Korach redo #1

After having had the opportunity to give this Korach post as a Shiur, I would like to redo it in light of the clarifications we attained. Thank you to all participants in the Shabbos and Sunday Classes! I will not repost Bamidbar 16, I assume everyone remembers the story as seen by Rashi.

According to the Rashi, though his true motive was personal ambition, Korach took great care to make his argument with Moshe appear to have broader significance. In this Korach behaved much like any modern political challenger-for example Barack Obama with his anti Bush arguments. “Bush lied people died” makes the impression that Obama's concern is for the people, rather than for personal gain. Today's war weary populace is indeed hungry for “change” and “hope”.

As we see in the case of Obama, challanges to existing leadership tend to focus upon two fundamental motivations of the people:
A) anger with the failure of actual leadership to deliver the goods (Bush lied people died”)
b) Excitement in the potential of new leadership to deliver the goods (“Change”; “hope”).What is very different between modern leadership struggles and that of Korach is the ease with which we can discern the motivations. It is relatively simple to understand the basis of Obama's emotional appeal. People would like to believe that painful things like wars and economic hardship are unnecessary and somehow able to be avoided. There must be some “change” that could have avoided this pain! All that is needed is a leader who can provide some "hope". But what is the basis of Korach's emotional appeal? While one can identify with the anger of parents who feel their children died needlessly, where is the great excitement in being denied ones proper Kedusha? Rashi attempts to deal with this difficulty by the midrash about techeiles and tzizis, but we still seem remote. In stark contrast to Obama, Korach's appeals, even according to Rashi, seem contrived and formulaic. While one could easily visualize a crowd dressed in blood red chanting “Bush lied people died” -where is the great theatrical effect in seeing members of Sanhedrin all dressed in techeiles blue? One can certainly understand the sentiment of “no more war” but what is the great appeal of Korach's vision of a “world without tzizit”? To understand Rashi, we must first gain insight into the phenomenon of leadership struggles in the familiar environment of contemporary politics. Only then will we be able to extrapolate to the Jews of the desert. To start then let us ask the fundamental question. What is basis of this behavior of our leaders who promise us “change”and “hope”?

The basis of leadership strategy lies in an immaturity of our nefesh which takes the ultimate value of our own existence for granted. The immature nefesh cannot fathom the difficulty that attaining good in the causal framework of Creation involves. How could it be possible that an entity as valuable as I would have to work so hard to succeed?! Surely there must be a "hope" that the environment could be "changed" so that success would be easy? Deep within the immature nefesh a snakelike voice sounds that rebels against the yoke of causality. In a most cunning fashion, the voice distorts the natural difficulty of attaining its good with an external power purposely holding it back. I am not to blame for my lack of success- something external is holding me back!

For leaders, this distortion of the immature nefesh is both a blessing and a curse. As the failure of previous leaders becomes more apparent, a blessing arises for new leadership- they can articulate the anger with the old leadership and raise “hope” in their ability to bring “change”. All too soon however, the immaturity shifts from a blessing to a curse-the very leader who promised “change” with an easy ten point plan, will himself be the source of anger and frustration. As everyone before him failed, he too inevitably fails to deliver a good unattainable with a few easy steps within the framework of causality. A cycle of leaders each of whom rise and fall like the changing tides emerges.