Imu Shalev: Hello and welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha, diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, I’m Imu Shalev and if you’re into political intrigue, then boy do I have the parsha for you! This week we read Parshat Korach — and we follow the plot as Korach gathers together some followers and challenges Moshe and Aaron, saying: “Who do you think you are to rule over us?” 

I don’t know about you, but when I hear this parsha discussed at the Shabbos table and at shul, everyone tends to focus on one central question: Why do Korach and his followers rebel? What exactly was their issue with Moshe and Aaron? Were they cynical and jealous? Or were they idealists, egalitarians? 

It can be great fun to hypothesize — but how do you know if a hypothesis is correct? How do you validate it? That’s where you have to go to the text and scour it for evidence. If you ask me, that’s where the fun really begins. 

Taking time to slow down and carefully read the verses of the story is always a good start, but I often find that when I do, I stumble upon cues that point me elsewhere in the Torah. In this week’s episode, Rabbi David Fohrman does exactly that, tackling the great overriding question of this week’s parsha and deciphering a clue from a most unlikely source: from Korach’s name. Why did Korach rebel? Kuf, Reish, Chet — “Korach.” Somewhere in those letters lies a fascinating answer that the Torah is just waiting for us to uncover. Here’s Rabbi Fohrman!

Rabbi David Fohrman: Every once in a while, names in Scripture have significance. In the Book of Samuel, for example, a king by the name of Nachash attacks Saul, the very first king of Israel. Can it be a coincidence that his name just happens to mean “snake”? There was something snake-like about the attack. Was there something Korach-like about Korach's rebellion? What would the name “Korach” mean if it were a word?

As it turns out, Kuf, Reish, Chet in Biblical Hebrew actually refers to an ancient Amorite mourning practice, a way of expressing grief. Karcha means a bald spot where you would intentionally tear out the hair of your head above the place between your eyes as a way of expressing terrible, terrible grief.

And the Torah prohibits this: לֹא תָשִׂימוּ קָרְחָה בֵּין עֵינֵיכֶם לָמֵת – Do not create these bald spots on your heads for the dead. בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַיקוק אֱלֹקֵיכֶם – Take care of yourselves, you’re the children of God (Deuteronomy 14:1).

One's first impulse is to say, what could ancient Amorite mourning practices have to do with Korach's rebellion? Except if you keep on reading those verses in Deuteronomy 14, you'll find that it's not just karcha – the bald spot – that reminds you of Korach here; it's everything else in the passage, too.

Korach and the Karcha

For example, let's go back to Korach for a minute. What was Korach's argument that he lodged against the leadership of Moshe and Aharon?

 רַב־לָכֶם כִּי כָל־הָעֵדָה כֻּלָּם קְדֹשִׁים וּבְתוֹכָם יְקוָק

(Numbers 16:3)

It’s too much for you, this leadership thing. The entire congregation is holy, and within them is God. All right, so Korach here makes reference to the holiness of the community. But here's the strange thing: so does Deuteronomy 14. Right after it talks about the karcha, it says these words: כִּי עַם קָדוֹשׁ אַתָּה לַיקוָק אֱלֹקיךָ – for you are a holy people unto God (Deuteronomy 14:2).

And it's not just that. Keep on reading. Right after Korach the man references the holiness of the people, he says: מַדּוּעַ תִּתְנַשְּׂאוּ עַל־קְהַל יְקוָק – How come you have raised yourself up over the people (Numbers 16:3)? Turns out we've got a very similar idea in that verse in Deuteronomy 14 as well. Right after the talk about the karcha – the bald spot – and the עַם קָדוֹשׁ אַתָּה – the holiness of the nation – it says:

וּבְךָ בָּחַר יְקוָק לִהְיוֹת לוֹ לְעַם סְגֻלָּה מִכֹּל הָעַמִּים אֲשֶׁר עַל־פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה

(Deuteronomy 14:2)

And God has treasured you from among the nations upon the face of the earth. Again, the notion of one selected from among many; it's eerily similar. The Torah seems to be saying: if you want to understand Korach, you've got to understand that ancient Amorite mourning practice that the Torah finds so abhorrent. What does Korach, of all things, have to do with grief?

