“… LIVE WITH THIS THE
GREATEST OF BLESSINGS.”
When
teaching about the Ba’al Shem Tov, David Hertzberg, zt”l, a very special Jew,
taught us that towards the end of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s days his Chasidim wanted
to know who would be the next Rebbe after he left this world. Many thought that
it would be Ya’akov Yosef of Polonoy, who was the greatest learner of all the
Chasidim, but the Ba’al Shem Tov said no. Much speculation and many rumors
followed, but the Ba’al Shem Tov made no decision. As time became critical, the
Chasidim pressured the Ba’al Shem Tov for an answer, and this is what he said.
“To know who will be your Rebbe, you have to ask this one question: How do you
conquer pride? For anyone who says he knows the answer, you’ll know that he’s
not the one. Only the one who when he hears the question will collapse to the
ground in bitter tears crying, ‘all my life I’ve tried to do that, and I’ve
never succeeded,” he will be the one.
This story is such an insight into Korach: what
motivated him, and what defeated him. Shlomo Carlebach taught, “Korach never
sinned in his whole life, he had no part in the sin of the golden calf. If you
remember, Aharon was involved …”
The Levi’im didn’t participate in the sin of the
golden calf, and the result was that the Levi’im didn’t fall with the rest of
B’nei Yisrael. They remained on a higher level of sanctity. In fact, they were
living proof that it could be done and that we could do it. One could actually
live his or her entire life ascending from one level of sanctity to the next
without ever falling.
This reality of what had been and what can be
achieved was part of Korach’s challenge to Moshe Rabbainu, when he argued about
the mitzvah of ‘tzitzit’. “You want to tell us that a white garment can be
sanctified with a single strand of ‘t’chelet’ (blue), then I say that a garment
that is entirely ‘t’chelet how much more so is it sanctified.” Meaning that if
a poor Yid who has the merit of only one single mitzvah is considered Holy, how
much more Holy is a Jew whose whole being is saturated with mitzvot?
Moreover, it wasn’t only this stature of
exceptional Holiness that Korach claimed. With prophetic vision Korach saw that
generations of genuinely Holy and prestigious Jews were going to descend from
him. Shmuel HaNavi (Samuel the Prophet), B’nei Korach (lit: his sons, but
meaning that his descendents have prestige by being related to him) of whom
David HaMelech (King David), a”h, writes numerous tehilim (psalms) in their
name, e.g. Mizmor Shir l’B’nei Korach, and more.
Korach even compares his extensive and
impressive future lineage against Moshe Rabbainu’s lack of future lineage.
“What’s going to become of you and your children? I don’t see any great lights
descending from you!”
He’s right. Find one person anywhere who claims
descendency from Moshe Rabbainu? But Korach……ahhhh! (Ask the Bostoner Rebbes,
for example.)
So Korach, in his own eyes is ‘there’. He’s
achieved it all and only one thing eludes him - the stature of Moshe Rabbainu.
The whole episode of Korach is absolutely
fascinating, and the commentaries on it are even more so. But if we really,
really want to know what’s going on, there’s really only one way to do it.
We’ve got to put ourselves in Moshe Rabbainu’s shoes. We’ve got to hear and see
and understand everything as if we were Moshe Rabbainu.
Korach didn’t come out of the blue, fall off the
moon, or by some other miraculous invention suddenly appear. He was part of the
very upper echelons of leadership, and Moshe Rabbainu was clearly on intimate
terms with him. They might not have been deep friends, but the nature of who
they were and of what they and we were doing provided an intimacy that is
created when people are struggling together to achieve a common goal. Add to
this our uniqueness in what we were and are and had done and were doing, and
that intimacy achieves an even more sacred level.
So when Korach confronted Moshe Rabbainu, Moshe
Rabbainu knew intimately with whom he was dealing and why, and it is for this
reason that Moshe Rabbainu fell on his face [in prayer] when Korach challenged
him.
You see, it wasn’t only Korach - even though it
was specifically Korach - who stood before Moshe Rabbainu. It was also ‘a
Korach’, someone with his magnificent qualifications who stood there in opposition
to ‘a Moshe Rabbainu’. It was the ultimate challenge of the ultimate student
against the ultimate teacher. “I’m ready to move up”, “I’m ready to do what you
are doing”, and especially, “I’m even more capable than you are.”
