Image: A sinkhole in an intersection in Brooklyn, NY in 2015 Photo: katz/Shutterstock.
This week we read about Korach and his followers in Numbers 16-18, one of the grimmest stories in the Torah. Korach, a Levite, challenges the leadership of Moses. Moses refers the dispute to God. God blasts Korach and his followers, causing some to be consumed by fire and some to be swallowed by a huge opening in the earth. Frankly, it’s the stuff of nightmares.
Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3 offers us a list of those “who have no portion in the world to come:” the Flood generation. the Babel generation, the men of Sodom, and the Spies who rejected the land of Israel. Then it offers us an additional list about which the sages disagreed: according to Rabbi Akiva, the generation of the Wilderness, the congregation of Korach, and the Ten Tribes also have no place in the world to come. Rabbi Eliezer disagrees. For each of those, he cites a text suggesting that redemption is possible. For the people of Korach, he cites a line from the prayer of Hannah: “The LORD kills, and makes alive; He brings down to the grave, and brings up.” (1 Samuel 2:6)
The Torah text seems unequivocal in its condemnation of Korach: all is lost, the men offering incense are burnt up like Nadav and Abihu, and God commands Moses to order Eleazar remove the fire pans and have them made into plating for the altar, as a warning.
But our sages were not content to give up on the followers of Korach. From the time of the Mishnah, the rabbis persist in a hope that they will yet be found, like “a lost object that is still being sought,” in the words of R. Yehudah ben Betera (Sanhedrin 109b.) Shall we not follow their example, then, and refuse to give up on our fellow Jews, even when we think they are utterly wrong about something?
A version of this drash appeared in the Summer 2015 CCAR Newsletter.
