Parshat Korach

Parshat Korach

Sermon Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. The rebellion of Korach is not the only topic in this week's parsha, but it certainly is the most important part of it. Korach seems to have no real reason for his rebellion. He is a Levite and according to one tradition, he was privileged to carry on his shoulders the Ark. He was a wealthy man; to this day we say that someone who is wealthy is “as rich as Korach”. So we are left with a question. Why did Korach lead a rebellion against Moses and Aaron? He already had wealth, power and honor. What more did he want from life?

3. Aaron, who was Korach's cousin, was known as a man who loved and pursued peace. He would do everything in his power to bring peace between those who were angry and locked in a feud. According to the Sefat Emet, the first Rebbe of the Gur Hasidim, the reason Aaron was chosen to be the first High Priest was because he gave so much of himself to bringing peace to others. It is said that Aaron made no division between himself and the people he served. But our Parsha begins with the verse “Korach took” that is, he took for himself, he was not acting on behalf of others.

4. This is what prompts the Rabbis of the Talmud to say; “Controversy that is for the sake of heaven will come to fruition. Controversy that is not for the sake of heaven will not.” What is a rebellion “for the sake of heaven”? The controversy between Hillel and Shammai. What is a controversy that is “not for the sake of heaven” the controversy of Korach and his colleagues. Hillel and Shammai argued for many years and their arguments went on for several generations among their students. But they were not arguing for personal prestige or to raise money. They argued so that everyone would understand what God requires of them. But Korach only was taking “For himself.” He was only interested in what he planned to get out of his rebellion, no less than the leadership of the entire nation.

5. We hear a lot of talk about rebellions today. There are active rebellions going on in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Sudan and maybe a new one starting in Saudi Arabia where women are protesting to gain the right to drive a car. As you might imagine, Israel and the United States are very concerned about these rebellions. First of all, they could disrupt the flow of oil around the world. It also places the oil in the hands of unknown and untested governments. Are we seeing the beginning of a new era of Arab democracy or will they end up with another dictatorship, maybe worse, maybe better than the one that came before?

6. We American's like to think about our own rebellion against England. Our war of independence took only a couple of years to end, but it took another ten years for us to settle on a form of government that we have today. It was not an easy process nor was everyone in agreement about what we should do. In the end, we wrote a constitution and somehow it became the foundation of what our democracy is all about. We have every right to be proud of what this country has accomplished, even with all our problems, over the past 230 or so years. But don't think it came easy. We did fight a civil war, assassinated a number of presidents, and our history is filled with war and scandal. Our democracy is a success but it is also a work in progress.

7. Most other countries who have had rebellions have not fared so well. France followed us with her own rebellion against the French royalty and it started a reign of terror where thousands of people were executed for all kinds of petty treasons. The Russian Revolution in 1917 unleashed a war that put the communists in power for most of the last century. The many revolutions in South America over the past 200 years basically replaced one dictatorship with another. Only recently have some of the South American countries finally found a way to embrace democracy and end the cycle of violence.

8. The British rock band, “The Who” described these kinds of revolutions in the song, “We Won't Be Fooled Again”:

We'll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet
And the morals when they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again

9. If history is any indication, we are not in for an “Arab Spring” of democracy, but a long period of instability. Israel and the United States are justified in moving slowly and carefully in these uncertain times in the Middle East. The rebellion of Korach teaches us that we have to be very careful when it comes to rebellions. We have to know if there is a wider purpose than just one group trying to establish their hegemony over all the other groups.

10. My teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman has another lesson for us to learn from Korach and his rebellion. After Korach and his party died, Moses was told to take the firepans used by the rebels and use the metal from the pans to make a bronze plating for the Altar in the Mishkan. It clearly is to be a memorial about what happens when people rebel against God. But there is more to this lesson and to the plating on the altar than just a reminder of a rebellion. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief Rabbi of Palestine, says that this plating serves as a reminder to the community of believers, a rebuke to the inevitable corruption that accumulates around faith and religion: the tendency to anthropomorphize; to conceive of God in narrow and unrefined ways; to concentrate on the words and letters of Torah instead of on the thoughts and feelings that it expresses, and on its ultimate moral thrust.”

