Korach - Nachalat Sa'de vKerem

Nachalat S’de v’Kerem

Korach in his opening statement claims the whole community is holy – why do you – Moshe and Aaron - elevate yourselves over God’s congregation? The nature of the grievance is vague. Is Korach claiming that Moshe and Aaron are (l’havdeil) like the pigs in Goerge Orwell’s Animal Farm who grab power in what should be a community all equally holy Bolsheviks?

I would like to explore a different approach that differentiates “status” from effort. I don’t mean status in an obnoxious, hierarchical way, but as an attitude that the end game of life is about arriving, and having, and being. Even goals of great value, like Kedushah, holiness can be “static” because goals get calcified if we believe that we have arrived, that we’ve got it. The status in Korach’s terms is – that we ARE holy, period.

I prefer to think of life as an effort, a striving, actively improving on the status quo. Seeing the status quo as a point on the line of our journey, never the end point, only the point that precedes the next. We never arrive, we always journey onward.

Conceptually, the clash is about whether we view our selves in life as NOUNS –I am holy, or as verbs, I strive for holiness, better encapsulated in Kedoshim Te’he’yu.

If our attitude reflects the status that we are holy, we don’t need leaders whose job is to enhance or support the accomplishment of holiness, after all, we are already there. We are bestowed.

It is interesting, that when Dasan and Aviram express their contention with Moshe they do not echo Korach’s statements about leadership or holiness. Rather, they complain about their unhappy circumstance. Not only has Moshe taken them out of Egypt, (where the Israelites remember eating fish and vegetables). Moshe has not delivered them, as promised to the land flowing with milk and honey. Then there is an awkward twist in syntax of the Pausk.

But rather they will “receive an inheritance of fields and vineyards”; Nachalat sa’de v’kerem. (see the Pasuk, the flow of “Not receive” A, to “did receive” B.

Rashi interprets the Pasuk to mean that Moshe has delivered neither, milk and honey nor field and vineyard. Rashi reads the Pasuk as neither A, nor B as if the word “Lo” applies to both clauses. Rashi is not the plain reading of the text, which indicates failure to deliver the promised land of milk and honey, but the land IS one of fields and vineyards.

I believe this prima facia reading helps us understand the grievance of Dasan and Aviram. What is the difference between a land flowing with milk and honey and a land of fields and vineyards? Why do they bemoan that the land is not one that flows with milk and honey, but is rather one of fields and vineyards?

I propose that milk and honey are products that need little human effort to produce. They are the economic equivalent of Status (like Kulam Kedoshim). This is what the Israelites are promised in Exodus. But as reports of the land unfold from the spies, as well as agricultural laws, like leket, neta revai, kerem revai, bikurim, shmita and dozens of other agricultural laws, it become apparent that the effort to sustain the land will be more arduous than the promised, Eden like, land of milk and honey.

And so, the grievance of Dasan and Aviram is actually the same as Korach. They are seeking a life of status, to be, to have, milk & honey, to have arrived, rather than a life of effort, of striving, toiling in the field and vineyards of life, of traveling on an endlessly curious journey that continues to wondrously unfold so long as we allow it to.

The dispute is about values. Are you a noun (I am…), or a verb (I strive for…)?