Korach, קֹרַח  "Korach"  Numbers 16:1-18:32

Korach: We Will Preserve The Name

Poetic notes on the parashat Korach*

When high aspirations lead into a deep pit,

do not fault the aspirations 

If you’ve placed your ladder to divinity 

a foot from the edge of the pit,

as did the foolish Korach, 

your ladder will surely slip

and the pit will swallow you up

Consider a man and a woman who aspire

to the pinnacle of love

If a lover is an aggressor,

the love is tortured

Love kills love

Korach’s love aggressively pursued

the delicate Shechinah

And so he tortured love,

killing his relationship with her

After this, will we still preserve the name of Korach?

Will we give his name a special place?

The heart of God is a very tender heart

It is vulnerable to assault

An evil inclination took Korach by the throat 

It grasped hold of his mind of pride

How can one violate the open heart of God?

Will we not destroy our own soul?

Having taken liberties with God’s heart,

what remedy could Korach’s soul ever find?

There is a tragedy of the human firstborn

Korach’s tragedy cuts to the heart of this 

Korach’ mind and heart were within Dathan and Abiram

His Jewish soul was stillborn within them

Dathan and Abiram thought to dominate Moses,

to eliminate Moses from the kingdom

What forgiveness, what salvation, 

what reconciliation with the soul of Moses

could Dathan and Abiram ever come to find?

Who will find a way to preserve their names, 

or that of Korach?

The firstborn who wildly offered incense

became like an incense offering themselves

What did the grace of Moshe’s prayer reveal?

To rebel and escape chastisement

is to fall from the wings of redemption

Did the wise lose their wisdom?

Did the converts lose their conversion?

Did the firstborn lose their right forever?

Could Moshe’s messianic prayer save their place?

Could Levitical corporate repentance repair the priestly office?

Could the messianic hope and efforts of Aaron

take hold of what was wrong and make it right?

Korach planted his feet against that hope

Korach chose defiance, autonomy and sedition

He stood his ground out of aspiring love…

He resisted out of righteous desire

to climb to the pinnacle of spirituality,

to reveal equality and unity in the world

His righteous desire ascended to Gan Eden,

but did not return whole or holy,

because his righteous desire was blemished

He desired to give what was not his to give

Two hundred and fifty accepted his challenge

to enter into the heart of infinity,

like Nadab and Abihu

But unlike Nadab and Abihu, 

the name of none of the two hundred and fifty

returned from their holy folly whole

Their folly was like the folly in the days of Noah

For Shem was already feeding the animals on the ark

when those down below 

were still fighting over territory upon the earth

Still, the sons of Korach will preserve Korach's name

To know why, let us understand:

It may be you will cross a narrow bridge

and come to a narrow path along a high cliff

and reach a precipice of faith,

where the faith of others before you has fallen,

and you must stand in that place

where looking up is like looking down

and looking down is like looking up,

and fear is a predator circling you,

until your heart is dizzy

There is only one sure-footed way to go

You must look with a well-illuminated mind

and a clear-hearted sight

directly at the danger you are in

Then your spirit will lean in one direction or the other

Eventually, you will decide

If your spirit is amoral in its deepest depth,

The shepherd of your steps is chance

Your god is your own will

The time will come when you step blindly over the precipice

To do this you only needed to be unlucky

You had no need of faith

You only needed luck

For only a moral universe requires faith

If your spirit is moral in its deepest depth,

you will incline decisively

toward the moral step

The Shepherd of Righteousness will guide you

And even though the path at first

is so narrow that it is only one step wide,

you will not fall

Follow in the steps of the narrow path 

over the narrow bridge of faith,

even through the valley of the shadow of death

The sons of Korach preserved Korach’s name,

when they repented in corporate solidarity 

They repented on behalf of the family of Korach

and prayed in the spirit of Moshe:

Therefore, say with the sons of Korach:*

“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God

Deep calls to deep

All Your waves and breakers have swept over me

Though my soul was in the pit,

though my soul withered within me,

my hope is in God!”

R. Isaac said:* 

In the year in which the king Messiah is revealed, 

all the kings of the nations of the world 

will be at war with one another

Our earthen vessel is made for light

to contain the light of heaven

It was not made to be dragged down into darkness

through a fall of Adam’s faith into unholy folly

Hope, to receive guidance

to the highest height of holy light,

is found in the family repentance of Korach’s sons

What Korach did not perceive himself,

his sons perceived:

They perceived that Moshe and Mashiach are twins

Korach did not see or understand

that Mashiach and Israel are one Adam,

made in the very image of Hashem,

standing with Hashem like his own beloved adopted twin

For, seeing him, Hashem calls Ephraim,

“My beloved son”

For a most loving father

feels himself to be a twin to his son

and his son to be a twin with him

This is the essence of the Torah

This is the nature of Torah Israel

Korach tried on his own to assert the divine place 

of equality of every Israelite soul,

as being a portion of Hashem

His sons repented of his ladder of spiritual hutzpah

through which he slid into the pit

They saw and confessed

that the Israelite soul is even now

being fashioned only by Hashem

With the repentance of the sons of Korach,

I will ascend with the Shechinah

into Hashem’s embrace

With humility as deep as the pit of Korach,

I will yet praise Hashem

My hope is in God,

Hashem, Israel’s Loving Saviour