11. Rabbi Gilman goes on to say, “The plating on the altar, then, is not simply a reminder of Korach's sin. It is even more a reminder of the sin that lurks in the heart of the pious, within all of us, a perpetual warning that it is not at all clear who is the saint and who is the sinner, that each of us is both saint and sinner, and the line separating the two is very murky indeed.” It seems that the sin of Korach can all too easily be our sin, that we think that we are better than everyone else, we are more pious and our way of doing religion is more correct than what anyone else does. “And the men who spurred us on, sit in judgment of all wrong. They decided and a shotgun sings the song”. We are not better than anyone else. We may be different and we may have other ideas, but we are all saints and sinners and where we stand on the line between these two poles in our hearts will determine if our work is for the sake of Heaven or not.

12. Like everything else in this world, religion can be used for great good or great evil. History has shown us how religion can be a source of knowledge, information, learning, understanding and human advancement. Religion gives us the encouragement to reach out to each other, to help each other along the way and to support each other in our times of distress. But religion has also been used to foster hate, bigotry, war, ignorance and greed. The difference is not in what we believe, but in how we translate that belief into our daily actions. The plating on the altar reminds us that at any moment, our faith can go either way and we have to be vigilant to keep our faith on the right track. We must always remember that when religion is not about love, it is not really religion anymore.

13. Leviticus reminds us that we need to “Love our neighbor as our self. But the Sefat Emet says that if we love God, we will see that our neighbor is our self. We will see ourselves in our neighbor and not hold him or her out as some “other person” who is not worthy of our love. If we love God, we cannot love only ourselves; our hearts have to be open to not just our neighbor, but to all other human beings on the planet. Or perhaps Rabbi Gillman would say that we all have to choose every minute of every day who it is that we love; do we love only ourselves or do we love God and love others as well?

14. We can be saints and we can be sinners. We can follow our inclination to do evil or our inclination to do good. We can be for ourselves and we can be for everyone. Controversy and rebellion are not good or bad in themselves; what makes all the difference is what is inside of us. If we only are interested in taking for ourselves, our controversies will be like the rebellion of Korach, and destined for disaster. If we seek to raise up and improve the lives of all people, those we know and those we do not know, our controversy will be like that of Hillel and Shammai, for the sake of heaven and destined to change the course of history.

Let us keep our minds focused on what is best for the world and may God always support us when we choose to spend our lives working for the good of all people, as we say …

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Parshat Korach

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Parshat Shelach Lechah

Parshat Shelach Lechah
Saturday Morning
2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. As the People of Israel move through the desert from Mt. Sinai to the Promised Land, they begin to complain. I can tell you, from my time leading a tour to Israel, when people are traveling, they do a lot of complaining. The food is too hot, too cold or there is not enough to eat. The schedule is too hard, or to light, and they don't want to see the sights you have chosen. Even when they have a wonderful day, travelers have a tendency to latch on to the one problem they encountered and they quickly forget all the good things that may have happened. Think about this, we could be spending the night in the presidential suite, but if the bed is too hard, that is all that we will remember.

3. Of all the rebellions, the rebellion of the spies is clearly the most serious and the one with the greatest punishment. If this were just about the leadership of Moses and Aaron, then the rebellion of Korah would be a greater problem. If this were just about food, then the lusting after meat would be the greatest problem. What was it about the report of the spies that makes this the most serious rebellion in need of the strictest punishment?

4. On the one hand we could say that this is a leadership issue. The leaders of all the tribes go on this scouting mission and when they come back, most of the people take their cue from their leaders. If the leadership of the tribes would not be behind the effort to conquer the Promised Land, it would not be possible to enter the land. This would leave the people stuck in the wilderness. It is not a good thing but not worth a terrible punishment.

5. I believe that the issue here is not about the leaders of the tribes going out on a spy mission. Rather the problem lies in the way they make their report on what they have seen. Everyone agrees about the facts of the case. As we read in our Parsha, “We came to the land that you sent us to; it does indeed flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.” They showed the people a cluster of grapes that was so heavy that it took two men to carry the cluster back. But when it came time to interpret the facts of the case, here there was a great problem. The spies' report in our Parsha concludes, “However, the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the Anakites there.” they conclude their report saying, “and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” In other words, the land was filled with giant people living in giant cities protected by giant walls. We will be like insects, easily crushed.

6. This is not a problem of facts, it is a problem of perception. How big are these so called “giants”? How many people exactly are in these “large” cities? Just how tall is a “giant” wall? And if the scouts feel small in relation to the walls, well that tells us more about the scouts than it does about the inhabitants of the land. It is hard for us to know the facts about the inhabitants of the land if we are viewing them from the perspective of grasshoppers. The essence of the failure of the spies is that they did not believe in themselves and they did not believe in the power of God to secure them a victory.

