Parshat Korach 5767: Too Rational to Live

Numbers 16:1-18:32

This week we have the story of the Korach rebellion and its aftermath. Korach, Dathan and Abiram, along with 250 of the leading figures in the community rebel against Moses and Aaron, and want to be included as priests.

3. And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said to them, You take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you lift up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? 4. And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face; [Numbers 16:1-4]

Moses tries to dissuade them, but is unsuccessful. In a contest the next morning, the rebels light incense in their censers, to determine who is chosen by God. Korach, Dathan and Abiram are swallowed up by the earth, literally going straight to hell, and the 250 men are burned alive by a fire from God.

Something bothers me about this story. Korach is too rational to live.

Korach is making a good rational argument. Before the revelation on Mount Sinai, God told Moses to tell the people you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation [Exodus 19:6]. God also states I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God [Exodus 29:45]. If this is true, argues Korach, then they should all have the duties of the priesthood, not an elite. Nice rational argument, yet it leads to the death of the conspirators. Korach was too rational, and did not see the irrational, which was just as important.

For a little over a year I’ve been on a strange journey which has taken me to some rather unexpected places. It started with a sex scandal involving someone I knew. At the time I wondered how such a thing could happen.

I’ve done a lot of research since then. I’ve studied seduction, pick up artists, and social psychology. I learned a few magic tricks. I’ve read dozens of marketing books and books on influencing people’s decisions. While they all have their own themes and ideas there’s one thing that I find true of all of these books and workshops I’ve experienced in the last year. Man is not completely rational. Ironically, one of the most irrational things humans do is believe they are rational. Pick up artists, con men, salesmen and politicians all exploit this. I’ve learned the more we think ourselves rational the more submissive to mind control we become.

There is more to life than rational. But it would be a mistake to believe that we are totally irrational either. Completely emotional, experiential situations can be just as dangerous. Reading case studies about the mass suicide of members of the People’s Temple in Guyana or cult indoctrination strategies, I realize how far people will go to irrationally follow the lead of another.

In one story that has become one of my favorites in the Talmud, the two sides of this in Jewish thought become clear.

R. Abbahu and R. Hiyya b. Abba once came to a place; R. Abbahu expounded Aggada and R. Hiyya b. Abba expounded legal lore. All the people left R. Hiyya b. Abba and went to hear R. Abbahu, so that the former was upset. [R. Abbahu] said to him: ‘I will give you a parable. To what is the matter like? To two men, one of whom was selling precious stones and the other various kinds of small ware. To whom will the people hurry? Is it not to the seller of various kinds of small ware?’ [Sotah 40a]

In Jewish thought we have two ways of thinking. One is Agada, the story. The other is law, Halacha. R. Abbahu compares these to ceramic jars and diamonds. Abraham Joshua Heschel in God in Search of Man describes them differently:

Halacha represents the strength to shape one's life according to a fixed pattern; it is a form-giving force. Agada is the expression of man's ceaseless striving which often defies all limitations. Halacha is the rationalization and schematization of living; it defines, speci­fies, sets measure and limit, placing life into an exact system. Agada deals with man's ineffable relations to God, to other men, and to the world. Halacha deals with details, with each commandment separately; agada with the whole of life, with the totality of re­ligious life. Halacha deals with the law; agada with the meaning of the law. Halacha deals with subjects that can be expressed literally; agada introduces us to a realm which lies beyond the range of ex­pression. Halacha teaches us how to perform common acts; agada tells us how to participate in the eternal drama. Halacha gives us knowledge; agada gives us aspiration. (336)

Yet neither is sufficient by itself. “Halacha without agada is dead, agada without halacha is wild.” Heschel writes. They are not mutually exclusive, but instead a polarity. Neither dominates and within one is the seed of the other. It is a blending and balance of the two which is optimal.

Everything has it place. Rationality may let us look at an issue with diamond clarity. But rationality does not allow us to be in awe of the world around us, to ask new questions, only derive answers from old answers. It is not rational to say WOW! Proverbs 9:10 describes the polarity: The Awe of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and the knowledge of holy matters is understanding. Understanding may be rational knowledge, but wisdom comes from the irrational, from what Heschel calls it radical amazement: being able to say WOW!

Neither Korach nor any of his party could say WOW! When exposed to the ultimate WOW! Korach and the rest could not withstand such an event, and died. Trying to define and categorize that which cannot be defined leads to confusion. It is something quantifiable logic cannot handle. To those who try to quantify, they fail, and might even lose their mind and life.

There were three survivors of the Korach rebellion however. They do the opposite of Korach: They get irrational. In Numbers 26:11 we will read but the Sons of Korach did not die. They were musicians. Their lyrics we still have preserved in the book of Psalms.

As the deer longs for water streams,
So does my soul long for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my bread day and night,
While they continually say to me, Where is your God?

When I remember these things, I pour out my soul;
How I went with the multitude,
leading them in procession to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,
A crowd keeping the festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul?
Why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall again praise him
for the help of his countenance. [Ps 42:2-6]

This is not rational thinking but emotional longing, it is not logical and objective but personal and subjective. Most of the songs of Korach’s sons are in a similar vein, often about the longing of the soul to cleave to God. Yet they also wrote

My mouth shall speak of wisdom;
And the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.

