I have often wondered why Korah is treated so negatively in the Torah. The characters in this story remind me of old cowboy movies, where everyone’s character was black or white -- and in case you would not recognize who was who, the bad guys had the black hats and the good guys had the white ones. Aside from the possible racism involved in that, what it portrayed was a world in which everyone was either one thing or another. That is how the people in the Korah story are portrayed as well: Korah is the essence of evil and Moses the essence of good.
That is also how the Rabbis portrayed Korah. Rabbah bar Bar Hannah, for example, narrates that while he was traveling in the desert an Arab showed him the place where Korah and his companions had been engulfed. There was at the spot a crack in the ground, and on putting his ear to the crack, her head voices cry, “Moses and his Torah are true, and we are liars!” (B. Sanhedrin 110a)
But was Korah really so bad? He clearly was challenging the sole authority of Moses, and from the point of view of the story teller, that apparently was bad. The story teller was clearly on Moses’ side. But was Korah’s claim so pernicious? After all, from what he says, he apparently wanted power not for himself alone, but for the whole Israelite community. That, at any rate, is what he says to Moses and Aaron: “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?” (Num. 16:3) That sounds like he was the first true democrat in Jewish history.
That, indeed, is how a modern non-Jewish commentator sees Korah. Albert George Butzer in The Interpreter’s Bible says maintains that Korah’s claim was exactly right for our time and circumstances, but not for his:
From our present vantage point we certainly cannot be too severely critical of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Today we glory in their two main contentions, viz. ecclesiastical and political democracy as over against autocracy in both of these realms. In what then did the crime of Korah and his associates consist? Was it not that they failed to see that their timing was wrong? Fine as their ideas were, they would not understand that the people of Israel were not ready for them. Indeed, had the rebellion of Korah succeeded at that time the result would have been the worst kind of chaos, and God’s plan for Israel would have been dealt a retardingly disastrous blow...There is ...destructive power in an idea whose time has not come.
My own view, though, is that Martin Buber had the right idea about Korah. In his book, Moses (pp. 186-190), Buber sees Korah not as an ancient democrat, but as a dangerous autocrat who would undermine the rule of law. Writing in Germany at the time when the Nazi “brown shirts” were spreading terror among all those who were not Nazis, Buber compares Korah to them. Like them, Korah was claiming authority in the name of all that is holy in order to undermine established law, leaving society in the hands of “leopards” and “werewolves” with the wildest instincts of the state of nature:
A chief or shaman, whose authority is supported by a superhuman power, can be combated in two ways. One is to attempt to overthrow him, particularly by shaking faith in the assurance that he will receive that support, and to take his place, which is precisely what some suppose to have been the nucleus of the story of Korah, that is, a manifestation of the personal struggle for power known to us from all phases of human history, and one which in general leaves the structure of society unchanged. The second method is to cut off the main roots of the leader’s power by establishing, within the tribe but external to the official tribal life, a secret society in which the actual, the true, the “holy” communal life is lived, free from the bonds of the “law”; a life of “leopards” or “werewolves” in which the wildest instincts reach their goal on the basis of mutual aid, but in holy action.
Buber then asserts that the true claim of those who would rebel against the law is that the law must always be continually reinvigorated with its spirit. Korah, though, represented the false claim of those who would rebel against the law, namely, that the law should be replaced by those who claim authority based on its spirit. He points out that those who would take the latter path always speak as if the ideal, eschatological end-time has come, making law unnecessary and counterproductive. That, indeed, is the claim of Paul in the New Testament as well. For Moses and Judaism, though, we must remember that we do not live in such a redeemed state, and therefore law must continue to govern:
It was the hour of decision. Both Moses and Korah [both] desired the people to be the people of the Lord, the holy people. But for Moses this was the goal. In order to reach it, generation after generation had to choose again and again between the roads, between the way of God and the wrong paths of their own hearts; between “life” and “death.” For this God had introduced Good and Evil, in order that men might find their own way to Him.
For Korah the people, as being the people of the Lord, were already holy. They had been chosen by God and He dwelt in their midst, so why should there be further need of [good and evil] ways and choice? The people was holy just as it was, and all those within it were holy just as they were; all that needed to be done was to draw the conclusions from this, and everything would be found to be good. It is precisely this which Moses, in a parting speech ...calls Death, meaning the death of the people, as though they were swallowed up while still alive.
In our own day, when terrorists daily seek to undermine the authority of law and replace it with their own ideal world, we must be ever more wary of those who would sing the siren song of eschatological completion. We must also see the danger of those who would replace Jewish law with its spirit in the name of some secular, utopian reality. Rather, the story of Korah should remind us what Buber calls “the true rebellion” against the law, namely, our constant duty to reinvigorate the law -- American and Jewish -- with the spirit of its values and goals so that we can effect those values and goals in the real world that Judaism would have us live.
Shabbat Shalom.