Moshe Rabbainu, the unequalled teacher, answers
each of these challenges of Korach’s. He answers the last one first, “ boker
v’yoda HaShem et-asher-lo….ha’ish asher-bachar HaShem hu Kadosh…” In the
morning HaShem will make known who is His…the man whom HaShem chooses he is
Holy…”. Then he responds to the first, “Rav l’chem, b’nei Levi….” You Levi’im
have [been given] greatness…. Finally he relates to the second, Ha’m’at m’chem
ki-hivdil Elokei Yisrael etchem…v’la’amod l’fnei ha’eidah l’shartam.” Is it too
little [for you] that the God of Israel has distinguished you…to stand before
the congregation and serve them?
Like every excellent mentor, Moshe Rabbainu both
succinctly describes what is bothering his student, Korach, while
simultaneously he lays before him the solutions to his problems. It isn’t,
however, that Moshe Rabbainu is being combatant with Korach, instead with his
gentle acumen and acute insight he’s saying to Korach that, “You’re overlooking
something. You really, really don’t understand what it’s all about.”
It’s the ultimate dilemma for a teacher and
student: the teacher is living and doing that which the student hasn’t
experienced and can’t comprehend.
With Korach the problem is compounded because
Korach confronts Moshe Rabbainu not privately but openly and publicly and with
accomplices before the entire hierarchy of Am Yisrael. Instead of a being a
strictly pedagogical dilemma of a student versus a teacher, it becomes an
assault of extremely talented, qualified, and accomplished individuals against
a system and those who stand at its head. Of so it would seem.
There are times in every teacher’s life when he
knows that he can only bring a student to the threshold. What and if the
student will decide is and must solely reside with the student. One excellent
example is a story told about the Chofetz Chaim, zt”l, which I’ll relate in
extreme brevity. One Purim, one of the Chofetz Chaim’s best students got
Purimdik very early on Purim, and because of his ‘elevated state’ he began to
badger the Chofetz Chaim demanding that the Chofetz Chaim guarantee him a place
in Olam HaBa, the coming world.
The Chofetz Chaim, realizing that he was
Purimdik, politely ignored him. Still, for whatever reason, this student
continued all of Purim to pursue the Chofetz Chaim with his request, “guarantee
me a place in the coming world.” So relentless and determined was he, that in
the afternoon, when the Chofetz Chaim started to go to the Purim seudah
(feast), the student physically barred his way declaring, “I’m not moving until
you promise me!”
Ignoring the pleas of others to “throw him out”,
the Chofetz Chaim looked deeply at the young man and said, “I don’t know if I
have a place in Olam HaBa, but if I do it is because I have scrupulously
adhered to the halachos of Lashon HaRa (the laws against speaking slander). I
promise you that if you, too, will scrupulously guard the halachos of Lashon
HaRa then you will be given a place in Olam HaBa.
Despite his inebriated condition, the words of
the Chofetz Chaim and their import struck home, and the student sobered
noticeably. For long moments he stood there in deliberation and in silence as
everyone waited for his decision. Finally the Chofetz Chaim cried out, “What?!
You stand at the portals of eternity and you hesitate?! Get him out of here!”
The other side of this coin, however, is in not
seeing what it and you are all about, which is where Korach stood. Korach not
only wouldn’t have hesitated in response to the Chofetz Chaim, he wouldn’t have
even known that there was anything to hesitate about. OF COURSE you go forward;
that’s what it’s all about! What he didn’t know is that there are times when to
walk through is the WRONG decision. That is what Moshe Rabbainu was trying to
teach him; it depends - it depends on when and how and with whom.
As Shlomo Carlebach teaches, “Korach saw that
the High Priest [Aharon] was the person who made the golden calf. Facts of
life!……and now, mamash, he saw that [with] the spies coming back everything
falls apart. He says what the world needs - ‘we need a new high priest - we
need a new high priest to change the whole picture.’
But you know what he didn’t see, he didn’t see
how holy Aharon is. You know friends, how much it takes to see somebody else
doing wrong and realize that they only wanted to save somebody else’s life?
That [is] already the deepest depths; for that you need a lot of depth.”
Korach’s blindness was that he could only look
up. He could only focus on where to go, how to improve. He genuinely wanted it
different, improved, and better, but he couldn’t see that in pushing himself
forward that he was also pushing himself away from everyone else. He would have
unhesitatingly walked into Olam HaBa, totally oblivious that he was on one side
and everyone else on the other. If asked about it, he would have responded, “if
I could do it, so can they.”
Moshe, however, knew that his unparalleled
student was missing something fundamental - the essence - what it’s all about.
It’s what David Hertzberg, zt”l taught us about the Ishbitzer and his two star
pupils, Rebbe Tzadok HaCohen from
Both Reb Tzadok and Reb Leibeleh learned
directly from the Ishbitzer, yet each one’s Torah is so completely different
from the other; one is the deepest of the deep and the other pure sweetness and
honey. In answering the question that begs to be asked, “how can that be?”