Unpacking Korach’s Motivation

Let me chart a little theory here for you that has to do with that question we asked about before: what was the motivation behind his rebellion? If you look carefully, I think you'll find that there were several different layers to his motivation. Let's read some text here; I'll show you what I mean. 

Level 1: Korach's overt words. The entire nation is holy; why do you lord yourself over them like this? Now, if I had to summarize that argument to you, I could do it in one word: communism. We're all equal, we're all holy, we don't need any leaders. So at face value, that sounds like his argument… but if you keep on reading, the text begins to tell you another story. Here is Moshe’s retort: 

הַמְעַט מִכֶּם כִּי־הִבְדִּיל אֱלֹקי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶתְכֶם מֵעֲדַת יִשְׂרָאֵל לְהַקְרִיב אֶתְכֶם אֵלָיו לַעֲבֹד אֶת־עֲבֹדַת מִשְׁכַּן יְקוָק

(Numbers 16:9)

Was it really too little for you, Korach, that as a Levite, God set you aside in your tribe to be close to Him, to serve in the Tabernacle? Was that really too little for you, that you also want the priesthood? I'll tell you something: if I'm Korach and I'm listening to that, I would have said, “Moshe, did you hear what I said? I'm not interested in being the leader myself. My whole point is there should be no leader.” But interestingly, Korach doesn't say that. He accepts Moshe's premise. Why does he accept it? Perhaps Moshe got his motivation right at some level.

Evidently Moshe heard something in Korach's words that was a little deeper than what Korach said overtly. Overtly, it's: There shouldn't be any leader. Covertly, it's: Maybe I should be the leader. It's like George Orwell back in Animal Farm: "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Communism is the veneer, power is the goal.

Except that if you listen a little bit more closely and you keep on reading, you'll find an even deeper level of motivation that saturates the words of Korach and his followers… and it's here that we get to the idea of grief or mourning.

A Deeper Level

Listen to Moshe's next dialogue with Korach's prime followers, Datan and Aviram. Moshe calls to these men, and they answer: 

לֹא נַעֲלֶה הַמְעַט כִּי הֶעֱלִיתָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבַשׁ לַהֲמִיתֵנוּ בַּמִּדְבָּר כִּי־תִשְׂתָּרֵר עָלֵינוּ גַּם־הִשְׂתָּרֵר[…] לֹא נַעֲלֶה

(Numbers 16:12-14)

We will not go up to see you. Was it not enough for you that you brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, out of Egypt, to kill us here in this desert, that you also want to rule over us like this? We’re not going up to meet you. Listen to that language, “going up.” It's the first thing they say: “We're not going up to meet you.” It's the last thing they say: “We're not going up to meet you.” Why? Because you have failed us. What was your central promise? That you would bring us up to a land of milk of honey — but the opposite has happened, hasn't it? Egypt, that was the land of milk and honey; this is just a barren desert and here is where we're going to die.

Remember, Moses is the one who said to Korach: הַמְעַט מִכֶּם – Is it not enough for you, Levi, that you also want to be a Kohen? And here, with Datan and Aviram, it's like: הַמְעַט כִּי הֶעֱלִיתָנוּ – Oh, wasn't it enough for you, Moses, that you took us out of this land of milk and honey? They're viciously angry.

If you have to characterize their motivation here, their motivation is not communism, Level 1. Their motivation is not even power for themselves, Level 2. It's just rage at Moshe and Aharon for having brought them here to the desert to die. This isn't the first time that the people have complained in the desert about being brought there to die. The difference is that this time, it's real.

What Happened Just Before This?

You see, the people had always talked about their fear that they might die in the desert. In the sin of the spies just before Parshat Korach, they had talked about their fear that they would die trying to conquer the land. But that lack of faith in God  had been the last straw. After the people's rejection of God's willingness to go before them and help them conquer the land, God had decreed that the entire generation currently living would all die in the desert over the next forty years. None of them would see the land of Israel. And now here we are in Parshat Korach right after that. Wouldn't we need to understand our Parsha in that context? 

