Here is my current draft of a D’var Torah for this Shabbat on Parashat Korach. It’s one of many in this period leading up and beyond July 4, the 250th anniversary of the U.S.A.
June 20, 1776, was a Saturday just like this year. On that day the town meeting in Natick, Massachusetts, unanimously approved a “Resolve for Independence.” It was drafted by Captain John Coolidge, Daniel Morse IV, and Reverend Stephen Badger. Natick was established in 1651 as a “Praying Town” with a specific mission to bring the gospel to Native Americans. Reverend Badger was a Harvard-educated minister who by the 1770s was serving a congregation in Natick made up of what today we could call Native Americans, African-Americans, and Anglo-Americans. It was fairly unusual back then, and during that decade Reverend Badger fought against an attempt to relocate the congregational meeting house to South Natick which was a whiter part of town, in an attempt to segregate the church.
The “Resolve” that Reverend Badger, Captain Coolidge, and Mr. Morse formulated was not long, but it put Natick on record in support of independence should the Continental Congress approve such a move. It accused Parliament of thirteen years of “acts.. by which every idea of moderation, justice, humanity, and Christianity are entirely laid aside” and “which would disgrace the most unenlightened and uncivilized….” It anticipated the language of the Congress a couple weeks later in committing their “lives and fortunes”, and I particularly like a bit at the end where they interrupt the hifalutin and bombastic tone with “if we may be permitted to suggest an opinion”, and they propose that the sooner the Congress could get on with independence the better.
Yasher koach Reverend Badger on all counts!
Meanwhile on the same day in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress decided that Saturdays going forward were going to be for committee work. It was noted that given the high temperature around the proposal for independence already circulating, there was a need to draft rules for debate, and they set up a committee to formulate them which included Thomas Jefferson. Who by the way nine days before had been assigned to another committee, the one to draft the actual Declaration of Independence, and as we know he was dragooned into chairing that committee by John Adams. Talk about if you need something done give it to a busy person!
Well given that other committee, the one about rules for debate did not actually finish their work before the final debates in early July. It took until July 10 to draft rules and submit them to the Continental Congress. Apart from some parliamentary procedure-type things here are some of their proposals:
- “No Member shall read any printed paper in the House during the Sitting thereof without Leave of the Congress.”
- “When the House is sitting, no Member shall speak [or whisper] to another, so as to interrupt any Member who may be speaking in the Debate.”
- “No Member shall speak more than twice in any one Debate without Leave of the House.”
- I especially like one proposal that got deleted by the whole Congress: “No Member in coming into the House or in removing from his Place shall pass between the President and the Member then speaking.”
And that’s how I bring you to Korach, the challenger to the authority of Moshe and Aharon at the opening of our parasha.
Korach is known basically for two things, both of which are relevant to this summer marking the 250th anniversary of American independence and the ideas articulated in the Declaration.
Korach is known in the Talmudic tradition as the dugma, the exemplar, of how not to debate. What in Pirkei Avot, the Talmud’s ethical treatise, is called “debate not for the sake of Heaven”, machloket she-lo l’shem shamayim.
Korach is depicted as, so to speak, the one who demonstratively brings something else to read when important things are being studied and discussed, who whispers while someone else is engaged in an important point, and who crosses in front of the presiding officer.
He is also known for hijacking the concepts of the Torah to rouse the rabble, to undermine confidence in good leaders by portraying them as the ones perverting Torah for their own power and wealth, and himself as a truth-teller, when what he wants is a following of his own. It’s bad enough in the eyes of the midrash that Korach is someone to be suspicious of, and demagogues like him. What’s worse is in the process, he is seen as emptying important ideas of their meaning, by dragging them into his other agenda.
In particular, he degrades the idea of equality, or as Korach puts it the equal holiness of everyone in God’s community.
