Parshas Korach 5782
“Let’s buy a new house.”
This is my go-to response when my wife mentions some minor fix or adjustment required on our home. Anything from “that light bulb needs to be replaced” to “the screen is coming out of the sliding door” is fair game for my tongue-in-cheek response. It’s meant to be absurd. Who in the world would buy a new house just to avoid some minor issue? But, upon reflection, I think this absurd response actually merits a closer look.
What was it that prompted Korach to rally the troops against Moshe and Aharon and question their leadership? Rashi, quoting the Midrash Tanchuma, explains that it actually had very little to do with Moshe and Aharon themselves. Rather, Korach was jealous of the appointment of Elitzafan as the head of the Kehas branch of the tribe of Levi. Korach believed that he himself was more worthy of the position and moved to lead a rebellion against the leaders responsible, namely Moshe and Aharon.
Leaving aside the contemptable nature in denouncing the great leaders of the Jewish People, Korach’s plans were quite obviously misguided for another reason altogether. At present, Korach is a Levi, and as such serves in his own right in a position of prominence relative the vast majority of the Jewish People. But if he succeeds in his rebellion, who’s to say he’ll land in any better a position than he’s already in? Perhaps what will be left after all the dust of rebellion settles is a society disinterested in any leadership or hierarchy altogether. What makes him so certain that he’ll be any better off?
The answer is that the impulse to buy a new house in response to a light bulb that’s gone out is actually quite real. If I’m honest with myself, the reason I say it in response to such trivial repairs is not only to be humorous; on some micro level it actually opens a small pocket of fantasy that it’s nice to escape into momentarily. Changing bulbs, replacing a screen, tightening a door knob—though insignificant on their own, collectively string together to make for a task list that seems never-ending. Wouldn’t it be sweet to just say, “Forget it, we’ll buy a new house”? To imagine that it’s just that easy to make the problems all go away offers some sort of strange release.
But in the end, we all change the lightbulbs. For two reasons. The first is that if it’s additional effort we’re looking to avoid, we won’t find it in buying a new house. Buying a home is a massive undertaking all its own and will gobble up far more man hours than just changing a light bulb here and there.
But more importantly, we stick with the house we already have because a new one won’t offer any solution to the annoyance of changing light bulbs. The new house will come with its own set of tasks and frustrations. Many will be identical to the ones that exist in my current house, while many others will be similar in kind even if they are different in form.
Nobody buys a new house to avoid changing a lightbulb because the gap between the existing problem and the proposed solution is so obviously large. But shrink that gap and that same impulse starts to become a major force to contend with.
This is what Korach was up against. He was frustrated by a system and sought to tear down the system rather than finding some other means of dealing with or solving the acute source of his frustration. He could have found ways to live with the distinction that simply being a Levi would afford him. He could have created other means of achieving more fame and prestige within the system as it already functioned. But there’s something so alluring about clearing the slate and starting over.
A reboot is an appealing fantasy. That somehow if we shook up the Boggle board of life, the letters would fall in a far more convenient and advantageous locations. But it is rarely so. More likely, we trade one problem for another, and find that new frustrations emerge where old ones were covered over. Had Korach succeeded, it is hard to imagine that he would have succeeded at all.
If not in response to a blown light bulb, perhaps you’ve indeed considered just buying a new house. Or moving to a new community. Or quitting your job. Or your line of work altogether. Or any other dramatic life change as a means of solving some of the mounting problems owed to your present state of being. Do such changes have merit? Or are you just walking the trail blazed by Korach?
The best way to assess is by honestly asking ourselves if we see the drawbacks of making the change. If we view a change as a panacea for all our current aggravation, we should slow things down. Solving some of life’s problems always lead to new ones. Do we see them? If we’ve identified that a career change may mean better pay, but also demand more hours. If we see a new community as providing more dining options, but also a larger mortgage. If we see that a new house may mean more bedrooms, but that I’ll be changing more—not fewer—light bulbs, then we’re in position to make an honest, principled assessment. If we don’t see the problems ahead, the change is a dream, and we need to wake from our slumber.
Did Korach appreciate the problems his rebellion would create? It’s hard to see that he did. Change is often the right move to make, but change for change’s sake is a fool’s errand. Drunk on the prospect of what a new beginning could magically offer, Korach was sadly blind to the fact that tearing down the system as it stood was unlikely to yield any of the results he so desperately wanted.