Reality Bites: Thoughts on Parashat Korach - Rabbi Shira Levine

I write this D’var Torah with a broken heart.

Sorrow surrounds us—the destruction and despair of the ongoing war.

Twenty-nine civilians have been killed (as of this writing) by Iranian missile strikes. Fifty of our brothers and sisters remain in captivity - They must come home. Now.

I turn to Torah to find strength, to seek life within it, to have it breathe hope into me. And I find through this, the Torah, my soul can be revived this week.

In last week’s Parashat Shelach Lecha, the threat was cast:

And now, in our parashah, the threat is realized: The earth opens its mouth and agrees to participate in the human conflict.

Earth, solid ground—why?!

Why do you take sides in human strife?

Our parashah, Korach, is:

On one hand, pure terror at the materialization of the threat:

The earth yawns wide and does not relent.

Where will the next lot fall?

The weekly rhythm of Torah reading invites us to surrender to these weeks in the book of Numbers that engage major questions of leadership. This year, we read Korach’s story through a new lens: participatory leadership.

The organization “HaTribuna” (The Tribune) for participatory leadership offers models of inclusion and empowerment for community partners (I invite you to visit their website!). With these participatory lenses, I read Moses’ response to Korach’s challenge as overly centralized, “old-fashioned” leadership- a leadership that no longer speaks the new language of collective wisdom.

This is a leadership that misses the opportunity held within each proposal of communal participation - A leadership stuck in an Ego System, one that centers the self, rather than evolving into an Eco System - a network that wisely draws on the diverse resources and strengths of the group and their interrelations.

Rashi explains,

The Netziv of Volozhin says: he fell in prayer.

Chizkuni agrees it was prayer, but adds a layer: Before the prayer, there was a moment of shame - eyes that avoid direct gaze, a heart pounding with the recognition of a deep mistake.

That moment, when Moses’ eyes lower and he buries his gaze in the ground, is precisely what allows God to enter:

But sadly, God enters not with spirit or water, but with fire:

A binary test of firepans, a zero-sum game.

A lose-lose situation—even if your firepan is accepted in heaven,

You’ve already been burned as a leader on earth…

So how can we find an answer from Parashat Korach this year, for our question of how to lead in the wilderness?

Perhaps the harsh conditions of the desert require Moses’ kind of leadership, strong-handed, immediately referring “problems” directly to God? Maybe Moses can’t afford to be open to “suggestions for improvement.”

Maybe, in the extreme desert climate, leadership must be a fortified wall, without cracks that could allow doubt to seep in?

In the wilderness, we are a people with no home (not even one to long for yet).

Of course, our decision-making structures will look different.

I do not wish to judge Moses harshly this year - I choose to judge him with generosity.

(And really, how can we judge Moses, when we are all so utterly exhausted…)

Let’s close with a blessing for the month of Tammuz.

Bahya ben Asher offers a commentary on the same verse: “Moses heard and fell on his face.” He notes that Aaron is not mentioned as falling, the Torah does not not say “they fell on their faces.”

This, he explains, is due to Aaron’s humility and moral strength - Even though Korach’s rebellion was directed primarily at him, Aaron remained still.

But Moses, seeing his brother humiliated and feeling protective of his honor, fell on his face alone.

Bahya ben Asher suggests that Moses’ prostration had nothing to do with himself, and, at least this time, not with his internal leadership dilemmas. This time, Moses found within himself the strength to see his brother’s pain and acted in response.

May it be that when our current heartbreak threatens to flatten us, we learn from Moses that falling on one’s face can be an act of defiance, and rebellion on behalf of another’s suffering.

Of someone distant, or someone who feels like a brother or sister to us.

Can we make space within ourselves for the pain of another and give voice to their experience?

Whether through prayer,

Whether by allowing shame to surface,

Whether by lowering our eyes in humility,

Or by falling on our faces—literally or metaphorically?

Not necessarily today,

Not after such a hard week.

But perhaps, later this month, we’ll find the strength to fall for others, in whichever interpretive form “falling” may take.

And the earth- it will hold our fall.

In prayer for a month, bearing good news

In a land we will not cease to build,

As a very, very good land.

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