7. Now we can see why this rebellion is punished so severely; it is a failure of faith, faith in themselves and faith in God. They had no way of knowing how the inhabitants of the land looked at them. We will learn in Parshiyot yet to come, that the Moabites so feared the People of Israel that they hired a man to curse them. In our haftara we learn that the inhabitants of the promised land were terrified of the People of Israel, having seen how they had completely vanquished all their enemies. Maybe the People of Israel were small like grasshoppers, but, apparently, to the inhabitants of the Promised Land, they were like a swarm of locusts, devouring everything and everyone in their path. No wonder that Caleb and Joshua are horrified by the report of the majority of the spies and no wonder God takes this lack of faith so seriously that God determines that this generation must die in the wilderness so that their children can inherit the land that their parents are too insecure to conquer.

8. The late Rabbi Bernard Raskas once wrote, “Many of us treat religion as we do the little plastic case on an airplane labeled, 'pull down only in case of emergency.' Those of us who seek religious integrity realize that it isn't just an emergency hatch to be used for sudden escape when disaster strikes. To be of real use in time of trouble, [faith] must have become a regular and disciplined part of our lives long before there was trouble. Otherwise, it is very likely to be merely an exercise in futility.” If we need to be strong to recover from an illness, we need to exercise before we get sick. If we want to know what to do in an emergency, we need to learn about emergencies long before we have to encounter one. If we want to have faith in times of distress, we will need to have faith in the good times as well.

9. Understanding goes a long way when we are in unfamiliar surroundings. We once took our three children on a surprise trip to Disney World. We woke them up early in the morning so we could have a full day in the park. My son started complaining right away that we had promised him a trip to Disney World and we had yet to fulfill our promise. His sister, older and paying attention to the road, saw the signs we were following and said to him, “Pay attention! Don't you see that we are on our way right now to Disney World?” A little understanding changed his misery into excitement.

10. We too have a hard time having faith. Like the People of Israel, we don't always stop to consider where we are going and how we are going to get there. All too often we are wandering through life without any idea of what our goals might look like. We complain often about the bumps in the road and the hardships of living life day by day. But without goals, we are like travelers without a map and too embarrassed to ask for directions. We will never get to our destination.

11. But if we are lost, whose fault is that! We may be destined to win the lottery but we will never fulfill our destiny if we never buy a ticket. We may be destined for fame and fortune but we will never attain it if we never go any further from home then to our mailbox. We could be living lives of adventure and excitement but we need to be home in time to make the early bird dinner!

12. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner tells a story of a time that he and his wife went on a vacation to the Rocky Mountains, to a resort on a pristine mountain lake. There were all kinds of trails to hike and paths to explore. There were also signs everywhere warning about bears. They said that the bears could run faster than people, climb higher than people and and were very dangerous to confront. “Do not get close to the Bears” the signs warned. On the first morning at the resort, when the Kushners went down for some breakfast they met one of the park rangers who had stopped in for a cup of coffee to ward off the cold mountain morning. The Kushners and the ranger talked a bit about the park and the animals and finally the rabbi asked the real question on his mind. He asked, “You don't think the bears will come this close to the resort do you? If we were to take the easy hike around the lake, we would not confront any bears there would we?” The ranger took a slow sip of coffee and thought about the question behind the question. Finally the ranger answered, “If I could tell you that there were no bears out there then it would not be a wilderness would it?” The rabbi and his wife took their hike and had a wonderful week in the mountains.

13. Our fears tell us more about ourselves then they tell us about the world in which we live. Sure there are dangers out there, there are lions and tigers and yes bears. There are con artists, crooks and unsavory people. There are all kinds of sudden dangers we may have to confront if we leave the comfort of our homes. But if we are to enjoy the wonders of this incredible world, we are going to have to have some faith that everything will turn out alright in the end.