Many pro-independence preachers of the 1770s invoked these sections of the Book of Numbers to exhort their congregations. They compared their own time to the wilderness, and described the challenge of going forward into republican freedom versus going back to tyranny, with King and Parliament in the role of Pharaoh. These preachers saw the covenant at Mt. Sinai as anticipating their own moment, when a group of people had thrown off a tyrant and expressed their freedom by entering a new covenant of just laws and wise leaders who were not kings. They feared the soothing words of loyalists who promised that things would be better under British rule, and they feared upstarts like Korach who spoke about milk and honey and equality but thought that saying these things was all you needed to do to make them happen, and whose plans could not secure the blessings of liberty.
But Korach himself doesn’t often appear in these sermons, because he is an outlier among the challengers of the Book of Numbers. I said Korach is known our tradition for two things, and the second thing is what is in the Torah, the substance of his critique of Moshe and Aharon: “For all of the congregation, all of them are holy, kulam kedoshim — so why do you lift yourselves up above the community of God?”
Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think this is most clear, explicit statement of equality in the whole Torah. Of equality and its implications for society, for politics. Yes, the Torah opens with a statement that the first humans were created in the Divine image, and most of the Torah is about throwing off oppression and then preventing its return. We infer equality from all kinds of places in Torah.
But an actual explicit statement of equality – I think Korach is the one person in Torah who names it and nails it.
In ancient times, and in 1776, it may have been easier to put him aside because of the first lens, to say he didn’t really mean it and Moshe deserved to be leader-for-life. But in our time, his words should hit home. We are the generation who is ready to take him seriously on the face value of his words.
What is the answer? What does equality mean – what are all the implications of equality?
This is the most important question to drill down on this summer. It’s a hard one; I myself have been trying to write down what I think equality really is and entails. Equality is the most famous idea in the Declaration of Independence yet incredibly, equality seems like it’s on the defensive. If you talk about equality, a lot of people accuse you of being like Korach, of using the idea as a ruse to gain power, to take other people’s freedom, to funnel wealth away from those who “deserve” it.
To reclaim equality, this first American ideal, we need to be the best version of Korach.
And who better to do this in our country than the Jews of America.
We have two traditions to draw from. Equality for us evokes both Thomas Jefferson and Sefer Bereshit, the Book of Genesis. One tradition introduces humanity as Tzelem Elohim, created in the Divine image. The other talks of inalienable rights.
We have two sets of lived stories we are rooted in. In one we are a minority among a majority; in another we are part of the whole. Our long Jewish history and the stories of our families before America and since we came here – stories of discrimination and worse, confronting them and overcoming them. Our American story from all men are created equal to Juneteenth and Pride Month.
The obstacles and setbacks and heroes we experience within both traditions too. As Jews we have wrestled with spiritual equality and Jewish law, the debates over women’s role in ritual leadership and marriage equality. As Americans, I hardly need to say.
And in the biggest frame – Jewish tradition asks what our obligations are, in every realm from interpersonal to economic, toward other equal human beings with whom we share a nation; while American tradition asks what our rights are, as equal individuals.
We have something essential to offer to this country as we reconnect to equality this year. I have been reading a book I recommend called Our Declaration, by Professor Danielle Allen, director of the Edmund and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. One thing she says based on both the history of 1776 and political philosophy is that we don’t arrive at definitions of equality conceptually, just by nailing down the original meaning of the text, but by writing together. That’s why I am not here giving you now my written definition, which will be unfinished until we talk more.
So unlike Thomas Jefferson’s other committee, I will permit you to bring other printed material to our discussions and our services – by all means bring Professor Allen’s book, which I would be reading in shul if I were not leading services.
And I am drafting some study material for us to roll out the week after next and on July 4, Shabbat America, when I hope you’ll stay and study the Declaration and sing songs of liberty from both of our traditions, as long as you like between Kiddush and fireworks.
It’s imperative that we put equality in the center again this year, that we try to define it and ask our questions about it. We cannot let equality be dragged down or dismissed, removed from our American moral and political vocabulary. As for our role in that, our synthesis will be unique, as we put our American and Jewish texts and experiences together in Talmudic dialogue. We have something to contribute this year as we read the Declaration and unpack its many statements about equality, and as we take up Korach’s premise that all in the community are holy and have the Divine within us.
Shabbat Shalom!
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