“Who made you the boss? … No! I’m doing it my way! … You’re not in charge of me! … Stop telling me what to do! … I listened to you last time and now look where we are!” Does this sounds more like what you overhear from the room where your children are “playing together” than like you think the Torah should sound? Make no mistake, this week’s parsha is full of sibling rivalry all grown up into high-stakes family drama. Korach, for whom the parsha is named, is Moses’ cousin, and he is angry that Moses and Aaron have so much more authority than he does.
He gathers a group of supporters, demonstrating that, like his cousins, he has strong leadership abilities, and rebels against Moses and Aaron. Korach’s group approaches Moses and Aaron saying, “Enough of you! Everyone in the whole community is holy, and God is among them! Why do you raise yourselves up above God’s people?” This sounds hauntingly like an argument between my boys, as one gives another some unsolicited advice and the advisee flies off the handle. In our Parsha, things escalate quickly as Moses falls on his face, imagine the whining and crying from the other room and then retorts, “In the morning God will show who is really holy, and will bring the one God chooses close!” “You know, Mama said… I’m going to tell …” Moses tells Korach that he and his followers should get their fire pans ready, and tomorrow they would offer incense and God would choose. “Mama! He’s doing… and I’m trying to do … and I told him not to … and I can’t…! And of course it doesn’t stop there. Moses continues, “Enough of you, sons of Levi! God set you apart and brought you close and gave you work in the tabernacle and a special role serving the community. Now you want more? You want to be priests, too?!”. “OMG! You get everything you want! You never have to do the dishes! I have to do all these things and you want more!?”
Tired of dealing with Korach himself, Moses tries to talk to some of the followers. The refuse to come, accusing Moses of taking them away from the land of milk and honey to die in the desert. Moses turns to God and says, “don’t pay any attention to them. I never stole anything from any of them.” “Mama! He’s saying I … and I never did anything!!”
The next day they get everything all set up for the face-off, and God starts to lose it. God says “Stand back… I’m going to annihilate them!” Have you ever reached the point of just giving a primal scream? “If the two of you don’t stop fighting right now…! – There is no end of this sentence. Nobody knows what will happen, but whatever it is it isn’t good and you don’t want to find out.
It doesn’t end well. As Moses proclaims, “If these people die a normal death, you can complain about me, but If not, you’ll know that God put me and Aaron in charge,” the earth swallows up Korach and his band of supporters. “I told you Mama was going to be mad!” – And I told you nobody wants to know what will happen
Luckily the sibling conflict at home doesn’t tend to reach this point. Usually someone gives up or I manage to separate them to cool down before utter disaster strikes. But there are definitely times, and this week has been one of them, where it seems like the tensions are higher and disaster is potentially closer, and I can’t help but wonder why.
The midrash on this parsha explains that Korakh is so upset because the leadership of the tribe of Levi has been handed out without enough regard for birth order. Moses, Aaron and Korach are all grandsons of Kehat. Moses and Aaron’s father, Amram, was first-born and Aaron was his firstborn, so it makes sense that Aaron gets to be High Priest. But Korach’s father was next in line, and when leaders were chosen for all the families of Levites, Korach was not made leader, and instead the son of his father’s youngest brother became the chief. Korach takes that insult and passes it over to the tribe of Reuben, Jacob’s first born, and gathers some of them in because the tribe of Levi was given a more important role than their tribe. And while he’s on a roll, he reminds everyone that originally it was first-born children who were special to God and why is it that Levites took over that position?
The midrash and many of the commentators put this firmly in the realm of family drama gone awry. And I feel for Korach and his complaints. It’s hard not to be chosen, and to watch others get what seems like your fair share. And, in modern sensibilities, we do think of the whole community as holy, with no one member holier than another. And it must be annoying that Moses has to drive home how wrong Korach is over and over again. But Korach takes it too far. And he makes it all about himself, while whipping up the insecurities of his fellow complainers so that they are thinking about themselves and not about each other.
And rather than ask why the rebellion happened – It is often impossible to determine what the reason was for a blow-up among loved ones – I’m wondering why the rebellion happened now. One midrash says it was because Korach offered about an interpretation of the laws of tzitzit, which are given at the end of the last parsha and Moses shot it down. I tend to think it has more to do with the rest of last week’s parsha, though, where the people learn that their journey to the promised land will be extended an extra 40 years, that they will die in the desert, that they will have to get used to a new reality.
I’m willing to bet that many of us this week have been dealing with elevated tensions and bubblings up of anxiety as our children get used to the idea of the new reality of summer coming on. For most, it will be a pleasant reality, with fun summer activities or weeks of welcome unstructured relaxation coming soon. But the transition is difficult, and when faced with difficult transitions, for some reason, the natural inclination is to try blaming the people closest to us for our feelings of discomfort. Our kids do it to their siblings and classmates, and they do it to us. We do it to them, too. If I’m being totally honest, I’m blaming whatever is bubbling up in me on my kids right now.
In the parsha a greater disaster is averted because Moses, despite having all of his buttons pushed, feeling insulted and challenged, finds it in him to talk God out of taking even more drastic action. He thinks of the community, has compassion on them and takes it upon himself to pull them through together.
For most of us, whose children are at each other as they work through this transition, we can’t expect one of them to gain the necessary perspective to pull it together. It will probably fall to us. We will have to try to do it ourselves. I feel blessed to be part of a community, and strengthened in imagining that we are all, in our own kitchens, pulling through this moment together in community. I hope to see many of you at summer meet-ups where we can share these highs and lows together. Either way, Shabbat Shalom and Happy Summer.