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June 26, 1954

Authenticity in Jewish Life and Leadership (1954)

Korach
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Peace and Truth: Part-Time Opponents (1951)

Tomorrow three American colonels will enter the South Korean town of Kaesong, three miles below the 38th parallel. On the lips of these men will be the greetings of שלום, peace. And a tired, weary world, whose spirit has been frozen by a Cold War and whose energy has been burned up in sporadic hot wars, will wait in breathless expectancy for the results of these truce talks. There is a beautiful modern Hebrew song called שיר האתת, The Song of the Signalman, which tells of solitary Jewish guards in the lonely desert outposts of the Negev guarding the outlying districts of the Yishuv. The refrain of the song tells of one sentinel signaling the other: השלום?, “Is there peace?”, and the answer comes, הן, שלום, “Yes, there is peace.” All free men the world over hope and pray that when the three American emissaries cry out to the enemy commander השלום? “Is there peace?”, that the answer will come clearly and boldly הן, שלום, "Yes, there is peace."However, I must confess that I look upon peace with some misgivings. I feel that there is some conflict between שלום and אמת. Does not peace imply some surrender of truth? If you and I are at odds about some very important matter of principle, and we make peace, we compromise, doesn’t that mean that we have each yielded a bit of that which we hold to be the truth? If the family doctor prescribes a tablespoon of castor oil for Junior, and Junior bitterly objects to it, Mother can make peace between doctor and child by compromising and giving Junior a dose of half a tablespoon of castor oil. Peace has indeed been established. But not enough medicine has been given to cure the child – which the doctor feels is a true necessity, while enough has been given to Junior to make him cry and grumble and groan, a reaction which he feels is, in truth, both unnecessary and undesirable. A settlement has been made – but you have compromised the principles of both antagonists. No good has come of it for anyone. When the State of Israel was offi…
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Re-enacting an Old Drama (1963)

The rebellion of Korach and his co-conspirators against Moses and Aaron, of which we read this morning, is the first great, direct test of the leadership of Moses. The quelling of the rebellion of this band of malcontents re-establishes and re-affirms the leadership of Moses of his people in the desert. And yet, according to “Yalkut Reuveni” the hahkhmei ha-emet – that is, the Sages of the Kabbalah – have taught that this great battle between Moses and Korach had ancient roots. The struggle between these two, they say, was merely the re-enactment of the old drama of the strife between Cain and Abel. They identify Moses with Abel and Korach with Cain.The detailed kabbalistic analogy is beyond our limited comprehension. Nevertheless, it is obvious to all of us that the Sages of the Kabbalah have here enunciated a great truth. For indeed, as we analyze the two dramas, we find confirmed the similarities between these two sets of biblical characters.Thus, for instance, we can detect at least three elements which unite Moses with Abel and Korach with Cain. The first of these is: kinah, jealousy or envy. The fratricide committed by Cain against Abel had its roots in Cain’s envy of Abel: the Lord accepted the offering of Abel, but v’el Kayin v’el minhato lo sha’ah – God did not accept the offering of Cain. The same feelings provoked Korach to his abortive insurrection. Both Moses and Korach were brothers in the sense of being members of the same tribe of Levi. Yet Moses was the undisputed leader of the people, while Korach was not. He was consumed by the fieriest of jealousy even as later he was consumed by the fires of the Lord when he met his end.The second observable element that unites these two pairs is: ta’avah, concupiscence, desire, a ravenous appetite for more and more. In the story of the sons of Adam, the Sages tell us that they divided the world between the two of them. Cain owned a full half of the world – yet he begrudged his brother the other half and desire…
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The Rebel Within Each of Us (1975)

This morning I wish to take exception to the tenor of sermons customarily delivered on the Sabbath when we read of Korah and his insurrection. The pulpit on this day usually abounds in talk on the vice of rebelliousness and regards the rebel as an absolutely evil person. I do not want to plead in his defense. But I do believe the accusation should be modified. The rebel is sometimes—but not always—a rogue. Rebelliousness is not necessarily at all times an unmitigated evil.Actually, there are two strains of personality that are opposed to each other and that characterize most human behavior. They are: conformity and rebelliousness. Every human being has both tendencies within him. Some of us express more of one quality than the other. There are some people who are almost completely the conformist, others completely the rebel.The conformist is the dedicated bourgeois. He submits to the majority, the popular, and finds security in being part of the nameless mass and the faceless crowd. He has suppressed whatever independence of judgment he might have possessed. He is a self-righteous person who has largely ceased to think for himself.The rebel is the bohemian, the anarchist, the outsider. He worships at the shrine of protest. He proclaims the holiness of defiance. School, family, religion, society—all forms of authority—are considered by him the enemy, and he is dedicated to overthrow them.Which of these two is the better man? Which is the *midah*, the attribute of character or personality that Judaism prefers and recommends to us? Shall we be the conformist or the rebel?The answer is that the spiritually and psychologically mature personality must have elements of both, never only one. The authentic Jew must be neither “square” nor “beat,” neither reactionary nor radical. He is, however, to have the capacity and the experience of both. For either one, by itself, is odious. When combined in one person, each has much to contribute to the growth of his character, to the…
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