Dvar Torah on Parshat Korach

For quite a while now, we have been hearing a lot about a leadership crisis. It seems that, all over the world, the best and the brightest are not interested in seeking public office, and the people who are seem to let us down, one way or another, again and again. In North America, Europe, here in Israel, there is an almost constant stream of scandals involving politicians and people in public life, leaving one with the feeling that the lunatics have been elected to run the asylum. This week, I'd like to look at the parsha of Korach and its haftarah, from the Book of Shmuel I, in an attempt to think a bit about leadership.

The parsha is basically all about Korach and his followers, who challenge the leadership of Moshe and Aharon, seek leadership roles for themselves, and are severely punished for it. It is followed by a haftarah from the book of Shmuel I, in which the prophet Shmuel accedes to the wishes of the people and, against his better judgement, crowns Shaul as King of Israel. It is not Shaul's personal shortcomings, whatever they may be, that bother Shmuel. Rather, he dislikes the very idea of a monarchy. In the chapters preceding our haftarah, he again and again tells the people what a mistake it is to imitate the nations around them and seek a ruler other than God Himself. Shmuel warns the people what things will be like under a king: "He wll take your sons and use them for his chariot and horsemen, and they will run before his chariot. ...And he will take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and he will take your best olive trees...and he will take your servants...and he will take your donkeys..." (Shmuel 1, 8; 11-21). Shmuel's political theory is clear. A monarchy is by definition all about selfishness, greed, and inequality. The king will invariably oppress his people, and will do what monarchs do: take whatever he wants from his subjects.

Shmuel's consistent position against a monarchy plays out in a very interesting way in our haftarah. Once the deed is done, and, in spite of Shmuel's very serious reservations, Shaul is annointed king, Shmuel turns to the people and says: "Behold, here I am. Answer me before the Lord, and before his annointed: whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I oppressed? Whom have I treated badly? From whom have I taken  a bribe to look the other way? I will give it back to you. (Shmuel I, 12; 3-5)."   The people immediately respond that Shmuel is guilty of none of these things. In these verses, Shmuel is clearly and dramatically contrasting his record as prophet and spiritual leader, in which he was not guilty of taking anything from the people, with the inevitable kleptocracy of a monarch. The idea seems to be that the religious leadership provided by the prophet (along with the priest and the elders) is more organic, safe, natural, Jewish, than the too-powerful secular position of king. The absolute and violent power implicit in that role will invariably corrupt, and society will suffer.

Although the theme of leadership is clearly the connective tissue between the parsha and the haftarah, it is this speech of Shmuel's which most directly parallels something in the parsha of Korach. When Moshe fails in his attempts to defuse Korach's rebellion through discussion, he turns to God and asks Him to reject the rebels, to punish them. He then says to God: "Not one donkey have I taken from them, and I haven't done any harm to any one of them (Bamidbar 16; 15)". The parallel to Shmuel's statement to the people is clear; both he and Moshe defend themselves, and their leadership,  by insisting that they are not guilty of abusing their positions for their own gain. Moshe clearly seems to be implying that Korach and his fellow rebels are not like him, and, if allowed to lead, they will, like the king Shmuel is so opposed to, take advantage of the people they are meant to serve. Their claims against Moshe are therefore unfounded, as he, rather than they, fits into the mold of the proper Jewish leader: a selfless public servant, not seeking personal gain, totally unlike the king whose selfishness Shmuel warns us about.

This is fine as far as it goes, but the claim itself seems somewhat strange. Is this really the measure of Moshe's - and Shmuel's - leadership? That they haven't stolen any donkeys or oxen from anyone? That's what they have to say for themselves when assessing and justifying their leadership careers? That they aren't petty thieves? Is this really the ultimate measure of Jewish leadership, not being a thief?