That brings us to Datan and Aviram. If you take people who had expected to go into the land and now all of a sudden, it's not a journey of days, it's a journey of forty years until every last one of them dies… they would be grieving, wouldn't they? 

The text actually seems to point us in that direction because it tells us, if you look carefully, that right after the sin of the spies, the people were mourning: וַיִּתְאַבְּלוּ הָעָם מְאֹד – they mourned very greatly (Numbers 14:39). But what form did that grief take? Initially, the text tells us, the form of grief was denial. Right after the words : וַיִּתְאַבְּלוּ הָעָם מְאֹד – they mourned very greatly – the text tells us:

וַיַּשְׁכִּמוּ בַבֹּקֶר וַיַּעֲלוּ אֶל־רֹאשׁ־הָהָר לֵאמֹר הִנֶּנּוּ וְעָלִינוּ אֶל־הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר־אָמַר יְקוָק כִּי חָטָאנוּ

(Numbers 14:40)

They got up early in the morning and they went up (there’s that word again!) to the top of the mountain, saying: “Here we are, we’re going up to the place that God has spoken of — because we have sinned.” It's not real, this decree, right? Tell me it’s not real. Moshe says: No, no, it's real, you can't do that! Don't go up and attack them! God won't be with you! You'll get decimated! And in fact, that's what happened. They go up to attack, they don’t listen to Moshe, they try to take over the land, and they are decimated; they're repulsed by the inhabitants of Canaan.

That was the first response of mourning, but what's the next stage? Once denial doesn't work anymore, the next stage is anger: How could this happen to me? Sometimes that anger is controlled, but it can get out of hand, and that's this week's Parsha.

That same language that was used for denial, the first stage of grief, הִנֶּנּוּ וְעָלִינוּ – Here we are, we're going up — now becomes transmuted into an anger word in the mouths of Datan and Aviram: לֹא נַעֲלֶה – We're not going up. It's not just: We're not going up to you, Moses, rather: We've come to grips with the truth. We're not going up to the land, and therefore we're angry as anything. We're going to die here in this desert and it's all your fault.

It All Starts With Grief

Was it Moshe's fault? Not really. But that's the way blind rage works… and that's what Deuteronomy 14, the karcha, was talking about, too.

Don't tear your hair out when you mourn, don't mutilate your body. There is an impulse that can turn mourning into rage and the rage can turn against one's own self. When an individual attacks himself, he attacks his head – the leader of his body; he tears his hair out. When a community mourns the loss of itself, as was the case here, it attacks its head, too. That was Moshe and Aharon. The head was what they were attacking in Korach's rebellion. 

When you tear the hair out of your head, it's a way of punishing yourself, the Torah says. Don't do that; it's a pagan, Amorite custom. Don't allow blind rage to come back and destroy you. בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַיקוָק אֱלֹקיכֶם – You’re children of God, you're better than that. The Torah, through the connections between Korach and the karcha, tells us about the deepest levels of motivation behind Korach's rebellion: grief that became communally self-destructive. 

Another Prohibited Mourning Practice

The prohibition against putting that karcha — that bald spot — in your head as a mark of mourning is paired with another mourning prohibition as well: לֹא תִתְגֹּדְדוּ – do not slash yourselves in mourning (Deuteronomy 14:1), another form of self-mutilation.

Chazal – the Sages – had a very strange way of interpreting that law. They said: not only does it teach you not to self-mutilate in mourning, it teaches you something else: לֹא תֵּעָשׂוּ אֲגוּדּוֹת אֲגוּדּוֹת – you shouldn't make yourselves into small little groups (Yevamot 13b). At face value, you look and you say: What does this mourning practice of slashing yourself – לֹא תִתְגֹּדְדוּ – have to do with not making yourself into little groups – לֹא תֵּעָשׂוּ אֲגוּדּוֹת אֲגוּדּוֹת?  