14. I am always amazed when people tell me that they have never visited Israel. It is such an extraordinary land and the Jews who live there are an inspiration to Jews everywhere. Why do Jews choose not to visit the Promised Land? Many times it is because they are afraid. They are afraid of Arabs. They are afraid of terrorism. They are afraid of getting hurt or killed because Israel is such a dangerous place. The reality is that acts of terrorism in Israel are so rare that it is still news whenever one happens. Israel is one of only a few nations that are able to offer security for her citizens in spite of the dangers all around. I remind you that more people die on Interstate 95 each year than die of terror related activities in Israel. Israel may have other issues in society, but personal security is not one of them. It is only fear that keeps people away, a fear based on how they see themselves rather than on the real situation in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

15. We need only to take the time to learn about Israel, to learn about our city, to learn about bears to know when we are placing ourselves in danger. When we know what is dangerous, we can have more faith that things will turn out well. God had given us good minds so that we can prepare ourselves for whatever life may bring. It is often only ignorance that keeps us home and afraid. The early Hasidic Masters used to teach that a person with a lantern never has to be afraid of the dark. A person with the lamp of learning never has to be afraid of what goes bump in the night.

16. The lack of faith our ancestors had in themselves and in God resulted in 40 years of wandering in the desert. Not because God was not powerful enough to bring them victory, but because they did not have the heart for the fight. Each day they wandered they had to face the fact that it was only their own fear that kept them from their goals. Let us resolve not to let our fears get the better of us. Let us spend some time each day learning about the world, learning about the the things that we fear so that if and when we have to confront them, we will be ready.

17. Let us stretch our minds, widen our horizons and face our fears. Let us have faith in God that whatever we may encounter, we can face it and overcome it if we but prepare ourselves in advance. We can aspire to the stars if we turn our eyes upward to God. God has given us great talents to take us to distant and wonderful places. All we need to do is to prepare our minds and have faith, faith that we can understand more, do more and be more than we ever thought possible. With that kind of faith, everything in life will be, for us, as a blessing.

May God bless us with courage, understanding and faith so that we may get the most out of all of our days as we say.... AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Naso

Parshat Naso


Sermon Saturday Morning

2011





1. Shabbat Shalom



2. I have always been fascinated with the gifts that the princes of the twelve tribes of Israel bring to the dedication of the Mishkan in this weeks parsha. What is the appropriate gift to bring to the dedication of the portable sanctuary at the center of the Israelite camp? What should a tribe bring as a gift to the “housewarming” as it were, to the place where God's presence would dwell? Talk about a homeowner who has “everything”! And yet, each of the princes brings a gift on behalf of his tribe.



3. The two most interesting things about their gifts is that they all bring the same gifts to the Mishkan and the gifts are items that will be very useful to the priests who will serve there. They bring bowls and ladles filled with flour and incense and they bring gifts of cattle, sheep and goats to create herds from which the daily sacrifices can be obtained. The gifts the princes bring are identical so that they say more about the givers than they say about the gifts. There is no rivalry between the tribes. They all work together and in concert for the good of the sanctuary. In short, they do what is best for the community over what is best for themselves.



4. This approach to life is hard to find anymore. We look around us and we see that there are so many more people who are only interested in what is best for themselves than those who even think about the community. Neighbors who keep a clean and tidy home are often the ones who are littering the communal space around us. Politicians who are elected to serve their districts spend most of their time raising money for their reelection and avoiding all that could derail their campaign. News organizations that should be reporting for the public good end up filming and publishing whatever drivel sells their advertising. The sad story of Casey Anthony and the death of her daughter should only be a painful tale of a very sick mother. That the trial has become so lurid and sensational is because the News organizations have figured out that the public wants to see it, so they sell advertisng so they can give us as much as we want.



5. Now we have a culture where there are so many people who want to tell us what we should be thinking about. Not because it is for anyone's well being, but because it suits their personal agenda. I had a friend once who used to say, with his tongue in his cheek, “If I want your opinion, I will give it to you!” I have people come up to me all the time and ask why I “never” speak about Israel in my sermons. I have come to understand that this really means, “Why don't you ever tell everyone that you agree with me about Israel?” The right wingers want to hear me vindicate their point of view and the left wingers want me to vindicate their point of view. There are very few people who really want to hear about what is actually happening in Israel because, right or left, the reality makes them both uncomfortable. Just over these past few weeks, President Obama, did not say that Israel must return to the 1967 borders and Prime Minister Netanyahu did not really disagree with the President at all. If you think that the President DID say they should return to the 1967 borders you are watching Fox news and listening to the pundits on the right. If you think that the rift between the President and Israeli Prime Minister is a welcome breath of fresh air, then you have been listening to the news and to the pundits on the left. The truth is in the middle and if both sides are unhappy, that is a good sign that something important has been said. So after all the shouting and posturing on the right and the left, the truth of the past weeks is that Israel and the United States agree that Israel and the Palestinians must talk to each other and make painful concessions. Oh, and that Hamas will not be a part of the negotiations no matter what agreements they sign until they give up their guns and recognize Israel's right to exist. All in all, I was pretty happy with our President, with the Prime Minister and the way they agree on the path to peace. I sometimes disagree with them both, but this time, I have to admit, I agree with them both wholeheartedly.



