The Legitimacy of Dispute – Korach
In the Mishna we learn how to differentiate between a legitimate and an illegitimate dispute –
"איזו היא מחלוקת שהיא לשם שמים, זו מחלוקת הלל ושמאי ושאינה לשם שמים, זו מחלוקת קרח וכל עדתו" (אבות ה, יז).
The Mishna brings two examples of disputes, but does not elaborate why Hillel and Shamai’s dispute is לשם שמים and why Korach and his eida’s isn’t
Parshat Korach is one of the most commentated parshas in the Torah. This is not surprising, since dispute is at the very core of our being as a people. We are genetically programmed more than other peoples to question and investigate for the purpose of seeking the truth (almost the entire תורה שבעל פה is structured as dispute). On the one hand, dispute and the quest for truth bring us closer to our Creator, but on the other hand, if the dispute exceeds the bounds of legitimacy it becomes a destructive, often catastrophic cancer. It is therefore critical to define the boundaries of legitimate dispute.
Rabeinu Bachyei says that the only way we can truly understand parshat Korach is by using Kabbalah. It is usually my tendency to lean in this direction in my shiurim and under normal circumstances I would explore the throwbacks to the dispute between the sun and the moon on the 4th day of creation, the sin of Adam Harishon, the dispute between Kayin and Hevel, the creation of the hole that swallowed Korach way back when, on erev Shabbat בין השמשמות etc. which are explored at length by the זוהר הקדוש, the אר"י and others. Bli neder, in a future shiur.
This time however, I am going to concentrate on the method of the Ramchal who explains Korach according to פשט, because the ramifications have immediate practical application to the tumultuous period we are currently living through.
The first sign Chazal tell us to look for to distinguish a legitimate מחלוקת from an illegitimate one is - if it is personal or not.
The Midrash Tanchuma tells us that Korach’s dispute, while seemingly about equality and national interests, all emanated from a personal grudge! According to birthright and seniority Korach should have been the נשיא of his Levite family of Kehat. Instead, Moshe, directed by HKB”H, appointed Korach’s nephew Elitzafan ben Uziel as the נשיא.
Korach’s wife, the mefarshim tell us, held a grudge against Tzipporah, Moshe’s wife. Korach was an extremely rich man (the mefarshim have different opinions how he acquired his wealth – selling bricks in Egypt, discovering Yosef’s buried treasure, etc.) and his wife was appropriately adorned from wrist to elbow in jewelry. All the women would admire her as she walked around the camp. However, when Moshe carved the second set of לוחות (after breaking the first), HKB”H allowed him to keep the left over bits of stone that the לוחות were made from. The mefarshim say they were from סנפיריון – the most expensive and precious stone that existed. Moshe commissioned Oholiav to make a necklace for Tzippora from these fragments, that outshone any jewelry that Korach’s wife had and no longer did anyone pay her attention.
This is how it all began. It began with a jealous man, married to an equally jealous woman, both of whom bore a personal grudge against Moshe and his wife.
But it went beyond that. Korach and his wife were מגיע לי kind of people and whatever wealth and status they would have acquired, it would never have been enough. We get a hint of this from Moshe’s response to Korach “רב לכם בני לוי”. This was the attribute of Eisav who, in response to Yaakov’s gift, said “יש לי רב”, I have a lot – but he always wanted more (contrast this with Yaakov’s “יש לי כל” I have everything). The mefarshim say the reason Korach inherited this character trait from Eisav is because he was named Korach (one of אלופי עשו ) and warn us to take great care in naming our children appropriate names.
Aside from this unattractive character trait, the mefarshim tell us two other things about Korach. He was very smart and he was a לץ – someone who likes to make “productions” of things.
Korach was smart enough to know that he could never beat Moshe in a one-on-one dispute (which is why when Moshe called Korach, Datan and Aviram for a meeting to try resolve their grievances – they refused to come). So Korach employed two tactics that are the next two hallmark signs of an illegitimate dispute (used since time immemorial and to this very day) – ridicule and lashon harah.
Korach returned home one day and his wife asked him what new thing he had learned from Moshe in the Beit Hamidrash. Korach replied – Tzitzit (this is why the two parshiyot are adjacent). If you have a four cornered garment you need to attach Tzitzit to the four corners with a פתיל תכלת. “Why the blue thread?” his wife asked, “To remind us of the color of the sea and the sky, which is the color of the כסא הכבוד”, he replied. Korach’s wife wasn’t the least interested in Moshe and his teachings, rather she was constantly on the lookout for ammunition she might be able to use against him.
That night she and Korach devised a scheme that would ridicule Moshe. She spent the whole night sowing a four cornered garment that was made entirely from תכלת and she advised Korach to wear this garment the next day and confront Moshe with the question – “If the entire garment is תכלת, does it require Tzitzit with a single blue thread?” In a similar vein he asked Moshe, “If a home is filled with sifrei Torah, does the entrance still require a mezuzah?” These kind of theatrical “productions” were Korach’s modus operandi.
