05 - Korach CBE

Korach 5778 — Rabbi Michael Rothbaum Page 3
In fact, when Moses invites Dathan and Abiram, they refuse. Lo na’aleh!
Most English translations quote the pair to mean, “We won’t come!”
But lo na’aleh literally means “we won’t arise.” Na’aleh, like aliyah, “going
up.” Or El Al, “to the heights.”
The 15 th C. Portuguese Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel explains the curious verb.
“Go back and tell Moses,” he imagines them telling the messenger, “that if
he had summoned us with a pledge of some high appointment, or the
promise of a boon that we would receive upon our arrival in the land of
Israel” — then and only then — “we would have come to him.”
By now, the problem is clear. Like Killmonger, Korach and his band
pretend to want justice, but their actions indicate that what they most want
is power.
They claim to stand for holy community. But, given the chance, the both
corrupt the community and compromise its holiness.
Perhaps you can tell as much from their names. Killmonger chooses his
name for, well, obvious reasons. In the Torah, Abiram sounds like
Avraham, “father of multitudes,” but means “my father is exalted” —
exalted, perhaps in his private desires, above yours and mine. Datan is
related to dat, “law,” maybe using the rule of law to defeat the rule of love.
Korach’s name is related to karach, the Biblical word for baldness.
Korach’s supposedly principled demand is, perhaps, merely a bald-faced
attempt to accrue prestige and power for himself.
All of this, of course, is tragic. Tragic because of the destruction that these
rebellions cause. Tragic because, while we are distracted by infighting, we
are ignoring our true enemies. As I was writing this drash, I was informed
of the anti-Jewish graffiti that had been found at A-B high school.
God forbid we are distracted by Korach when Amalek is around the
corner.
But there’s more. These stories are even more tragic than we might think at
first blush because both Killmonger and Korach actually have a point.