Friday, July 12, 2019

Korach 5779 - When We Feel Like Falling on Our Faces

A version of this sermon was delivered on Shabbat Korach, 5779 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.


This week’s Torah portion begins:

“Now Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, betook himself, along with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—descendants of Reuben—to rise up against Moses, together with two hundred and fifty Israelites, chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute.  They combined against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Eternal is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Eternal’s congregation?”  When Moses heard this, he fell on his face.”[1]

Korach, the namesake of the Torah portion, is known for the rebellion and the aftermath in which he and his band of rebels are swallowed alive by the earth and sent down to Sheol, a sort of Hades of the ancient Hebrews.  Korach challenges Moses’s authority and his humility, calling Moses arrogant.  Aren’t we all holy, he argues?  Didn’t God make us a nation of priests and say that we are all allowed to partake in kedushah?  Why do you raise yourself above this community, Korach demands of Moses?  What makes you think you’re so special!?  Why not us?  Why do we have to follow the rules and morals of this society? 
Korach doesn’t agree with the way things are being done.  He doesn’t like the direction the nation is going.  He thinks it’s time to take drastic action for the safety and security of the people.  He thinks it’s time to upend the still new and untested rules, which not only stipulate the laws of the people, but their morality as well.
Moses hears Korach’s challenge and he doesn’t know what to do.  He is seemingly embarrassed by their actions.  Korach’s complaint flies in the face of everything Moses has tried to teach the people about how things are supposed to run in the Israelite camp and society.  He doesn’t know how to respond.  It’s in this moment, when he just doesn’t know what to do, that we read that Moses falls on his face.[2] 
            Rashi explains that this moment, Moses falling on his face, is because this is the 4th time that the people have risen against him, the golden calf, the demand for quail, and the incident with the spies all precede this moment.  It also won’t be the last time the people rise against him.  Moses and Aaron will fall on their faces again in a few chapters when the people complain they are hungry and thirsty and demand to go back to Egypt.
Rashi goes on to describe Moses in this scene as finally coming to a sense of powerlessness, and he explains his point with a parable from the Midrash: This may be compared to the case of a prince who sinned against his father and for whom the father’s friend gained forgiveness once, twice, three times. When he offended for the fourth time the friend felt himself powerless, for he said, “How long can I trouble the king? Perhaps he will not again accept advocacy from me!”
Chizkuni, a rabbi who lived and worked in France a couple generations after Rashi, describes Moses as: so ashamed he put his face on the ground in order to offer a prayer. Moses had hoped to receive a revelation from God how to confront this challenge.  But he doesn’t get instruction from God.  He doesn’t wait for God to come fix the evil he sees around him. 
Rather, unlike in other instances of face-falling, when we hear God’s suggestion, this time Moses doesn’t fall on his face before God; he doesn’t fall on his face before the Tent of Meeting.  He just falls.  And then, we assume, he gets up, and he challenges Korach to a test to see who truly knows how things are supposed to run.  You put your incense on the fire pan and Aaron will do the same and we’ll see who God chooses! 
Moses is caught in a destructive pattern with the Israelites.  What should be a proud march toward the Promised Land has, time and again, turned away from the ideals of the nation and the ideals of the society.  All Moses can do is turn his face down and pray for an answer.
            He doesn’t get that answer from God.  Rather, he devises the test.  He doesn’t wait for someone else to do something about it; he acts.  And the Torah makes this explicit because later we read that Moses has to tell God not to accept the incense they offer.  Moses takes this issue of upending societal norms into his own hands, establishing and administering the test.  God will dole out the punishment, but Moses sets the terms.
            What are we to do when the norms of our society are trampled on?  How are we to react when, as we celebrate the anniversary of this nation’s independence, the land of the free, we see image after image and report after report of children, separated from their parents, caged in inhumane conditions, without medical care.  Without running water.  Without adequate place to sleep.  Without toilets.  Without tissues, soap, toothpaste, diapers.  Without compassion.  Without humanity. 
These children are living in Sheol, and it is happening in our name and in our nation.
The images cry out to us, as if challenging the joyous fireworks and bbqs, asking what makes this country so special?  What makes us think that we’re any better than anywhere else?  What makes us think we have the market cornered on life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness?  Why does this country raise itself above others?
            It feels as if all we can do is fall on our faces and maybe pray to God, embarrassed by the behavior of the leadership of our country, shocked by the pictures we see of fathers and daughters drowned alongside each other.  Resigned that we may never live up to our ideals, if we ever have. 
If we fall on our faces, and turn our eyes away, and pray to God to fix this mess, we abdicate our responsibility.  Moses understands that he cannot allow this to continue.  The nation will be irrevocably lost if Korach is permitted to offer his incense to God.
We are a nation of immigrants who fled persecution, economic hardship, danger, and lack of opportunities over the centuries.  What are we going to do to ensure that the norms of this nation, of welcoming, of promising liberty, of standing up for humanity are maintained?  What are we as Jews going to do to ensure that we live up to our sacred norms, of welcoming the stranger because we were strangers? 
What arrogance we must have to not remember where we came from, how we got here, how many of our families died because they couldn’t reach these shores or were not permitted to do so.  What idolatry we traffic in when we see the stranger suffering and we do nothing to alleviate it, when we see images of humans detained in camps and we choose to argue over what to call them rather than how to liberate them. 
What test must we devise so that those who would ask us to upend our norms, our morality, our humanity, will know that we are not willing to do so? 
We are supposed to learn from our past, not repeat its mistakes.  After Korah is swallowed by the ground, his firepans, now sacred, are used as plating for the altar, for all to see, to remind the Israelites that there are boundaries of behavior that are not acceptable to cross. The people don’t quite listen. 
Our nation’s history is replete with examples we have not learned from.  May this not be one of them.  May this nation finally learn to live up to its highest ideals such that in future years, when we celebrate independence, we do so knowing that the project of freedom, of self-governance, of unalienable rights, has been extended to all who would be a part of it.

I close tonight with a prayer, For Children at Our Borders, by Alden Solovy:

God of mothers and fathers,
God of babies and children,
Youth and teens,
The voice of agony echoes across the land,
As children are taken from their parents,
Perverting our history as a nation of immigrants,
Perverting our values,
Perverting the ways of justice and peace.
These children
Wait in misery
To be reunited with their families
So that a few may reap the political rewards
Of their suffering
By playing tough at our borders.

Source of grace,
Creator of kindness and goodness,
You call upon us to stand in the name of justice and fairness,
To witness against this abuse of power,
To battle the systematic assault on human beings,
To speak out against their suffering.

Bless those who rise up against this horror.
Give them courage and determination.
Bless those who plead on behalf of the oppressed and the subjugated
Before the seats of power.
May the work of their hands never falter
Nor despair deter them from this holy calling.

Bless those now in bondage at the hand of the U.S. government.
Grant them shelter and solace,
Comfort and consolation,
Blessing and renewal.
Release them. Free them. Heal them from trauma.
Reunite them with their families.
Hasten the day of their reunion.

Blessed are You, God of All Being,
Who summons us to oppose violence, oppression, slavery and injustice.

Amen.


[1] Numbers 16:1-3
[2] Ibid. 16:4