פרשת קרח

ויקח קרח בן יצהר בן קהת בן לוי ודתן  ואבירם בני אליאב ואון בן פלת בני ראובן
Korach the son of Yizhar, son of Kahas, son of Levi, separated himself with Dasan and Aviram, the sons of Eliav and Ohn son of Peles, the offspring of Reuven.

This weeks פרשה starts with the rebellion of קרח and his attempt to "overthrow" משה as the Jewish leader. In order to do this קרח gathered a group of 250 men (of stature) to help "stump" משה and prove that he really did not have help from ה׳.

רשי explains that the reason behind קרח's rebellion was jealousy. קרח felt cheated out of the position of נסי of his שבט because משה appointed his cousin, אליצפן בן עוזיאל, to the position (like ה׳ commanded him to). However קרח didn't believe that ה׳ told him to do this and thought that משה was just picking favorites. Therefore he set out to cause משה to be disproved. 

To show everyone that he was right about משה, Korach gathered the 250 men and gave each of then a טלית made completely out of תכלת. They proceeded to משה רבינו and asked "If someone has a garment made completely of תכלת, is he obligated to put ציצית on it? Of course משה quickly answered "he is obligated". קרח responded by saying "a garment that is made completely of wool requires only one strand of תכלת, and yet you say that a garment made completely of תכלת needs additional תכלת? Impossible!!". קרח and his followers laughed and started their rebellion.

The מדרש states that the קרח's strategy was to ask משה a question that he would not be able to answer. From his "stumping" of משה רבינו, he would prove that there was no way that he was getting his answers from ה׳. Now, the difficulty (with רשי) is that it doesn't seem that קרח's question was really such a powerful question. I mean, the rule is, ANY four cornered garment needs to have ציצית (with a string of  תכלת). So it really doesn't seem like the type of question that you would start a revolt off of. 

 If קרח really wanted to stump משה רבינו he could have asked a much harder question. What was so unthinkable about the answer of the תכלת that caused קרח and his 250 followers to laugh and try to start a revolution? 

To this, I have a two part answer.  The first, is the power of jealousy and how it overtook קרח. 

Here is an example, a person is sitting in their living room in a comfortable house; with a nice tv, great wife, nice car, anything a person can want. All of a sudden a commercial for the newest product comes on the tv screen. Of course what does the ad say, "if you don't have a (insert product name here) you can't be happy...". You know what happens, that person goes outside and all he can see are; people using that product, billboards advertising it, commercials showing people more using it, etc... And what begins to happen is, that person starts to become more and more jealous of everyone else who has it. The commercial ends up proving itself right, he can't mentally be happy until he has it. No matter how many friends tell him it is a waste of money, or time, he NEEDS it and nothing will stop him from getting it.

 In the case of קרח the product was the position of the נסי. As soon as he realized that he didn't have it, he started looking around at all the other נסיאם and all the power, respect, and קדושה that went along with the job and he became jealous. Therefore when he went to משה for the answer to the ציצית question, he wasn't really looking for the answer he would do anything to overthrow משה and gain the power he craved. Therefore the answer didn't matter.  

The second part of the answer has to with mob mentality. Take for example, the recent Canadian riots.  What was the real reason for these riots? Seemingly nothing, sorry to all the Canadians out there but losing a hockey game is not a good reason for riots. Now, do you think that as soon as the team lost, the entire city just got up and started rioting? No, granted people may have been really mad about their team losing, but it wasn't until people started to see other people breaking things, burning things, and beating people up did it click "well if they are doing it, it must be ok!" even though in the back of their minds they knew it wasn't.  Very often if you ask people who took part in riots or any violent or stupid act their response will be "yeah I know it was dumb, but I just got caught up in it". This is how the 250 scholars got caught up in the rebellion and laughed at משה. When they heard קרח's complaints against משה they began to realize that they wanted and needed that power. They, like the people who get caught in the moment in riots, were swept up into a frenzy about how they too felt cheated by משה רבינו.

Have a Great Shabbos
Yoni Spigelman
With Help From: The Shmuz on the Parsha- Rav Ben-Tzion Shafier