Temple B’nai Israel

Korach, Numbers 16:1−18:32
Shabbat, June 27, 2009 / 5 Tammuz, 5769

The Torah remains a valuable tool for understanding the world. In part that’s because it is the scriptural foundation for over three billion people. But it’s also filled with stories that are as current today as they ever were, about the challenges we face as families and as nations, especially in the context of religion.

This week, the Torah cycle brings us to one of the most storied and discussed religious and political uprisings in history, the rebellion of Korah (Numbers 16:1-18:32). At this point, the Israelites are still stuck in the wilderness. Moses, who is both the supreme religious and political leader, faces constant dissension.

Now Moses’ leadership is assailed on both fronts. Korah doesn’t understand why Moses and Aaron maintain a monopoly on the priesthood and religious leadership. “All the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them,” Korah says. “So why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?”

In the same portion, Dathan and Abiram have a much more political complaint: you haven’t kept your promises, and we are suffering for it. While their rebellion is overshadowed by Korah’s, it is actually pretty fascinating because of its currency as a political strategy. They start by completely misstating the facts: “We will not come! Is it too little that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness, that you must also lord it over us?” This is laughable, since no one would characterize the Egyptian enslavement as “milk and honey,” except that Dathan and Abiram may be politically depending on short memories and deep disaffection to cloud the past. They proceed to their big point: If you’re so great, where is this land you promised us?

The biblical solution to rebellion against religious and political authority is simple: Let God handle it. God is reported to have stepped in, and after considering destroying everyone, limits his lesson to destroying everyone in any way associated with Korah, Dathan or Abiram and their movements, by means of earthquake, fire and plague.

The questions raised by Korah’s rebellion will never go away, and based on very current events, have become more important than ever. When religion and politics combine at a national level, when religious authority bolsters politics and political authority bolsters religion, nothing is as clear as it seems, and anything can happen.

We naturally want good guys and bad buys, right and wrong, black and white. But even in Iran, where our hearts ache for the oppressed and our belief in freedom shines, it isn’t so simple. Those that might be better may not be, by our standards, good. The alternatives to the current situation may involve those who by their history, ideology and faith are far from perfect.

We learn this from the rebellion of Korah: Completely good guy and bad guys are hard to find in religious or political history, and when the two combine (as they did then, and as they do in so much of the world today), it is even harder. In Judaism, where Korah is sometimes painted with a broad brush as a self-interested demagogue who stood up to God and Moses, some have a much more complex view:

Korah’s argument turns on the eternal tension between authority and freedom. Like many demagogues after him, Korah offered himself as a fitting guardian of the spirit of freedom. But while the people might have accepted the offer of substitute leadership, God did not.

The argument Korah presented was not blotted out with drastic divine response, and neither was Korah’s name. His family continued to serve with high distinction; no less a person than the prophet Samuel was his descendant (I Chron. 6:16 ff.); ten psalms were composed by the sons of Korah; and his offspring functioned in the Temple courts. Like Korah’s argument, they refused to disappear.

W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, pp. 1132-33.

Bob Schwartz

Beha’alotecha, Numbers 8:1−12:16
June 13, 2009 / 21 Sivan, 5769

The Israelites, in their second year of wandering in the wilderness, complain to Moses. Moses in turn complains to God about the burdens of prophecy and leadership:

10 Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, all at the entrances of their tents. Then the LORD became very angry, and Moses was displeased. 11 So Moses said to the LORD, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? 12 Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child,’ to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors? 13 Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ 14 I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. 15 If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.” (Numbers 8 )

God ignores (forgives?) Moses’ sharp tone (“If this is how you treat me, just kill me now!”) and offers a solution. Moses will share the burden of inspiration with the Seventy Elders:

16 So the LORD said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you. 17 I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself….

24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. 25 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again. (Numbers 8 )

But we are not done with the question of prophesying. While most of the elders stop, a couple continue on:

26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. 27 And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” 28 And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men,c said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” 29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!” (Numbers 8 )

The final discussion of prophecy and inspiration in this portion comes in a confrontation with Aaron and Miriam, who are criticizing the marriage of Moses to a Cushite woman. These two believe they are entitled to a special opinon about such matters:

While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman); 2 and they said, “Has the LORD spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the LORD heard it. 3 Now the man Moses was very humble,a more so than anyone else on the face of the earth. 4 Suddenly the LORD said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them came out. 5 Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forward. 6 And he said, “Hear my words:

When there are prophets among you,
I the LORD make myself known to them in visions;
I speak to them in dreams.
7 Not so with my servant Moses;
he is entrusted with all my house.
8 With him I speak face to face—clearly, not in riddles;
and he beholds the form of the LORD.

(Numbers 12)

Who gets to be a prophet and how? Who gets to hear God and speak?

We can conclude from this portion that the spirit may rest on anyone, but that God makes himself known in different ways to different people. To a few people (or in this case just one), God will “speak face to face—clearly, not in riddles.” Others will have to settle for visions and dreams.

The most dramatic statement on this subject is left to Moses, as he answers Joshua’s alarm at the continuing prophesying of Eldad and Medad:

Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them! (Numbers 8:29)

There are three important ideas embedded in this one sentence.

First, as a practical matter, being the sole prophet is, as the portion highlights, an unbearable burden and responsibility.

Second, God calls Moses “very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth.” In some ways, this is a statement of unmatched humility; it is a super-hero admitting that he has no interest in the singularity of his powers. (In other ways, it also reflects a super-hero who is tired of being on duty all the time.)

Finally, it is the opening to a bigger question introduced here. If it is not just Moses, if it is not just Aaron and Miriam, if it is not just Eldad and Medad, if it is not just the Seventy Elders, how many more may be inspired, how many more may prophesy, who are they, and how might we know them?

Bob Schwartz

B’midbar, In the Wilderness
Numbers 1:1−4:20
Shabbat, May 23, 2009 / 29 Iyar, 5769

This begins a new book of the Torah. In English, we have adopted the title of this book from the Greek. The title Numbers reflects all the counting and statistics this book contains.

The Hebrew name for this book, B’midbar, is taken from the very first sentence, and is much more descriptive and poetic. B’midbar. In the wilderness.

According to the arrangement of the Torah, the narrative of the journey at the end of Exodus is interrupted by the detailed laws of Leviticus. Now the story of that journey resumes:

The LORD spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt…

Wilderness is a motif not only throughout the Torah, but in the Tanakh and even in the New Testament. Just in Numbers there are 48 references to “wilderness.”

In part this simply reflects the natural settings of these scriptural stories. The wilderness is also a contrast to city and civilization, a place apart, a place to run to or from, a place for strange and challenging events.

Above all, it is a metaphorical place. Moses and the people of Israel find themselves in the wilderness, long gone from Egypt, still far from the Promised Land. They are forced to find themselves there, that is, forced to figure out who they are. They will try to bring order to their lives, as they book begins with the arranging of tribes around the Tabernacle. From this point, rather than following the strict linear narrative of Exodus, the book will go here and there, mixing storytelling (some very dramatic and crucial) with more mundane lawgiving.

Many scholars attribute this grab-bag of material in Numbers to the editorial vagaries of compiling the Torah. But it also seems, if it isn’t too much of a stretch, to represent exactly what journeying through the wilderness is like. There are days of excitement and adventure, days of oppression, and days of just moving ahead and getting the basic rules straight. There will be days you don’t know which way to go, or who to listen or follow. But when it is all over, at the end of the book, you may find yourself through the wilderness and looking across the river:

These are the commandments and the ordinances that the Lord commanded through Moses to the Israelites in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho. (Numbers 36:13)