Truth, justice, kindness, and peace: Korach
Which is the most fundamentally important of these values, in your life, in our world: Truth, justice, loving kindness and peace or faith? Choose one, for the sake of this exercise. To help you – answer this question -What would the world look like if this were lacking in your life?
If you say peace, can you remember a times many of us give up our dignity for the sake of peace, especially women, I know I did – conflict avoidance. There are times to approach a conflict with courage. There are times to make good trouble, to challenge authority. These may be such times?.
Perhaps you chose justice, for without justice there can be no peace. How I wish for justices on our courts as of old – Bader Ginsburg for example. And without the truth, can there be justice? so maybe truth is the greatest? But what is the absolute truth, and are there times when the whole truth is hurtful? When Sarah says how can I become pregnant with my husband so old, even G8d tempers the truth. Every bride is beautiful at the wedding. says Talmud ketubot, in the opinion of Hillel. Shamai disagreed, you should be 100% truthful. But what is the truth about beauty?
Truth must the always be tempered with loving kindness. Loving kindness alone however is not great by itself, it can lead to spoiled kids and abusive spouses, who take the gift of the love they are given for granted.
What about emunah? Think of a time when you knew G8d was with you, immanent, not transcendent – palpable and in the room.
The Torah of Korach teaches us that the greatest of these is emunah – faith. Not that You believe in G8d, but that you know G8d believes in you. The challenge was not about leadership – but about whether we will follow G8d up – to the spiritual heights of Siinai, or go back to what’s familiar.
An insight that I received as a gift, is that the pit that opens to swallow Korach is the grave/kever that receives us all. The people are terrified by the fate they have gleaned by not knowing that G8d was with them in the debacle of the spies. You have brought us here for G8d to kill us in the wilderness.
We are all mortal, but we can choose to die in the wilderness or to know that G8d is with us in life, and even facing death. The ground opens to receive us all, What’s the difference in the case of Korach ? The ground receives his family, l’dor vador disappears. For the rest of the wilderness generation, We may not get there, but our children may – and that has to be enough. Our tradition is not happy with the fate of Korach’s children – Midrash tanchuma says that when Jonah was in the belly of the fish the fish traveled way down to the foundation stone upon which the world was founded. And what are they doing – Singing.
There is a story of a Kingdom where the ruling Queen loved her subjects so that she invited all her subjects to the palace who desired, an audience with her.
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