Korach
How can we hold complexity?
Reflection by Carrie Watkins, US Community Manager
"Parshat Korach relays the story of Korach, a man who, jealous of the power of Moses and Aaron, attempted to overthrow them. At first blush, Korach’s opening question might seem a reasonable one. `All the community are holy, all of them, and Hashem is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above Hashem’s congregation?` (Numbers 16:3). It sounds like a call for equality - if we are all ultimately equal, why raise up some above others?
Yet Korach’s fatal flaw lies not in his asking this question, but in how he asked the question. Midrash Rabba, which interprets the Torah through creative storytelling, shares that when the parasha starts with `And Korach took,` that what he took was his tallit! And it wasn’t just any tallit; it was a tallit made up entirely of tachelet, the blue fringes that in just last week’s parasha we were commanded to add just one string of to each tzitzit, each tasseled corner.
Korach was an all-or-nothing kind of guy then, you might say. And in that lay his downfall. In his attempt to flatten reality to all-or-nothing, Korach ends up being literally swallowed by the depths of the earth - a fault line opened up under him and he fell in.
The Hasidic Master the Mei HaShiloch brings an interesting tikkun to this story, a counter example of holding depth and complexity. He points out that several of the Psalms written by King David start with `A song of the sons of Korach.` King David made a point to connect the lineage of Korach’s descendents to him, not despite him, but because of him. `If they would not derive any good from being called in their father’s name, then they would not have been specifically related to this evil, God forbid.` In other words, King David saw the good in Korach, despite his great faults (pun intended). Being able to see the good and the bad in a situation was not something Korach himself could do, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve that another should do it for him.
The capacity to hold complexity is something we learn from our mindfulness practice. From the slow process of again and again allowing what is arising to be, even when it conflicts with other parts of ourselves, even when it’s not comfortable, even when it’s not fair, we open up the space within ourselves to see more clearly, to be with the good and the bad, to be with the all or the nothing. We learn to praise like King David."