I think Korach's rebellion and its aftermath, as we read it in the Torah, is really difficult to stomach.
Korach asks a reasonable question of Moses and Aaron. Who put you in charge? Why do you get to make all the decisions? Is it time for us to explore other more open and democratic ways of establishing ourselves as a nation?
Moses invites the Israelites to stand with whomever they choose to be their leader. If it's Korach, go stand with him. If it's Moses, take his side. Everyone who supports Korach's challenge to the system is then swallowed up by the earth. Moses continues to lead the people.
Ouch.
The rabbinic tradition for thousands of years has been to retroject information about Korach into the sparse story as it's told in the Torah. They suggest that Korach was selfish in his motives. Korach was arrogant. Korach was a power monger. All these negative character traits justify his violent and public death and the destruction of those whose curiosity was aroused by the questions he asked.
A found a Chasidic teaching that draws a different conclusion from the traditional rabbinic one. What if Korach's mistake was not that he questioned Moses' authority or that he had a tad too much ego? What if the reason Korach and his band are punished had more to do with how they went about voicing their opposition to the status quo.
There is no question that Judaism thrives because of thousands of years of ongoing discourse about the meaning of the stories and ethical guidelines contained in the Torah. Arguments, challenges to authority, speaking up...isn't this what we Jews are all about?
Korach does something else. He cultivates an angry mass of folks before voicing his concerns to the evolving national leadership. He creates an atmosphere of "us" and "them." His demise suggests to me that the earth cannot sustain a population that is divided into us and them.
There's the old story about the folks in the row boat. One is drilling a small hole under his seat. It is his seat, after all. But everybody goes down with the boat when it sinks. The hole driller may have declared autonomy over his own space within the collective, but his actions render the boat incapable of supporting everybody.
An atmosphere of "us" and "them" by its very nature promotes distrust, fear, false perceptions, more fear, and eventually life-destroying forms of acting out.
It's clear to me that the earth itself can't sustain our lack of cooperation and collaboration as a species on the planet. If we don't figure out how to get along, learn from one another, and work together, we will destroy the earth's capacity to sustain us. The earth will continue, we'll just become extinct before our time. Pity.
