Korach and all his company

(Numbers 16:5)
Tammuz 2, 5775/June 19, 2015

Korach, who led a popular rebellion against his cousins Moshe and Aharon, our sages tell us, was a man of great wealth and stature. He was both brilliant and charismatic. He, as we would say today, "had it all." So what was he after? Did he really want to usurp the daily responsibilities of Aharon the High Priest? Was he really interested in seizing for himself the mantle and the burden and the heartbreak of leadership that was Moshe's lot?

Our sages describe a challenge with which Korach confronted Moshe: He dressed his followers in cloaks of pure blue wool, saying: “Does a cloak made entirely of blue wool require blue fringes (tzitzith), or is it exempt?” Moshe replied, “ It requires blue fringes.” Korach and his cohorts laughed mockingly and shot back: "Can it be that a non-blue cloak is rendered fit with only a single strand of blue thread, yet this one, which is made entirely of blue wool, should not exempt from requiring an additional string of blue in order to render it fit?"

Our sages, trying to understand why Korach struck now, and not at a different time, take note of the proximity of Korach's rebellion with the commandment of techelet blue tzitzit(fringes), which Torah relates immediately preceding the story of Korach. Clearly Korach, ever the brilliant sophist, seized upon the apparent contradiction he saw in the commandment, and used it to rally people around his banner and create doubt and disillusion within their hearts concerning Moshe's abilities.

But Korach had another, personal connection to techelet: Korach was among the Levites who were assigned the task of transporting the Ark of the Covenant through the desert. In preparing for the journey, Korach and his fellow Levites would, " ...place upon [the Ark] a covering of tachash skin and on top of that they shall spread a cloth of pure blue wool." (Numbers 4:6)

A popular expression tells us that our bodies are our temple. Perhaps the simple intent is that one should strive to achieve an inner purity and closeness to G-d . But seeing our relationship to G-d as purely inward is a slippery slope. For once we focus our worship of G-d solely on the I-me-mine of our own selves, our worship of G-d soon becomes a worship of our selves. This was the premeditated intention of Korach, and this was the sign of his great brilliance, the fact that he comprehended from the start how so innocent a concept could be used to replace the image of G-d in which we are created, with an image of our selves, in modern parlance - a selfie.

The Ark of the Covenant, the very thing that embodies our closest cognitive connection to G-d , is covered in cloth that is entirely blue. So if I cover myself also entirely in blue am I not my own Ark, containing within myself, my own tablets of the law, which ultimately conform to my own self-serving priorities? Yes, Korach's argument, as he presented it to his gathering flock, seemed both democratic and righteous: Every man is holy, every man has a direct connection to G-d . Every man is pure, made up entirely of blue thread: So why do we need the additional blue threads of Aharon's priesthood orMoshe's leadership? But Korach wasn't proposing free elections every four years. Korachwas proposing a world in which every man, 'complete and perfect,' was his own world, answerable only to himself. A world of chaos in which Korach would seize all power for himself, just as he would expect any other to do, were they as clever as he. A world of ego and anarchy. A world very much resembling our world today.

Many a decent, G-d fearing person can be heard asking: "Why do we need to rebuild the Holy Temple? That was a thing of the past. It worked once when people were simple and were unable to fully imagine a transcendent G-d. But today we are sophisticated. We don't require an external, physical structure to remind us of G-d's omnipresence. We get it."

No one was more sophisticated, more modern and contemporary in his outlook thanKorach. We are forever in his debt for revealing to us nearly four thousand years ago, the fallacy of our kulo techelet - pure blue - tendency to reformat G-d's world in our own images. This is why the Holy Temple - a physical structure in place and time that exists beyond the limits of our own puny selves, a place where all can gather, and each of us single strands of blue can together form an all inclusive, pure blue cloak of humanity in the presence of the One G-d, Creator and King of the universe - is needed today, more than ever.

-The Temple Institute