By Sivan Rahav-Meir
Today all of us know how to explain Korach’s mistake. It’s terribly easy today to sit back and explain why most of the spies were in error and that it was a mistake to make the golden calf. But what would we have done had we been there? In the moment of truth, would we have chosen the truth?
Rabbi Haggai Lundin writes that when speaking about values, it’s worthwhile to pay attention to the historical context: “Korach was the hero of the hour. His ratings and the spirit of the times were on his side. He had followers and admirers and the media embraced him as a brave man who fought against fossilized tradition. We read about him every year and are reminded of an important rule: A lie persists for a time, but not forever. Today we are still astonished to sometimes see how popular views based on lies and hypocrisy win, at least for the moment; it’s enough to see the world’s relationship with Israel as opposed to its relationship with her enemies. Every adult individual can talk about how medical, economic and cultural lies—that rattled all of humanity at the time—eventually disappeared without a whimper. Sometimes it takes years, sometimes as in the case of Korach, the lie is swallowed up in the earth within a short time. But from an eternal perspective, good always triumphs.”
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It is difficult for us when our spouse is not happy with us, and Korach’s wife wasn’t happy. She thought that her husband had to receive a much higher-level role. Day and night, she dripped this venom in his ears: See the roles that Moshe and Aharon, your relatives, have, and see where you are. Move forward in life already! From here, things started going downhill, and fast. Korach declared a rebellion and fell into the abyss of total denial of the Torah and of Moshe Rabbeinu’s role.
But in the parasha, there is another character of a wife, a totally different one: On ben Pelet’s wife. On himself had already been carried into the dispute led by Korach and was no longer able to look at things from the outside, with discernment. Here his wife played a reverse role to that of Korach’s wife and managed with her wisdom to leave him out of the story. When Korach and his friends were swallowed up by the earth at the end of the tragic dispute, On slept in his tent and stayed alive.
Usually, when people talk about the Korach affair, they talk about the big things—dispute, peace, envy and faith. But between the lines, we may discover that which exerts the biggest influence upon us in life: the messages that our partners convey to us, the atmosphere at home and where it directs us, and the things that we say after a day of work, when the door of our home is closed, in the small talk in the living room and in the kitchen.
Sivan Rahav-Meir is the World Mizrachi Scholar-in-Residence and an Israeli journalist and lecturer.
