KORACH קרח

The rebellion by Korach, קרח, and his followers is famous and the happenings are a salutary lesson for all future generations. When one looks carefully at the terminology used in Torah, this often gives us clues as to depth of politics and machinations involved.

There are a number of obvious questions in respect of the words and expressions used at the beginning of the sedra and I will enumerate a number.

1) The sedra starts ויקח קרח בן יצהר בן קהת בן לוי And Korach took (he was) son of Yitzhar, the grandson of Kehos, the great grand son of Levi.

2) The Torah then continues ודתן ואבירם בני אליאב And Doson and Aviram, the children of Eliav ואון בן פלת בני ראובן And Oin the son of Peles, all of those came from the tribe of Reuvain.

The points to note are that it does not say ויקחו and they took, but he took ויקח. Who, obviously meaning the first person, namely Korach. Why does the Torah not say ויקחו, they took?

3) Why in the case of Korach does it give his complete genealogy back to Levi whereas Doson and Aviram it does not give the intervening one generation, that is Eliav was the son of פלוא who in turn was the son of Reuvain.

4) The next verse commences ויקמו and they gathered up against Moshe, not he but they all.

5) There were 250 followers of this rebellion and Rashi quotes that most of them came from the tribe of Reuvain. Why just from that tribe?

6) We find that when Moshe replied, the verse states as follows, וידבר אל קרח ואל כל עדתו, he spoke to Korach and all his followers. The word דיבור means speaking in a harsh way, whereas later on the Torah says ויאמר משה אל קרח, and Moshe said to Korach and אמירה is a much softer expression of speaking to. Here, Moshe was speaking specifically to Korach.

7) Later on the Torah tells us that Moshe sent to Doson and Aviram that they should come, why did have to send for them, where had they gone?

8) When Moshe told the whole of the Bnei Yisroel to go away from where the rebels were encamped, the Torah tells us that they should go from they encampment of Korach, Doson and Aviram, however, it then says that Moshe went to Doson and Aviram. Where was Korach?

9) Why, during the whole of this parsha, (when we all know that the earth opened up and the rebels were swallowed up alive under the ground) does it not mention that the children of Korach did not die. This is mentioned later on in the sedra of Pinchas.

Furthermore, you will, perhaps, remember that right at the beginning I mentioned that in the first verse there was ואון בן פלת, Oin the son of Peles, who does not figure anymore. The Medrash tells us that he was saved because he had a good wife. When she heard that he had joined the rebellion, she said to him “What good is it going to do to you. if Moshe wins, you will have been in the wrong, if Korach proves right, you will still not be the leader of the rebellion and, therefore, why do you need this trouble?”

His rejoinder was “I have given my word that I will join in the rebellion, which is due to take place in the morning.” His wife, who was very clever, said, leave it to me. When morning came, she would not let him go out of the tent that they lived in but stood near the entrance combing her hair. As soon as the representatives of Korach turned up to collect her husband, they saw what she was doing and they ran away and that way she saved her husband, who did not join in the rebellion.

Let us return to the questions that I asked.

Rashi uses a very unusual expression about Korach, קרח שפקח היה, Korach, who was very clever. Why, in that case, did he make this major mistake which led to his downfall. Rashi explains that he saw future generations including people who would be singing accompaniments with the Kohanim who were bringing sacrifices, also the famous prophet Samuel who was one of his descendents and they were all great and holy people. He, therefore, reasoned that he could not lose the fight with Moshe. Rashi ends by saying that Korach’s children, at the last moment, repented. They did תשובה.

We must put this in perspective, Korach was not only a Novi, a prophet because he could see what was going to happen in the future, what he saw, actually took place, he did have these very great and holy descendents!! He was an elderly gentleman, according to the medrash at least 130 years of age, and also he was very rich because the Gemora tells us that Yosef in Egypt amassed enormous treasures, Korach discovered one third of them and took them with him. He must have been a very rich man indeed. He had everything going for him, so why was it that he decided to rebel against Moshe Rabbenu.