I will incline my ear to a parable;
I will open my riddle to the lyre. [49:4-5]

They understood the polarity, that wisdom and understanding are related to story and song. We move seamlessly from one to the other. There is knowledge and law, there is story and ethics. Both are necessary, both are needed by the other. We live interdependent lives, a tapestry of all things. Our lives are full when we remember that. When we forget this, as did Korach and his rebellion, we are headed for disaster.

Parshat Behar Behukotai 5767: Quid pro quo?

Leviticus 25:1-27:34

In a double portion, finishing up the book of Leviticus this week we read:

1. You shall make no idols or graven image, nor erect a pillar, nor shall you set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am the Lord your God. 2. You shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary; I am the Lord. 3. If you walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; 4. Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.[26:1-4]

While all the good things continue for a few verses, we then read these verses

14. But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments; 15. And if you shall despise my statutes, or if your soul loathes my judgments, so that you will not do all my commandments, but that you break my covenant; 16. I also will do this to you; I will appoint over you terror, consumption, and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart; and you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. [26: 14-16]

This will lead to progressively worsening conditions from famine to invasion to exile, until what remnant would be left of the Israelites would become paranoid exiles in foreign lands, afraid of the rustling of leaves.

Last week I put a footnote about Haya Im Shmoah, the reading from Deuteronomy 11 that is often omitted in liberal liturgy of the Shema. Haya Im Shmoah begins:

13. And it shall come to pass, if you shall give heed diligently to my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14. That I will give you the rain of your land in its due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, and your wine, and your oil. 15. And I will send grass in your fields for your cattle, that you may eat and be full. 16. Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and you turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; 17. And then the Lord’s anger be kindled against you, and he closed the skies, that there should be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest you perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord gives you. [Deut. 11:13-17]

In both Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 11 there is a quid pro quo view of divine commandment and intervention. Do bad things and get bad. Do good things and get good. Some find this it a simple model of theodicy, the philosophy and theology of why bad things happen. There are preachers and rabbis who say that 9/11 or Katrina was a punishment for our misdeeds. For most however, this is simplistic and absurd, if not a heartless, painful way of describing such tragedies. So many people, not wanting to believe in such directness, reject such passages.

I’m not so sure rejection is wise. There are two issues that intrigue me about both passages I have a hard time ignoring. One is apparent only in the Hebrew. Unless one lives in the southern United States, in English “you” expresses both singular and plural. These sections are in the plural. They are addressed at a society as a whole. We as individuals cannot live to that expectation. We take the burden of all of society on our selves. We would need to be responsible for everything – and we can’t.

The specific transgression that causes the bad things is Idolatry. What is Idolatry? As we read repeatedly, Idols were physical objects which one bribed in order to get something in return. The Torah, given this understanding, makes another leap. Idolatry was not bribing a god at all but mere self absorption. Since there is nothing really there but a block of wood, the idol is a self delusion, a honoring of the Self instead of honoring the Creator of All.

Shabbat, the Sabbaticals and Jubilees we read about in this portion are about physical rest of people, economies and of course the land. They are also pauses from the regular grind to remind us we are in relationship with everything. In such pauses, we learn to be amazed at how wonderful and powerful such relationships are. Today it would be hard to find many people actually sacrificing to a wood or stone idol as a god. It is a different matter to think of self-absorption as idolatry. When we spend all of our time working or doing the stuff that matters to us personally and for our personal benefit only then we too are guilty of Idolatry.

Martin Buber believed we need to get away from the I-it experience of idolatry and move to the I-thou relationship, where the I was our perception of everything else. We hear repeatedly, from the first utterance at Sinai on, I am the Lord. There is a third possibility, I-I. We as limited beings are not everything, but instead part of an entire system of relationships, not one relationship, but infinite relationships with infinite things. God transcends these relationships. God created matter, but also created the relationships of all of these things. God is the entirety of those relationships. The first ‘I’ is the ‘I’ of I am the Lord, the entire system. That ‘I’ meets the ‘I’ of the limited human of I-Thou. I-I describes us as an integral and vital part of God. We are also an infinitely small part of God as well because everything else is too. As Heschel reminds us, we do carry two passages with us always, The world was made for my sake and I am but dust and ashes.

It was not because you were greater than any people that the Lord set His love upon you and chose you. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel, I love you because even when I bestow greatness upon you, you humble yourselves before me. I bestowed greatness upon Abraham, yet he said to Me, I am but dust and ashes;(Gen 18:27)[Chullin 89a]

To proclaim the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He: If a man strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the Supreme King of Kings, The Holy One, Blessed Be He, fashioned every man in the stamp of the first man, and yet not one of them resembles his fellow. Therefore every single person is obliged to say: The world was created for my sake. [Sanh. 37a]

When we lose this perspective then we move into idolatry. We must remember we are integral to every other relationship, and yet be very humble about that role. If our deeds are for the Self only, we stop caring how we affect all other relationships. When we stop caring, we cause damage. Such damage is cumulative, first affecting us in small ways then bigger ones, until our entire world is destroyed. Each one of us has the potential to do this. If a lot of people do the same the damage is worse. In whole societies we see the damage.

Divine retribution is not quid pro quo. It is the consequence of our actions. We are responsible for everything, as God commanded humanity back in Genesis 2. We have a stewardship of our personal and professional relationships to our communal and environmental ones. Such stewardship requires us to do the right thing and have the right relationships. Each will affect the other. All too often we forget that. When I davven Haya Im Shmoah, or read a passage like this week’s I am reminded once again.