6. A woman called me to ask for my help in repairing the rift between her and her daughter. The daughter had made a decision that the mother disagreed with and she wanted me to resolve their problem. The family was supposed to have had dinner together on a birthday and at the last minute, the daughter had to cancel and the mother was heartbroken that the family was apart. She wanted me to referee the argument. “Can you do that?” she asked. “No” I replied, “the only way this problem will be resolved is if you both get together and talk it out. I can facilitate the conversation but you both have to want to resolve the disagreement.” But then I went on. I told her that I could not comment on her daughter's position, since she was not on the phone and I could not hear her side of the story. I then told the mother that whatever decision had been made, that decision was in the past and it was too late to change it. The real issue is if there could be a resolution by making a better decision in the future. It didn't matter anymore that the family was not together for a birthday, what matters is if the family can find a reason for the family to get together again soon. When we only can see our side of the story, we can't always see the path to reconciliation in the future.



7. A couple of years ago, Newsweek magazine asked its readers to tell them what parts of the magazine they liked and what parts they did not like? What parts did they want to see more of and what parts could they leave out? To the editors' shock and surprise, the part of the magazine voted out was the gossip page. The readers said they just really didn't care what was happening to Lindsey Lohan or to Brad Pitt. The editors were “thrilled” to be able to remove what they had thought was an indispensible part of the magazine.



8. I came across a saying by Fredrick the Great, the king of Prussia in the 18th century. He said, “The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices”. Truth is not about who is right and who is wrong. Truth is about doing what is best for someone else. Sometimes the best answer is not what will make everyone happy, it will be what will make everyone equally unhappy. Being wrong is not a sin, it is a necessary part of learning how to be right.



9. I can tell you for sure that the tribes of Israel in the desert did not always get along. The big tribes often overwhelmed the smaller ones. Some were quick to assimilate bad habits into their tents, as Shimon will do in the upcoming parsha of Hukkat. Sometimes they will act in self interest as three tribes will do by asking not to enter the Promised Land because the land they were already on was good enough. But when it came to their faith and to their sanctuary, they were of one mind and one heart. When it came to God, they knew that they had to reach out to a higher standard in personal relationships. Moses did not have to tell them what gifts to bring. They knew what was required and they got together to make sure that what the Priests needed, the princes would provide. And not just for the priests either. The princes also provided to the Levites, oxen and wagons to help carry the parts of the Mishkan when they traveled from camp to camp. They got together and made sure that the right number of wagons were available.



10. If we can put our own needs aside long enough, we can realize that everyone has something that they can teach us and that every event has something in it that we can learn. It does not matter at all our age or ability, our background or level of education. When we are learning, we are growing. The idea is not to just grow older, but to grow in wisdom and in understanding. That is why we pause in our service to learn from the Torah and to learn from our Teacher, our Rabbi. It is not enough to go through the prayer book; we have to open ourselves up so that the words of Torah and the words of the Siddur will go through us; changing our direction, our understanding and leaving us open to explore new ideas and to test new theories.



11. It is not enough to just listen to one news broadcast or read just one newspaper. On any given day I am constantly comparing news items. I look at the news from eleven different news sources and even then I challenge myself to see if there is a hidden meaning behind the headlines. Getting at the truth is never easy and we should not expect that anyone can do it for us. When we hear politicians and pundits shouting at each other or at us, they are really saying that we should only listen to them and to ignore everyone else. That is a good sign that we probably should be doing just the opposite, listening to everyone else and ignoring what they are shouting.



12. The world is not a simple place and making sense of what is happening is not a simple activity. Let us remember the example of the princes of the tribes in our parsha. If we come together for a common cause, we will bring peace and completion to the world. If we place our own needs before everyone else, we will only spread discord and divisiveness. The Torah tells us to seek peace and even blesses us in this parsha with the prayer “ May the Lord bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace.” May God grant us the peace that comes from loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, listening to them as we would have them listen to us. May this be the peace that pervades the world as we say …