Hello everyone and welcome once again to the Temple Institute Parsha class.
My name is Gedalia Meyer and I am podcasting from Maale Adumim in Israel.
One of the great challenges of life is to admit that we are wrong.
Everyone has experienced this huge obstacle to reality, or at least everyone who has had
the occasion to be wrong and faced themselves in the mirror over it.
It is tough, of that there is no doubt.
But it can be done, as most of us can attest to.
In fact, it turns out to be a lot easier than we are led to believe by ourselves, once we
have actually done it.
It may have seemed impossible at certain stages of the process, but when a few of the obstacles
are overcome, it may appear to be no more difficult than a good solid hike, or getting
out of bed in the morning despite being quite tired.
It is simply a matter of just making up one s mind and then sticking with that choice.
Once done, it is easy to look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.
It may even result in a refreshing sense of joy and purpose.
What is the reason for this contradictory state of affairs?
Why is it so difficult to admit one s errors at first, but so natural and simple when having
actually succeeded?
The answer could all be located in that mysterious nucleus of self-energy known as the ego.
This odd collection of thoughts and feelings, which nobody has ever seen but everybody experiences
all the time, is responsible for all matters of the self.
It is our source for belief in our own worth, and also the source for our belief in our
own infallibility.
To some degree, we are our egos.
But that assessment is really short-changing our true essence.
We are not only our egos - we also possess a mixture of spiritual, mental, and emotional
powers that makes the ego one of many forces that make us who we are.
But there is no question that the ego drives a good deal of our inability to admit that
we are wrong.
It is right there, in the first moments of that battle, convincing us that there is no
way in the world that we could possibly have blown this thing so badly.
There has to be some other explanation for whatever is the problem.
It could be other people, with egos, that messed things up.
It could be unfortunate circumstances that were beyond our control, that we could relegate
to the nebulous force of fate.
It could be anything, as long as it is not us.
But then, after a certain amount of observation and introspection, we may come to realize
that the ego is not the only player in this game and that there are other, more important
factors that have to be considered.
It may boil down to seeing that none of this obstinance is doing us any good.
As important as ego considerations may be, sometimes they have to be overlooked because
they are just getting in the way.
It may even be a sense of genuine humility that hits us right between the eyes.
We may come to an understanding that we are not as perfect as we thought, and this revelation
may enlighten us to find a path of personal freedom.
These sorts of inner struggles are as old as the human mind.
It is part and parcel of the experience of self awareness that brings them upon us.
There could be no other way.
To be a human being is to be a self - keenly aware that its primary purpose and most powerful
drive revolves around that very self.
As long as stories have been told, they have hinted and zeroed in on this most personal
component of our being.
Every myth, every poem, every moral teaching, in some way touches upon this inner battle
between the ego self and the greater self.
The Bible is positively loaded with this theme.
Adam could not admit that he had eaten from the forbidden fruit.
He had to blame it on Eve.
Cain was unable to come to terms with his murder of his brother, even when directly
confronted about it by God.
He had to deny it altogether with the famous question, Am I my brother s keeper . Sarah,
the wife of Abraham, could not face her own lack of faith in God s promise that she would
bear a child in her old age.
During the national collapse of the Golden Calf, Aaron, the brother of Moshe, couldn
t face his own shortcomings in taking charge of a precarious situation, and blamed it all
on the rebellious people.
There are dozens of other examples, but we get the point.
This week s Parsha is called Korach.
That word is a personal name, one of a handful of Parshas that are named after a person.
Surprisingly, this honor is not reserved for the most righteous of the people in the Torah.
There is at least one other case of a genuine bad guy who has a Parsha named after him.
But Korach is the classic example of this.
He has been identified in Jewish tradition as epitome of what not to do.
He challenged the authority of Moshe, and by extension, God, for no reason other than
a bruised ego.
His story takes up over half of the Parsha, so the name is quite fitting.
It all boils down to an organized rebellion against the priestly authority imposed by
Moshe and given to the family of Aaron.
Korach, it turns out, was a Levite - a member of the tribe assigned the task of assisting
the Kohanim.
The Kohanim were a small subset of the Levites who performed the actual service in the Mishkan,
while the Levites were merely the helpers.
Korach resented this slight to his ego, and almost brought the entire Exodus adventure
down to its knees in his rebellion.