Korach knew the answers before the questions were asked and he also knew that whichever answer was given, he would have used it against Moshe. If Moshe would have answered “It is פטור from Tzitzit”, Korach would have said “Then why if ALL of Am Yisrael is holy (תכלת), do they need one solitary פתיל תכלת (meaning Aharon haCohen). And if Moshe answered, as he did, that the entirely blue garment still required Tzitzit and that a house filled with sifrei Torah still required a mezuzah, then Korach would twist that answer and show how “illogical” it was (a house filled with sifrei Torah needs a tiny scroll on the door with only two parshiyot from the Torah?) and use it to ridicule Moshe.
In addition to ridicule, Korach employed his second weapon – insidious lashon harah against Moshe. Korach asserted that the only Torah Moshe actually heard from Hashem were the same עשרת הדברות that all Am Yisrael heard on Har Sinai and that everything else, that Moshe claimed HKB”H had communicated with him, was “fabricated” - with the ulterior motive of furthering himself and his immediate family. In addition Korach accused Moshe of adultery (with Korach’s wife). Neither of these false accusations could be easily refuted. How could Moshe “prove” that Hashem had actually spoken with him alone? How could Moshe “prove” that he had not slept with Korach’s wife? Suddenly every husband in the camp started doubting the fidelity of their wives.
This is the lethal and catastrophic power of lashon harah. It plants a cancerous seed in your mind, that, even if later proven false, is never fully extinguished.
Korach continued with another “production”, a story of a widow who was bequeathed a field by her late husband, and how slowly but surely, however hard she tried to make ends meet, Moshe kept “eating away” at her livelihood by forcing her to give תרומות and מעשרות to Aharon haKohen and leaving parts of her field to the poor. So much so that the woman was forced to sell the field and with the money she bought two sheep. But it did not end there, Moshe then told her to give the firstborn lambs and wool to Aharon haKohen, so eventually she was forced to slaughter the animals thinking it would give her enough food for a while, but again Moshe told her to give the זרוע, לחיים וקיבה to Aharon haKohen, until finally the woman died penniless.
It was all lies. In the desert there were no fields and תרומות ומעשרות only commenced when Am Yisrael later settled in Eretz Yisrael. But Korach was a convincing performer and a glib talker. He used highfalutin terms like “equality” and “fair distribution of power” to dupe others into thinking he was conducting a justifiable מחלוקת for their benefit (the בכורים who had lost their firstborn rights to the Levi’im, etc.) when in fact all that concerned him was his own, personal כבוד. He even managed to dupe people of immense stature – נשיאים, אנשי שם – heads of tribes, people who knew how to use the שם המפורש.
What was Korach thinking? He was a man of great stature himself. He was one of the bearers of the Aron Habrit! That task is not given to any idiot. Korach had Ruach Hakodesh and Nevuah! Rashi says he saw by prophecy that among his descendants would be Shmuel Hanavi and 24 משמרות כהונה! Korach thought he was infallible, but Rashi says – his eyes deceived him, it was not from him, that these great people were descended, but from his sons (who did tshuva and survived). He began with a personal grudge against Moshe and concocted a deceit that he ended up believing himself. This is the destructive power of coveting כבוד. You cause yourself to climb so high up a tree that eventually you cannot get down from it. As it says in the Mishna -
רבי אלעזר הקפר אומר, הקנאה והתאוה והכבוד מוציאין את האדם מן העולם (אבות ד, כא)
Incidentally, one opinion says that this is why the talmidim of Rebi Akiva never נהגו כבוד זה בזה – because they knew of the destructive power of כבוד, so they purposely eliminated it completely. But they had it wrong – for yourself, you must run far away from כבוד, but you must always give it to others. Not respecting others is just as catastrophic as coveting כבוד for yourself.
When Moshe saw that there was no chance that these evil people would do tshuva, he begged Hashem not to acquiesce to their mincha (they knew the שם המפורש and that had great power). As we know the story has a “happy” ending. HKB”H caused a great miracle to happen and Korach and his eida were swallowed up by the ground, along with all their belongings, erased from the face of the earth as if they had never been. I use “happy” in parentheses, because that was not the end of the story. Am Yisrael accused Moshe of causing Korach and his followers’ deaths. A plague broke out killing many more and finally, only when Aharon’s staff flowered were Am Yisrael ultimately convinced (but that is a story for another shiur).
What Chazal were trying to teach us in the Mishna is the essence of an illegitimate dispute. They used Korach as the template and as we have seen above, it springs from a personal grudge and employs ridicule and lashon harah. These are the three hallmarks of an illegitimate dispute.