The answer is that he was already jealous of the fact that Moshe was the leader and Aharon was the Kohen Godol whereas he had nothing. However, Moshe and Aharon were sons of the oldest son of Kehos, namely Amram. What tipped him over was the fact that his younger cousin אליצפן בן עוזיאל, Elitzaphen ben Uziel, born to the fourth son of Kehos, was given the job of being the head of the whole of the Bnei Kehos, the ones who carried the ארון, the Ark with the Luchos and dealt with the holiest parts of the Mishkan.

He, Korach, was a son of the second son of Kehos and, therefore, felt that he should have been given the job. That jealousy caused him to rebel.

He then looked round for supporters and found then readily among the tribe of Reuvain. Remember that Reuvain was the first born son of Yaakov Avinu. He was supposed to have both crowns of Kahuna and Malchus, to be the Kohen Godol and also to be the king but lost them both. As long as the Bnei Yisroel were in Egypt, this was not so important, they were too busy working as slaves but when they came out of Egypt, the tribe of Reuvain realised their great loss. The Kohanim came from the tribe of Levi and the tribe of Reuvain had lost that honour. When the Mishkon was consecrated Hashem commanded that Yehuda should bring the sacrifices on the first day and Reuvain did not get to bring its korbonos until the fourth day. They felt demoted and hurt. Therefore, they were easy prey for Korach to influence and to join his bandwagon.

Coming back to my original questions, we now understand the terminology used, better. The first word in the sedra, ויקח, and he took, refers to Korach because he was the instigator of the whole matter and it then gives his detailed genealogy, his yichus, because it was that particular point which was hurting him and caused him to be jealous.

On the other hand, Doson and Aviram and Oin son of Peles were all Bnei Reuvain, the children of the tribe of Reuvain and that is the reason why they are just mentioned without going through all their genealogy. It was because they were members of that particular tribe that they got involved.

In any event, we know that Doson and Aviram were trouble makers going back a long time, Rashi states at the time when Moshe was still in Egypt and killed the Egyptian who had been ill treating a Jewish person that the next day he saw two Jews fighting. He remonstrated with them and they threatened to report him to the authorities. They were, indeed, Doson and Aviram. They had been thorns in Moshe’s side for many a year.

Therefore, when it came to the actual uprising, the word ויקמו, they stood up to rebel, applies to all of them but for different motives.

When Moshe went to speak to all of them it uses a harsh expression because we are talking about the Adass Korach, the followers of Korach and really the argument had nothing to do with them, the main protagonist was Korach himself.

When Moshe turned to Korach to talk to him, he tried using a soft expression as King Solomon states, מענה רך משיב חמה, a soft expression turns aside wrath. However, unfortunately this did not help.

Doson and Aviram who were seasoned trouble makers did not take any notice and left the presence of Moshe. They even refused to come back and that is why Moshe had to try and call to them. This is another lesson in behaviour for us to note namely, that Moshe Rabbenu went out of his way to try to make peace but they refused to take notice.

However, let us return to Korach, himself. As mentioned before, he was a very clever man and being clever, he had gone at night, to gather together 250 people to try and carry out a coup, however, when Doson and Aviram came brazenly forth and remonstrated with Moshe, he was nowhere to be seen. This is a typical politician’s attitude, that he kept out of sight to see what was going to happen. This did not really help him because of the fact that the earth split open and as R’ Yehuda in the Gemora states, even if some of the trouble makers were not on the spot the ground inclined and they slide into the hole that had miraculously appeared.

As you can see, there was lot more going on than just appears on the surface!! We can learn numerous lessons from the behaviour of the individuals concerned and of the consequences.

Finally, the reason why no mention is made of the children of Korach who, at the last moment repented and did not die, was because a person should never rely on doing wrong believing that he can repent later on. As far as the fact that Oin ben Peles was saved by his wife, once again, one should not rely on something without thinking it through carefully and not rely on miracles.

I think we all are aware of what has happened in the past few months in the UK, for example, and that politics is a very shady and even dirty game and should be avoided like the plague. (or swine flu?) It is unfortunately likely to bury people alive eventually.