with such light we are drawn to them. It’s a difficult path to be on. The best we can do is to know the lesson (the lakach…same root as lokayach) to recognize what we, as humans, can embrace and can’t. Peaks are peaks. Ravines are ravines. To mistake them for the absolute sacred or for the pits of the earth ultimately destroys our love for each other. We cannot take God. We cannot use God without destroying God.

So, may we have the humility to know our place on this earth. May we honor love beyond the good or the bad. May we avoid mistaking the peaks for the kadosh kadoshim….and the ravines for the pits of the earth. May we avoid judging those who do, even if their words scratch at God to whitewash the horrific actions of this era. May we be like God and learn how to teach the boundaries. May we get enough glimpses of the beyond to know that we are sacred here and now…that we are set aside to fly over the stuff between the beyond. May we know…how goodly are our tents (24:5). And may we remember…Oh Lord, the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup. Thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen into me in pleasant places, yea. I have a goodly heritage. (Psalms 16:5)