David said, “Reb Tzadok gave over ‘what he heard’ and Reb Leibeleh gave over
‘how he heard it’, and this was two different Torahs altogether. It’s much
different what we’re hearing and what we’re doing……cause this is really the
secret of life. There’s a lot of things that we have to do….. You see, the
whole question is not ‘what’re we doing?’ but ‘how’re we doing it?’”
Moshe Rabbainu understood that Korach wasn’t
comprehending the depth of what were his responsibilities. It isn’t sufficient
to have plans to fix the world; you also have to have contingency plans when
your plans go awry. The demands of leadership are the ultimate demands of being
a teacher: you have to be able on the instant to decide what it is that those
who are your responsibility need. It may be clarification, it may be
encouragement, it may be chastisement, and above everything it may even be the
necessity to intercede and draw the punishment that otherwise would fall upon them
- but it has to be for them.
Olam HaBa is an enviable goal, but it’s not an
individual one; it’s communal. If you as a leader and teacher are sitting there
alone, what have you accomplished?
Moshe Rabbainu, in answering Korach, said, “the
Holy One, Blessed be He, has given you greatness. By not falling in the sin of
the golden calf, you’ve shown that it was not an inevitable, unavoidable
mistake. We could have and we can do otherwise. In distinguishing you within Am
Yisrael, God is telling you, ‘You are between them and Me, because you are
there for them. Your back is towards me and your face towards them. Unlike
they, who will walk forward when walking into Olam HaBa, you will walk
backward, in assurance that each and everyone is following.’“
Korach still didn’t get it. Instead of accepting
Moshe Rabbainu’s attempt to refocus him, he persisted in challenging the one
missing ingredient that eluded him. His ultimate challenge to Moshe Rabbainu
was, “We’re all equal and identical. Every single one of us stood at Har Sinai,
and every single one of us heard the Holy One, Blessed be He, speak. How is it
ever possible that you are distinct from all of us?”
And this, ultimately, is the crux and core of
Korach’s challenge and dilemma. How? Why? From where?
Let’s, for a minute, be Moshe Rabbainu looking
at Korach. There is no doubt that not only do we really have a lot of
compassion and love for him, but we also know how much Korach is genuinely
needed. We have absolutely no difficulty in understanding ‘what he doesn’t
understand and why’, and yet equally we know that it absolutely exceeds our
ability to explain to him. We cannot make him see it, yet it is expected that
he will see it. The uniqueness of Moshe Rabbainu, who is the genuinely humblest
of human beings, is so for one reason and one reason alone.
Moshe Rabbainu knows that whatever he is and
knows, it is only so because it is all coming from God. It’s a gift, pure and
simple, an outright gift, not something that he achieved or acquired. That
extra level of sanctity, wisdom, and understanding which separates him uniquely
and forever from the rest of mankind is a gift - a Heavenly gift. And because
it is, there is absolutely no way that he can explain it to the insatiable
appetite of Korach or to anyone else.
So Moshe Rabbainu tells Korach and all those who
side with him, “There’s nothing I can do or say that will convince you. Bring
your censers and we’ll let the Holy One, Blessed be He, decide once and for all
who is who. I dearly wish that it was within my ability to convince you, but
you’re all beyond reason, and therefore it is up to He, who is beyond all
reason to understand, to reveal only that which He can know.
I know that you don’t believe me, Korach, but
it’s really not coming from me, none of it. It’s all a gift. If you would only
listen to your OWN prophecy that says, ‘you, Korach, are going to have such
illustrious descendents, but mine are going to disappear into oblivion.’ That’s
the price that I have to pay. Whatever the uniqueness is that has been imparted
to me it’s not transferable. My descendents cannot inherit it.
You, however, are blessed, extremely blessed.
Not only are you the beginning of an illustrious and magnificent family, but
your family will be among the genuine teachers and leaders of Am Yisrael.
Wherever we are going and whatever we will be doing, it will be you and them
who are and will be teaching and leading us. Please, please accept this. More
than this cannot possibly be given to you. I beg of you to back off from this
and to live with this the greatest of blessings.
Korach, however, insisted on playing with fire,
Holy fire, and instead of provoking God to compassion, he provoked Him to judgment.
Even Moshe Rabbainu was incapable of protecting those who stepped out from
under his and His protection. But it wasn’t for Moshe Rabbainu’s lack of trying
or compassion; for some things even the ‘gift’ doesn’t work.
B’Shalom,
Daniel Nakonechny
Beit El
Sivan 5766