Dvar Torah on Parshat Korach

There is currently something of a trend in Israel. A small but growing number of Orthodox males, while otherwise remaining Orthodox, do not want to wear kippot. The reason for this is a sense that the kippah creates an unwanted and unnecessary division between Jews. Here we are, the thinking goes, all living in a Jewish state, serving together in the army, paying taxes, talking Hebrew, not going to work on Shabbat and celebrating the Jewish holidays, what need is there to announce my "superior" Jewishness, my extra measure of religiosity, with this little cap? Aren't we, here in Israel, all in this Jewish thing together?

The absence of the kippah is also connected to a sense of Jewish identity which is national, rather than religious, and which all of us here share: by simply living in Israel one is already living and acting like a Jew, advancing the Jewish cause, doing the Jewish thing, and a kippah, announcing that fact, is seen as unnecessary, and, in fact, arrogant, in that it seems to claim that one is a better Jew than those who are bare-headed. (This, of course, only works if you are a part of the Jewish majority, which might explain the popularity of the keffiya headgear, often worn as a scarf, among some of the the Arab minority here.)

This thinking is somewhat similar to that of Korach, the villain in this week's eponymous parsha, in which he rebels against Moshe and his high priest brother Aharon: "You have taken too much, for all of the congregation is holy, and God is among them, why do you lord it over the congregation of God?" Korach seems to feel that a religious hierarchy is unnecessary, and that Moshe and Aharon are wrong to claim the sole right to leadership. After all, he says, we all stood at Mt. Sinai, we are all part of this holy nation, why should you two present yourselves as somehow special, holier, closer to God, more in touch with the truths of Judaism, than the rest of us?

As democratizing as this might seem to us, the Torah sees this challenge as a bad thing: Korach and his band of rebels end up being swallowed up by the earth, in one of the Bible's more dramatic and unambiguous punishments. The message is clear: Korach was wrong, a religious hierarchy is necessary and essential, we do need a religious leadership, with priests, Rabbis, judges, to lead the nation in the right direction. So, if we connect the non-kippah wearing trend with Korach's rebellion, it should be viewed as a bad thing. Both Korach and the kippah-less are saying that Jews are Jews, we are all part of the Jewish project, why distinguish some as being somehow higher on some scale of Jewishness or religiosity than others? Is that not divisive? Arrogant? Would we not be better served by a sense of collegiality, egalitarianism? Should we not see ourselves as all equal partners in the Jewish project? If the two positions are essentially the same, then there is definitely something wrong with the removal of the Kippah. The story of Korach teaches us that equality only goes so far, and religious hierarchies are necessary, and that differences in religious observance, knowledge, and commitment are real, and should be recognized and privileged. The anti-kippah team is, therefor, misguided, and its members would do well to watch out for any sudden openings in the ground underneath their feet.

On the other hand, the sentiments behind the kippah removal feel healthy, motivated by a positive sense of community and shared destiny. Can we not find room for a position which, while not actually rebelling against the Torah's notion of religious hierarchy, does somehow recognize and support an egalitarian tendency, a desire to see all Jews as equal? Happily, and not that surprisingly, there is a Talmudic text that bears on this question (one of my sons likes to throw it at me whenever I say anything he thinks is too Orthodox). It's from Tractate Pessachim (the volume of the Talmud which deals with the laws of Passover), page 66a. It tells the story of a year during which the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nissan, the day on which the Passover sacrifice is offered (and eaten that night at the Seder) came out on a Shabbat. For some reason, the leading Rabbis in the Jerusalem area did not know if one is permitted to slaughter the Passover sacrifice on the 14th which is a Shabbat (slaughtering an animal is forbidden on the Sabbath). Hillel, a Rabbi who had recently made aliyah to Israel from Babylon, was called upon to solve the problem, as he was known to be a great scholar, a pupil of two other great scholars, Shmaya and Avtalyon. He successfully supplies the answer, which is that one should offer the sacrifice, even when the 14th falls on a Saturday.

He is then asked another one: OK, the Passover sacrifice will be brought this year, on Shabbat, as you say. But what if one forgot to bring a knife to the Temple area on Friday, in preparation for the next day's sacrifice? Since carrying from place to place is forbidden on Shabbat, and the knife could have been brought to the Temple on Friday, may the knife be carried to the Temple on Shabbat itself? Interestingly, Hillel says that he once learned this law, and somehow forgot it, but not to worry: "leave the people of Israel alone; if they are not prophets they are the children of prophets". In other words, let's see what the Jewish people do about this Shabbat knife-carrying problem, and, whatever they do, it will be OK.

The next day, Shabbat, the people all came to the Temple, leading their animals to be slaughtered. Those who brought sheep (with a woolly fleece) stuck the knife in the fleece, and those who brought goats (not so hairy) placed the knife between their horns. Hillel saw them doing this and suddenly remembered that, in fact, that was the law as he had learned it: if one forgot to bring the knife to the Temple before Shabbat, one may bring it in this tricky, not-really-carrying way on Shabbat itself.

The bit that interests us in this story is the part about the Jewish people being at least "the children of prophets". When unable to come up with the answer to a halachic question, Hillel says we can rely on what the people remember and do as being legitimate - the people, with their customs and actions, decide what the halacha is, not through intellectual argument, but by the way they behave. This approach would seem to be in line with the anti-kippah team: we are all in this together. The Jewish people, and not only their Rabbis, are a legitimate source for what is the correct Jewish thing to do. Therefore, let them be, let them behave in the way which they believe is authentically and correctly Jewish, because, if that's how they behave, it is authentic.

The question is, how do we reconcile this populist attitude with the preference for a top-down Judaism we see in our parsha, which privileges the leadership of Moshe and Aharon and rejects Korach's claim that "the entire congregation is holy"? Perhaps one explanation might be this: Korach, in his attack on the leadership of Moshe and Aharon, claims that "the entire congregation is holy". His equality is one of shared privilege: we are all equal to Moshe, we are all equally touched by and in touch with the divine. This egalitarianism of arrogance is false, and unacceptable - not everyone is a Moses, not everyone has really achieved his intellectual and spiritual heights. Hillel's point, on the other hand, is that, although the average Jew may not be a prophet, all Jews are the children of prophets, i.e., heirs to a national tradition, part of a shared cultural, intellectual, and ethical heritage. When acting from a sense of equality based on our shared past and common destiny, all Jews are, in fact, equal, and all Jews, as part of the ongoing Jewish project, have an equal voice in determining its contours and direction. It is this kind of shared responsibility for the Jewish future which forms the rationale for removing the kippah: if we are all in this Jewish thing together, then why behave in ways which divide us? This is not Korach's claim to equal rights and privileges, but, rather, a recognition of equal obligations, responsibilities, experiences, and commitments.It is especially interesting, I think, that Hillel said this after he made aliyah (went up from Babylon to Israel), as he was perhaps, at that time, especially sensitive to issues of peoplehood and shared national destiny. It is also apposite that his topic should be the Passover sacrifice, which commemorates the creation of the Jewish people as a separate nation as they prepared to leave Egypt.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix