Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto’s talks are known throughout the Jewish world. They combine chassidic teachings and philosophy, along with tips for a better life. We have collected pearls from his teachings that are relevant to our daily lives. This week he comments on the Torah section of Korach.
Our sages say that it is well known that Korach was a very righteous and pious person. The holy Arizal says that the end of the words of the verse (Psalms 12:13) "A righteous person will blossom like a date-palm'" spells Korach.
It is related about the Satmar rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum (the Yismach Moshe), that he told his students that he had been reincarnated and returned to This World three times, and in one of the reincarnations, he was present during Korach and his faction’s dispute with Moses. He said that all the righteous individuals and scholars sided with Korach and all the common people went with Moses.
His disciples asked him with whom he had sided. He answered that he stood apart and did not go with anyone. They asked him how come he didn’t side with Moses. The Yismach Moshe answered them, "If you knew how great Korach was, you would understand how come I didn't go with Moses. Korach was a great Torah scholar and his fulfillment of commandments was outstanding. He did good deeds and gave tremendous charity. He was a paragon of righteousness and came from a distinguished family. Korach was able to get up and undermine Moses’ status in a way that shook up all the Israelites.”
Korach rose up against Moses thousands of years ago. But the trouble that Korach brought upon the Jewish nation has not ended until today. Korach did a terrible thing. He fully believed that he was right, and he fought and undermined Moses’s entire status. God had testified about Moses: "My servant Moses is not like that ... he is the most faithful in all My house" (Num. 12:7). In all of God’s “house,” in This World, including angels and humans and all of creation, the one most faithful to God was Moses.
You have to understand what happened to Korach and his faction. In This World, when a person dies, they bury him in the ground, the body rots in the ground and that's the end of the person. A person has two partners - the spiritual soul and the physical body. God gives man his soul and gives the body five senses. The father contributes the bones and the mother contributes the flesh, blood and sinews. G-d put in place the natural process of death in This World even for righteous and holy individuals. A man lives his allotted time and when his time comes to an end, he returns his soul to God. The earth also receives its part - the body which was created from the earth. In the creation of the world, God gathered from all the sands in the world, and created the world in such a way so that wherever a person dies, the earth will receive his body because he is a part of it.
On the day of a person’s death, this partnership disintegrates, the soul ascends to heaven and the body decays in the earth. Our sages say that until the body decays in the grave, the soul descends and ascends for twelve months to see what is happening to the body. That is why in the first year many go to the cemetery to visit a person's grave at the beginning and the middle of the month because this is the time when the soul descends to the grave to see what happens to the body, its other half.
Like a person buying a apartment to live in, the soul lives inside the body, and after the partnership is over, the soul returns to God and the body returns to the earth.
But something happened to Korach that no other person in the world had ever experienced. Moses asked God to take Korach and swallow him up in the ground. Korach did not die the way people die, but his body and soul remained together. Korach's body and soul remained intertwined. Our rabbis say that under the earth, Korach's body is burned and seared by fire, and every thirty days God renews his body so that his suffering will be eternal, an eternal pain that has no end.
When God revives Korach's body and burns it, Korach and his faction shout that “Moses is true and his Torah are true.” He continually says this because the discord that Korach created in the world never came to an end. "The ‘sons’ of Korach did not die" (Num. 26:11). To this day, the disputes that exist in the world over Torah scholars arise from the force generated by Korach’s controversy that he fomented against Moses. To this day, there are people who are from Korach's sect, students of Korach who are sparks of those who belonged to Korach's group and continue in every generation to complain, disturb and harm even if they appear to be Torah scholars. Korach was also a Torah scholar and his way has continued until this generation. Our holy books write that the fire of Hell is hundreds of times worse than the ordinary fire that exists in This World. Korach has been burning in this fire all the time and it has not stopped since he was swallowed up in the earth. It is continuing because he sowed controversy among the Jewish people.
Since Korach perpetrated evil and corruption, and caused a destruction that has no parallel, his punishment was to descend with his body and soul to the She’ol, the lowest place in hell. The discord created by Korach caused his physical body and spiritual soul to be fused together.
A great lesson should be learned from this. A person may do many transgressions in his life, but causing dissension and rising up against and causing suffering to a Torah scholar, gives the physical body control over his spiritual soul. The soul’s harm is eternal and brutal, a severe and dangerous harm without parallel. Korach couldn’t in the past and will never be able in the future to severe his physical part from his spiritual part. He is underground shouting hopelessly that Moses is true and his Torah is true while he is revived and burned every thirty days.
A person has to keep his soul holy and separate from his physical body, because as soon as he meshes his holy soul with his physical body he will be unable to rectify it, and he will end up in a difficult place where rectification is severe and extremely difficult.
We must guard our pure soul’s holiness, through Torah and keeping its commandments and doing good deeds, and by being devoted to God - "I see the Lord always before me" (Psalms 16:8). Then we will not lose the soul, which is a part of God from above and is only entrusted to us. Let us guard this deposit in the most correct and beneficial way.