He managed to get some important members of another tribe, Reuven, who had nothing to
do with any of this internal tribal business, on his side.
They seemed to just get dragged in to the mess, and were unable to extricate themselves
when the going got tough.
Two of the ringleaders, Datan and Aviram, were from this other tribe.
They issued the dramatic challenge to Moshe accusing him of utter failure in bringing
about the goal of the Exodus - entry into the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey.
They refused his summons to talk matters over.
Things went from bad to worse.
The rebels refused to back down and Moshe was forced to call upon the intervention of
God into the mix.
At first God wanted to destroy everyone, even those who stood on the sides.
But upon Moshe s plea that only the guilty should face the consequences, God somehow
communicated to Moshe the fate of all those involved in the rebellion.
Everyone was to separate from the rebels, who would suffer the fate of being swallowed
by the earth, along with their families and all their possessions.
In an instant, this dramatic vortex emerged and that should have been the end of the story.
But everyone who witnessed this miracle at close range was afraid that they would be
dragged into the abyss also.
Although this never happened, the people still harbored resentment about what had taken place.
They accused Moshe of having killed God s people . Some sort of plague then descended
on the entire assembly which killed about 14,000 of those involved.
All of this was only resolved with a strange litmus test of staffs representing the twelve
tribes, along with one representing the Levites, being placed in front of the Ark of the Covenant.
Only the staff of the Levites flowered with almond blossoms, thus demonstrating to all
that there was a necessary and divinely ordained hierarchy to the priesthood and the way things
were done in the Mishkan.
Korach himself never comes up again in the Torah, other than in a census a few Parsha
later.
In the count of the tribe of Reuben, when the names of these two guys, Datan and Aviram
come up, the whole rebellion is briefly mentioned.
It states that Korach and his group died when the earth opened up and fire finished them
off.
This little section concludes with the odd statement, The sons of Korach did not die
.
That s it as far as Korach is concerned.
But what does this mean that his sons didn t die?
Why is this important?
Why didn t they die if in the story about the actual events it states explicitly that
they fell into the depths along with everything that was theirs ? Weren t these sons part
of Korach s family, who should have vanished with their father into the abyss?
There is no obvious answer to this question.
They somehow survived.
Jewish tradition, however, has an answer that is a bit strange and reveals a lot about the
ego.
The Talmud makes the remarkable claim that these sons of Korach repented from whatever
part they played in the rebellion and managed to extricate themselves from the thick of
things.
But their fate was not simply to be left alone to live out the rest of their lives.
They were taken down with their father when he fell into the sinkhole in the wilderness.
They were also swallowed by the hole.
But they didn t quite die the ignominious death that Korach did.
These sons, it turns out, didn t fall all into that pit.
They remained, hovering on the edge of that hole, neither outside of it nor in it.
Their condition was such that they spent the rest of their lives regretting what they had
done in joining in whatever manner that they did in their father s rebellion.
They could never really fully repent for what they had done, but they were allowed to devote
their lives to trying to do so.
The Talmud states that they spent the rest of their lives proclaiming Moshe was right
and we were false . In some manner, the echo of that proclamation would always remain in
the vicinity of the spot where that hole was located.
It was an echo in the wilderness, declaring the simple and profound confession, that they
were wrong.
This is the core lesson from Korach s sons.
They admitted that they were wrong.
This must have been enormously difficult for them.
They had to follow their father.
They were part of the rebellion.
They were dragged down with all the rebels.
But they managed to spare themselves from the full thrust of the punishment by making
the wrenching decision that were wrong.
This admission of their mistake earned them a kind of glorious fame in the strange world
of Jewish tradition.
They were rebels but they realized that they shouldn t have been.
Their echo remains there, in an empty spot in the desert, reminding the world that there
is always an option of admitting one s faults and coming clean.
It isn t easy, and it doesn t erase the past, but it does change the future.
They didn t die in the way that their father and the other rebels did.
It is truly a heroic thing to be able to admit that one is wrong.
In that battle between the ego and the inner self, the ego usually wins.
It calls all the shots and refuses to allow any other voices a place at the table.
But when that other voice is able to be heard, it speaks a kind of truth that the ego cannot
touch.
It tells us that we are not perfect, that we can make mistakes, and that we can own
up to them.
We gain a kind of immortality when we accomplish this Herculean but very simple task.
Like Korach s sons, such a person doesn t die.
Shabbat Shalom!