Before discussing this, I would like to point out one more thing about our parsha. The parsha begins like this: "...ויקח קרח בן יצהר בן קהת בן לוי ודתן ואבירם בני אליאב ואון בן פלת בני ראובן. ויקמו לפני משה" -  "And Korach the son of Yizhar the son of Kehat the son of Levi took, and Datan and Aviram the sons of Eliav and On the son of Pelet the sons of Reuven. And they stood before Moshe...". What's obviously strange here is that the phrase "And Korach...took"  doesn't seem to connnect to anything; we are never told what Korach and his followers actually take. All we know is that these people came and stood before Moshe, complained to Moshe and Aharon that their leadership is illegitimate, and that others should also be allowed to have bigger leadership roles. The content of their rebellion is clear. The question is: what do the first two words of our parsha - "ויקח קרח" - "And Korach took", refer to? What did he take?

Looking at this together with the strange self-justifying speeches of Moshe and Shmuel, what jumps out at the reader is the word  לקחת - to take. Both Moshe and Shmuel insist that their tenures as leaders have been good because they took nothing from anyone. In the Book of Shmuel, this is clearly juxtaposed with all the taking that Shmuel warns the people the king will do. Put together with the amorphous, free-floating "And Korach took", a clear pattern emerges. Both Moshe and Shmuel represent, and are championing, a certain kind of leadership, a leadership of which they are the historical models. Korach, we are told by the "And Korach...took" at the start of our parsha, is in a taking mode. His entire rebellion is simply a way for him to "take" - power, wealth, respect, status. This matches what Shmuel tells us about a king: that his relatively limitless political power is a guarantee that he will rule in a "taking" mode. Moshe and Shmuel's leadership, on the other hand,  is in the classical Jewish mode; it is all about giving. In Moshe's case, this is apparent from the very start of his career. We read earlier, in the Book of Shemot, that it took God quite a long time just to convince him to accept a leadership role; he really did not want it. Moshe stands at the opposite pole from a person whose ambition and greed push him or her to want to lead,  in order to take.  

It seems to me that we have discovered the reason for the leadership crisis we are currently in. Today, raw ambition is seen as a good thing, and is nothing to be ashamed of. Humility is out, selfishness - "taking" - is in. One is meant to carefully plan one's career from the perspective of insuring one's financial success, and businesses are meant to run the same way, with a eye only on maximizing profit, at the expense of other values. The reasons behind this corporate, bottom-line, Trump-ish mentality are many, and may be related to the way capitalism is playing itself out in the west; globalization, the new technologies and the tremendous wealth they have created for a small group of people, but I, for one, have no doubt that this is the very unpleasant place in which we now find ourselves. The insistence by Moshe and Shmuel that their leadership be judged by the seemingly simple, prosaic, somewhat nit-picking fact that they never took anything for themselves from anyone, speaks to a very different mind-set, and a very different leadership style. Both Moshe and Shmuel represent a Jewish form of leadership that pre-dates the monarchy, and is seen by Shmuel, and, in fact, by the Torah itself in the section in Parshat Shoftim which talks about the laws of kings (Devarim; 17, 14-20), as far superior to it. In this model, the right person takes a leadership role out of a sense of need, a sense that the situation calls for someone to step up to the plate and solve a problem. This leader is not thinking about himself, is not in a constant mode of taking, as the first words of Parshat Korach indicate Korach was. Moshe's and Shmuel's seemingly picky insistence that they have taken no one's donkey or ox is not about the livestock, it's about their mindset. Theirs was a career in public life that was totally focused on the common good, on helping others, on doing the right thing. Personal gain, status, wealth, "taking",  had nothing to do with it. Just as the "And Korach took" doesn't even need an object to make its pont - Korach was about selfishness, about himself, about taking - the point of "I didn't take a donkey, I didn't take an ox" is really about the mindset, the motivation behind Moshe's and Shmuel's leadership.

As our world, and much of the Jewish community, seems to more and more embrace and assimilate corporate values, values of wealth, selfishness, financial success and personal status, one needs not wonder too long why it's so hard to find good leaders today.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix