June 28, 2025
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parashat Korach
Korach’s Challenge
June 28, 2025 – 2 Tamuz 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Some weeks, when we open the Torah, it’s not clear how that particular parsha speaks to our lives. But this week, the Torah feels so real. It feels like the Torah could easily be written for exactly this moment. So today, I want to do something radical: I want to take a deep dive with you into our parsha. I want to learn with you the story of Korach and what our rabbis teach. And I want to be very granular about the lessons we can learn from that story.
Let me set the stage. The parsha opens as our people are journeying through the desert. They’ve escaped slavery, have watched their enemy beleaguered by plagues and then crushed in the crashing seas, and they’ve witnessed God’s presence leading them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. They’ve been to Mount Sinai, they’ve seen the thunder and heard the lightning, they have watched Moses’s face light up with the brilliance of Divine connection, and they have accepted God’s Torah. Last week, our parsha concluded with the gift of tzitzit—a physical reminder of our connection to God and God’s eternal presence in our lives. In essence, everything is generally going well.
It’s in this moment that divisiveness arises. Korach, the son of Izhar, who is part of the privileged tribe of Levi, resents Moses and begins to mobilize a rebellion against him. At first, the movement is just whispers. Korach goes person to person, wise to their individual grievances, he amplifies their perceived personal injustices and whispers about the forces of nepotism which he claims have taken over their community. [1] Korach approaches members of the tribe of Reuben, who lost their birthright to Joseph and his descendants, and feigns sympathy. “It should have been you. Your birthright was taken away. Moses thinks he’s so great and pretends to be talking to God all the while he’s stealing from you!” To others he whispers, “can you believe that Moses installed his brother as high priest? If that’s not nepotism, I don’t know what is?!”
And then, as the movement forms, Korach creates a campaign platform. He can’t run on personal grievances. And he can’t accuse Moses of nepotism publicly, not when God was the one to appoint Aaron as high priest and Moses is so clearly just carrying out God’s will. So instead, Korach crafts a message that will appeal to the widest range of Israelites. With 250 influential community-members, he confronts Moses and Aaron: “You have gone too far! Every single person in this community is holy, all of them, and God is in their midst. Why do you raise yourselves above God’s congregation?” [2]
On its face, his message is brilliant. You could imagine the campaign ad his team would produce: “Korach believes in you. It’s time for us to ascend the mountain. We are all holy. It’s time to bring power back to the people. I’m Korach and I approve this message.””
But the commentators point out that there are more sinister forces at work behind Korach’s campaign. In the Talmud, our rabbis teach that Korach came from a life of privilege. Rabbi Levi claims that “the keys alone to Korach’s treasury were a burden requiring three hundred white mules to transport them, and moreover, all the keys and locks were of leather.” [3] He was super wealthy, but riches weren’t enough for him. He wanted power. And his campaign for recognizing the individual holiness of the people wasn’t about elevating them, it was about elevating himself above them.[4]
At first, Moses tries to reason with Korach. Right there, in front of those 251 dissidents, Moses responds, “Are you serious?! How can you come here and claim injustice when you yourselves occupy a privileged place in society. You are Levites. You have unique access to God and ritual. You get to perform the duties of the mishkan and to serve the community as Levites. And now you want to be priests too?! You’re not running a campaign against me, you’re running against God.”
Korach and his followers are unmoved. Moses proposes a different response. He tells Korach and his followers to come back the next day with fire pans and offerings of incense. He says that God will decide this once and for all.
The next day, Korach and his followers show up with their firepans. Aaron comes with his own firepan too. By this point, God is so angry, God is prepared to incinerate all of them. But Moses asks God to show the people who the true leader is amongst them. The earth opens and Korach and the leaders of his campaign, and all of their family members, are swallowed whole. Then fire shoots forth from heaven and consumes all the people who were caught up by their rhetoric.
Now, in our Torah, the story has a somewhat magical, hopeful ending. Having seen the earth opening and swallowing entire families and fire shooting from the heavens, are reasonably terrified. So God instructs all of the leaders of the twelve tribes to bring their wooden staffs to the tent of meeting. Aaron’s staff magically begins to grow, and erupts in almond blossoms proving his rightful leadership. As we know, the people didn’t exactly go on to live happily ever after, but there was never another rebellion like Korach’s.
Why tell this long story now? I think there are two very important lessons that we need to learn from Korach.
The first is about leadership. All too often, leaders arise who claim that they represent the best interests of the people. Their platforms seem wholesome. They claim to stand for justice. But sometimes those claims are simply covers for self-interest and ego. This parsha reminds us that it is easy to be persuaded. Even our ancestors who literally saw God give the Torah on Mount Sinai, who experienced the Exodus, even they could be swayed by Korach. The story of Korach warns us to be cautious.
The second lesson is personal. While our parsha opens with Korach standing with 250 followers against Moses, that moment didn’t just happen spontaneously. Korach met with people one on one; Korach heard their stories and amplified their sense of perceived injustice. Korach warns us that our hearts are easily manipulated. It’s so tempting to believe that all of our problems stem from someone else, from something else. If we can instead take responsibility for our own pain and our own challenges, we are find that we are less susceptible to leaders who seek to prey on our pain.
The world is a mess. And just like in this parsha, our lives can be drastically impacted by bad leadership. We can’t control who will seek power, but we can do the inner work to protect our minds and our hearts. And we can pray that God will send us a Moses.
[1] Rashi, Ibn Eza, Or HaChaim, and Nechama Leibowitz on Numbers 16:1-2
[2] Numbers 16:3
[3] Sanhedrin 110a
[4] Nechama Leibowitz on parshat Korach