Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

I wouldn’t call Emanuel School a hotbed of rebellion. However, while teaching my students about how Moses protested against God’s decision to wipe out the Jewish people after they worshipped the Golden Calf, my students asked me how I’d feel if they protested my decisions as a teacher. The question gave me pause for thought, not because I discourage questioning, but because I am well aware that sometimes questioning and challenging can be courageous and respectful and a way to enhance knowledge and justice, while at other times it can be entitled, indulgent and destructive.

I explored this with the students and reflected to them that their relationship to authority was quite different to the culture of the Israelites in the desert. In fact, generally speaking, I find students have a healthy sense of being willing to challenge authority. The discussion then moved to ‘how’ one challenges authority.  Sometimes, in history, there is a place for outright rebellion to overthrow an oppressive tyrannical system. But usually, when we are questioning someone, it’s within an existing system that we don’t want to destroy (I hope), be it the space of the family, the school or the community.  So the question becomes how do we engage in conflict, called machloket in Hebrew, within a system that we care about and don’t want to see completely annihilated!

The week’s parsha recounts the infamous rebellion against Moses led by Korach and his band of rebels. Korach famously challenges Moses by saying, “We are all holy among the people of Israel. Why should YOU be over US? Make us leaders too”. Moses is so uncomfortable by this challenge that his initial response is to fall on his face, after which he earnestly tries to engage with the rebels through discourse. Personally, I was always bothered by the untimely and somewhat terrifying end to Korach. He and his followers are in the camp when the ground opens up and swallows them. God clearly disapproves of their challenge to authority. There are many Midrashic sources which imagine Korach and his followers in an underground kind of limbo, praying to God and trying to do teshuva (repentance) for what they did. Korach’s demise is the closest thing we have to hell in Judaism. But, what did he do wrong? We know that there is a culture from Abraham through to Moses of being able to question God, challenge the system. So why did things go so downhill (excuse the pun) for Korach?

This bothered me until reading Avivah Zornberg’s analysis of the event. Using the actual story, she shows that Korach was not interested in genuine dialogue with Moses. After his initial protest, (who do you think you are Moses to be a leader over us?), Moses attempts to speak with him a few times in the text and we don’t hear Korach’s response or words ever again.  The Midrash, puzzled by Korach’s silence imagines that Korach’s silence was a conscious decision. They imagine Korach saying: “If I answer him, I know he will win because he is a wise man and so I will be reconciled to him, it is better that I not engage with him”. A master of non-responsiveness, Korach was the ultimate blue-ticker! Ouch.

The Maharal, a 16^th century philosopher who lived in Prague talks about the word machloket. He writes that a person who is ba’al machloket, a person who sows the seeds of argument sets his words on strict din or law. In other words, the person who does this sets their argument on the assumption that they are totally right a state of being that involved ‘uncompromising and transparent righteousness’. This kind of person is inflexible and unyielding.

The Babylonian Talmud teaches that: “one should not maintain a dispute for Moses sought out the people of Korach to come to terms with them through a peaceful dialogue”. As a therapist, I have long been aware that part of the work of intimacy is to be able to have conflict with someone. There is nothing so vulnerable as being able to look someone in the eye and share why you are unhappy or even angry with them. To be able to maintain that difficult conversation is a profoundly vulnerable and intimate space If we can’t do conflict, we can’t really  be intimate with people either.