The Sages saw something. There's a link between the karcha – the bald spot – and Korach,  and the Sages extended that link to לֹא תִתְגֹּדְדוּ as well.

Yes, Korach was grieving, he was attacking the head… but what was the effect of attacking the head? He was dividing the community against itself. He was taking one wonderful thing, the community of Israel, united - and making two smaller diminished things out of it, dividing it against itself. Don't do that, the Sages say, don't slash yourself and don't slash your community apart. So when you read Deuteronomy 14, the simple meaning of the text refers to individual mourning practices: making this bald spot, slashing yourself. But the larger meaning of the text refers to communal mourning for communal loss.

Grief and Us

The Torah is warning us here about a deep human tendency buried in our soul. Mourning can be cathartic but it can also destroy. Shiva – the seven-day mourning period after death – how many families have found themselves tragically pitted against one another during this time? How come Uncle Bob and Aunt Marlene are struggling so viciously over Grandpa's favorite chair? Before you know it, Uncle Bob and Aunt Marlene aren't talking to each other, and neither are their kids.

The tragedy is they're not really even angry at each other. Korach wasn't even angry at Moshe either; it was grief. Stay away from that kind of grief. Resist at all costs the tragedy of Korach.

Imu: So I’m going to be honest with you. While I found Rabbi Fohrman’s evidence in this episode to be really compelling, I was really troubled with the meaning of this presentation. When I am in mourning, apparently there are rules and restrictions to my mourning. There are ways in which I am supposed to mourn? There is a grief that is too out of control? Anger is somehow inappropriate in my mourning? That's what was going through the back of my mind when I was hearing this presentation and trying to take lessons from the  grief of the people of Israel and Korach and his followers and the law in Deuteronomy against tearing out your hair, or cutting yourself in grief. It doesn’t feel very humane to ask somebody who is grieving to rein it in. 

But a friend of mine — someone who works with me closely at Aleph Beta — pointed something out that I think was very wise. First of all she reminded me, and let me let you all know, that I don’t have the standing to speak authoritatively about grief. I haven’t experienced, thank God, any major losses in my own life. But my friend had. And she told me that she found Rabbi Fohrman’s words comforting. She found the Torah’s command comforting. 

What she told me was that in her own experience of grief, yes, there was sadness, tremendous pain, but there also was anger, and that sometimes that anger was sort of a dark hole, a black hole that had tremendous gravitational weight, something that was tremendously destructive, and that at a moment of great loss in her life, a moment of severing connections, it put her in a place where that anger threatened existing connections … which is exactly the opposite of what you’d want in a moment of grief, a moment of loss. You need to be connected to your loved ones. She experienced Rabbi Fohrman’s words and the Torah’s words as a reminder, not to let that anger — that destructive kind of anger — run amok and take you to too dark places to recover from. 

She described that anger as a dark hole that threatens to swallow you up. I don’t know whether she had Korach on her mind unconsciously, but it did strike me when I listened to her words that this is indeed the fate of Korach and his followers: their anger run amok, they are swallowed up in a dark hole.

When talking about this piece in the office with my editors, we noted how the Torah’s law in Devarim is introduced lovingly: בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַיקוָק אֱלֹקיכֶם – You’re God’s children. It’s almost as if God is asking us to trust our father. To make our way towards acceptance. To experience anger, but not a self-destructive kind of anger. He’s our father, and he’s asking us to trust him. 

I’ll leave my thoughts there, with a final word that I did learn quite a bit hanging up my scholar hat and talking to someone who experienced grief, hearing from them what this meant to them. So if you’re someone who has experienced a loss and you have thoughts and feelings you’d like to share, I definitely want to hear them. So please feel free to share them. Write us an email at info@alephbeta.org. Thanks for listening.

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Credits:

This episode was written and recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman. 

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was produced by David Block and Carly Friedman and edited by Rivky Stern and Ora Ziring.

Into the Verse editing was done by Beth Lesch.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. 

Our editorial director is Imu Shalev.