Contrast this with Hillel and Shamai. In the Beit Hamidrash Hillel and Shamai were ardent adversaries. They had seriously conflicting opinions as to the essence of halacha. But it was never personal. Hillel never personally attacked Shamai and Shamai never personally attacked Hillel. Hillel’s followers married Shamai’s followers and vise versa and each were invited to the others’ simchas. The dispute was centered around halacha alone, there was no ridicule and there was certainly no lashon harah. Hillel’s opening line was הוי מתלמידיו של אהרון, אוהב שלום ורודף שלום and Shamai’s philosophy was הוי מקבל את כל האדם בסבר פנים יפות. There was no hate – it was all לשם שמים with the purpose of getting to the truth. The mefarshim say that both Hillel and Shamai were right, except that Hillel’s method is applicable to this world and all its faults, while Shamai’s is applicable to עולם האמת, the world to come.
In our lives we are often confronted with disputes and we require tools to clarify and evaluate the legitimacy of the parties in the dispute. It may be a neighborly dispute, between siblings, between a man and his wife, or on a larger scale – a political dispute.
The first telltale sign of an illegitimate dispute is not always easy to identify. We cannot see inside a person’s heart to discover if his agenda is personal or not. The other two signs are much easier to recognize. If someone’s cause is righteous, they have no need to employ ridicule or lashon harah against their opponent and if they do, this is a sure sign that their position is illegitimate and inferior. Korach knew he could never best Moshe, so he resorted to “dirty” tactics and this made his dispute illegitimate.
Today we are living in troubled political times. Two of the worlds “model” democracies, America and Israel are realizing that even the most “advanced” political systems have their limits. Democracy is just another form of dispute and the limit of its power is that it is contingent on both sides respecting each other and not crossing red lines. When that breaks down, democracy ceases to function and it degenerates into illegitimate anarchy with all the trimmings - personal agendas, ridicule and insidious lashon harah.
One only has to read/watch/listen to the “news” to see this in all its debauchery and shame. The media “trumpet” for each side ridicules and slanders the other and each sows the cancerous seeds of lashon harah. “True” journalism (if such a thing ever existed) is no longer. Investigative journalism has been replaced by manipulative journalism. Politicians leak insidious slander and lies to the media, and the reporters, most of who have their own political agenda, fan the flames by adding their own little tidbits in the same vein.
In years past the best way to get rid of your political rival was to shoot him with a sniper’s rifle (re: JFK). Today, a much more effective method has been devised - character assassination. All you need to do is allege corruption or sexual misconduct by your adversary and plant the seed which will eventually fester into a grotesque mutation that masquerades as the “truth".
All the while each side proclaims to only have the highfalutin “ideals” at heart – “the good of the nation”, “equality”, etc. It’s the same old story as it was back thousands of years ago with Korach - all it is really about is personal grudges and agendas.
The question is not why the parties in the dispute and their media lackeys do what they do, but how the “people” are duped by it. How could Am Yisrael, after experiencing everything they experienced in the Exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea, the Man in the desert, receiving the Torah on Har Sinai, etc. How could they believe Korach’s lashon harah and lies?
You could say that - only two years prior, Am Yisrael were slaves in Egypt and at the lowest level of טומאה. Yes, they experienced great miracles, the Ten Plagues, Crossing of the Red Sea, the Man, Har Sinai, etc. but these were “pyrotechnics” and short lived. They had not studied Torah from the age of תינוקות של בית רבן over many years, continuing into yeshiva gedolah. Moshe was presenting the Torah to them brand new, for the first time! In order for something to influence you permanently requires tenure, something Am Yisrael lacked two years after the Exodus.
But it was more than that.
It is the destructive power of lashon harah. Even if your brain tells you that everything you are hearing or reading is total rubbish, once the cancerous seed of slander has been sowed and repeated often enough, there will always be this little, nagging part of you saying – “there cannot be smoke without fire”. It eats its way, little by little, from the inside and erodes your common sense. This is the way it was with חטא העגל, the מתאוננים, the מרגלים and now again with Korach. It transforms deception into “truth”. Joan Peters, in her book From Time Immemorial, referring to the Palestinian propaganda – called it “turnspeak”.
For this reason Chazal counsel us to run a mile from illegitimate מחלוקת and certainly not engage in it ourselves. The day of Korach’s dispute with Moshe, there was no Man. This is the degree of HKB”H’s abhorrence of illegitimate מחלוקת. It is legitimate to have a different opinion, but it must be difference emanating from mutual respect.
The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l repeatedly remarked how much he respected his adversary Professor Richard Dawkins, a devout atheist and despite the fact he found his opinions offensive and revolting, he was always amazed at the degree of civility and respect that was always given and reciprocated.
As soon as that goes out the window, so does society. You must always give כבוד but never covet it.
This is the lesson of Korach and we would be well advised to apply it. The alternative is catastrophic anarchy and chaos.
