Korach v. Moses

Shabbat Korach
June 19, 2004

None of us likes conflict, discord or controversy. Aren’t they all rather negative words? Today’s parashah seems to prove it: the end result of Korach’s rebellion is much pain, anguish, suffering and death.

And yet, our tradition seems to look at conflict and controversy somewhat differently. In Pirkei Avot, we learn the following:

Kol makhloket she-hi l’shem shamayim—sofah l’hitkayem.

V’she-eino l’shem shamayim—ein sofah l’hitkayem.

Every controversy for the sake of Heaven—its end is to endure.

But any controversy that is not for the sake of Heaven—its end is that it will not endure.

What controversy was for the sake of Heaven? The controversy of Hillel and Shammai.

And not for the sake of Heaven?—The controversy of Korach and his faction.

This text doesn’t just suggest; it tells us explicitly that though some conflicts are wrong, inappropriate, to be condemned, others are not. So before condemning one conflict and enbracing another, it would be helpful to know how to tell the difference.

What really is the difference between a conflict “for the sake of Heaven” and one which isn’t? What’s the difference between the controversies between Hillel and Shammai, and those involving Korach and his group?

Korach’s fundamental complaint was that he didn’t have power. He and his partners resented Moses’ leadership. He wanted power for himself.

So from this do we learn that a controversy for the sake of Heaven should not involve power? That couldn’t be. Without power, how can one act out one’s values, one’s principles? But what then distinguishes the two?

The answer seems to be the issue of the ultimate goal: is it l’shem shamayim -- for the name, for the sake of Heaven? Or is it for the name, for the sake, not of Heaven, but for one’s self?

We are in the midst of an election year in this country. It’s a time which, on the one hand, I find extraordinarily interesting and engaging, and at the same time, somewhat depressing. It’s interesting because we have a high stakes race going on, and that is inherently interesting. Often, during election years, I pull out my old copy of Theodore White’s The Making of the President, to remind myself how much has changed—and how much hasn’t.

I find it depressing for the same reason I find it interesting: it’s a high stakes race. Shouldn’t it be more than that?

So often, news programs, television interviews, and news reports focus all their attention on electibility, on the politics of the race, rather than on its substance. And that, I think, is depressing, because it pushes the candidates, the parties, and the electorate to focus too much attention on the chances of winning, rather than on the reasons one candidate or party or perspective might be more worthy of winning.

I recently viewed a clip from an old episode of West Wing, and one of the characters, in a flashback scene during an election year, was lamenting exactly that fact, that the focus was on winning, rather than on why one might want to win. It’s the old Vince Lombardi idea that ‘winning isn’t everything—it’s the only thing’. That works in football, it may work in politics, but it doesn’t work in governance. And that’s depressing. Remember that old Robert Redford movie about the candidate who, after finally winning the election says, “Now what?” “What do I do now?”

Winning is important. Power is important. We all know that. Moses knew that. After all, Moses was the ultimate rebel against Pharaoh. He knew that unless Pharaoh was defeated, the Israelites couldn’t be free.

Yet, for Moses, the ultimate question was not who he was, but Who he represented: “Who shall I say sent me?,” he responds to God when asked to go before Pharaoh.

Now today, if a candidate appeared before us and said that God had sent him to represent Him (and there are those who come perilously close to saying precisely that), not too many of us would believe him. Yet, today, we’ve become so cynical—perhaps rightfully so—that we can hardly believe anyone when he or she says, I’m doing this for this reason or for that one. Our candidates are so careful not to say anything that might hurt their chances for election—or re-election—that we’ve turned our election campaigns, which, at their core, are political contests, into nothing more than political contests—highly personal, highly subjective, focusing much more on the emotional side of our consciousness than on the intellectual.

Let’s remember that quote from Pirkei Avot. Makhlokot l’shem shamayim—disputes for the sake of Heaven—are good. We need them. We need to thrash out the issues. Just like Hillel and Shammai disagreed, yet remained civil with one another, so too can and should we discuss and disagree and remain civil with one another.

In the Babylonian Talmud, we learn that: Ein ha-olam mitkayem elah bishvil mi shebolem et atzmo b’sh’at m’rivah, she-ne-emar, “Toleh eretz al blimah.” (Job 26:7) (B. Hullin 89a). “The world exists only for the sake of people who, in the midst of disputes, suppress their instincts.” Rabbi Abahu goes further and says the world exists only for the sake of those she-mei-sim atzmo k’mi she-eino—those who act as if they don’t matter. That’s the goal: to suppress one’s ego to such an extent that a dispute is wholly about the issues, and not about personalities.

We learn from this that self-restraint, and a focus not on the ego but on the issues are at the core of a makhloket l’shem shamayim.

Let’s hope we’ll have such makhlokot this year.

AMEN