Korach

Korach

In our Perasha we saw a great revolution led by Korach. The previous Perasha ended with the commandment to make Tzitzit. Part of the Mitzvah of wearing Tzitzit is to have a thread of Techelet which was sky blue.

Korach was a troublemaker. He was chasing after his own Honor. He is the type of person who would never be convinced by a true answer. He spoke only using rhetoric and did not really care about what G-d has to say.

What did he do? According to the Midrash, he got up and went to Moshe Rabienu and asked him if a garment made completely of Techelet needed to have strings attached to it. How can one little string of Techelet put on a garment change a whole garment filled with it? Moshe answered him that it still needed the Techelet attached.

He also asked Moshe whether a house filled with Sifrie Torah needed a Mezuzah.

Moshe Rabienu answered him that the house still needed a Mezuzah. Korach then said to Moshe “A house which has many paragraphs needs to have a Mezuzah which has only two.!! He said to Moshe, “G-d did not command these Mitzvoth you just invented them yourself.”

It has been claimed that these kinds of questions were probably not really historical but reflected the problems the Jews were having with Greek philosophy. After reading a book (Olam Hatanch) on the tanach which comments on our Perasha I am convinced that these midrashic stories exactly reflect the story in our Perasha.

The previous Perasha which discussed Tzitzit finished off by saying “You will be holy”. The words of Korach and his followers was exactly those words. He said “The entire community is holy” The intent of these fiery words is to say to Moshe that if the whole community is holy, how come you are the king and your brother is high priest?

Moshe did not answer the questions addressed to him because Korach was not interested in hearing a true answer. He only wanted to usurp authority. Our rabbis of blessed memory have followed this philosophy and never give answers to people who just want to make fun of our beautiful Torah.

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