Why does the rebellion of Korah in the Torah happen now? The Israelites have been wandering for a long time. Why should this be the moment a full-scale rebellion explodes?
Rabbi Baruch Epstein, the author of Torah Temimah, in his commentary Tosefet Bracha, offers a reason that speaks to us very powerfully in our own time. There were always dissatisfactions, but the people held them in check for they had a great expectation. They were about to enter the land.
In last week’s Torah portion, however, the spies returned with their evil report. God’s wrath was inflamed and God spoke through Moses.
“In this very desert shall your carcasses fall. Of all you who were recorded in your various lists from age 20 and above, you who have muttered against Me, not one shall enter the land that I swore to you, save Caleb son of Jephuneh and Joshua son of Nun.” (Numbers 14:29-30.)
In other words, the people have just learned that they will not be permitted to enter the Promised land.
Hope deferred, Proverbs teaches, makes the heart sick. (Proverbs 13:12). The shock of knowing they would not be able to realize the dream led the Israelites to push against the leadership of Moses. The reality of such frustration is deeply human, both then and now.
In a famous poem titled “Harlem,” Langston Hughes asks what happens to a dream deferred:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
– And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
– Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
The dream of going into the land was not only deferred but denied for the Israelites. And as the poet teaches, it explodes. This linkage also helps explain, writes R. Epstein, the answer to Rashi’s question. Rashi asks why the Torah places the story of the spies and the story of the rebellion back to back, since it is a scriptural principle not to juxtapose two catastrophes. Rabbi Epstein’s answer is that one essentially caused the other.
The time of the pandemic has reacquainted us with dreams deferred and dreams denied. Surely some of the violence the world has seen in the past year is the eruption of energies that are held in check by expectations. When people cannot leave their homes or gather together there is a constant pressure exerted upon us that will find an outlet. This is not to deny many other causes of violence, but day after day of confinement – a different disappointment than wandering in a desert but still contrary to fundamental human needs – has taken its toll.
Moses’s leadership was accepted so long as people still believed they were heading straight for Israel. Once that was no longer the case, the difficulties of the desert became too much for the Israelites, and demagogues like Korah exploited their dissatisfactions.
The centrality of hope is something the Torah teaches us both by its presence and by its absence. This parasha shows in part what happens when people lose the hope that they will enter the land. The survival of the Jewish people, however, is in large measure due to the hope that the future will be a redemptive one. For centuries the messianic hope kept Jews anticipating a better future despite the depredations of the present.
Korah played on the fears and disappointment of the Israelites. He did not have a better future to offer them, only the charisma of ego and a way to channel their anger. The failure of the rebellion teaches us that in spite of disappointments and difficulties, the path of hope leads to survival for our people and for the world.
The writer is Max Webb senior rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, and the author of David the Divided Heart. On Twitter: @rabbiwolpe.