Parshat Korach

Francesca R - June 19, 2026

Gut shabbes, everyone! I'm Francesca, a big fan of TBRS from the delicious vegetarian soups, to the debates in history reading group, to the beautiful tunes of kabbalat shabbat that we sing each month.

I'm happy to be here during Pride month on Juneteenth to dive into a juicy Torah portion with you. I think our queer, anti-Zionist community is ready to wrestle with Korach's rebellion.

The Torah portion this week is very dramatic. Parshat Korach finds the Israelites wandering in the midbar, the desert or the wilderness. They have escaped from Mitzrayim, the narrow place of bondage where they were held as slaves, through God's intervention and the leadership of the siblings Moses, Miriam, and Aaron. The Israelites have received the Torah on Mt. Sinai. They have constructed the mishkan, a beautiful, portable sanctuary in which the divine dwells and often communicates with the newly sanctified priests. They have moved ever closer to the promised land, supposedly overflowing with milk and honey.

But the way has also been harsh. Travelling from Mitzrayim to the land of Canaan, the Israelites have fought bloody battles with other people already living in those lands. They have gone hungry, missing the fish, melons, leeks, and garlic they used to eat by the Nile. On many occasions after the Exodus, the Israelites question the point of their perilous journey, and chafe against the new rules laid out by Moses. In a couple of these incidents, the questioners are rewarded. The first time the Israelites complain of hunger in the wilderness, God sends them manna and also a bunch of quail to eat.

But things seem to have turned by the book of Numbers. When the Israelites beg for meat in Numbers chapter 11, a "wind from God" once again brings a flock of quail to cover the camp. But when the Israelites begin to eat the birds, a plague strikes them down while they still have the meat in their teeth.

All of this is to say that Korach is not the first or the last rebel to question Moses or God. But he might have the most people power, and he has a good point. That's why I like him.

Parshat Korach begins, in the JPS translation, "Now Korach, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, betook himself" - and I'll just pause here to say the Biblical Hebrew inflection of the verb lakach, to take, is very funky here. "Betook" isn't really a word in English. But the translators are trying to get at some kind of reflexive action here. Korach "took himself up," "or perhaps took in hand," with the connotations either of leading, or of seizing, or of setting apart. "Korach…betook himself, along with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth…to rise up against Moses, together with certain other Israelites, two hundred and fifty of them: cheiftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute. They combined against Moses and Aaron and said to them, 'You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and God is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above God's congregation?"

Basically, Korach gets a large group of friends and allies together to call out Moses and Aaron. They accuse them of hoarding power, of access to God. Robert Alter translates the rebels' cry not as "You have gone too far!" but "You have too much!" a protest that sounds familiar to me as NYC office-seekers promise to tax the rich and Elon Musk becomes a trillionaire.

In the Torah portion, Moses seems to respond with humility and dismay, falling on his face before Korah and his allied chieftains. But Moses does not respond to the central question of why he and his brother were chosen for such special roles. He doesn't address Korach's base claim that everyone in the community is equally holy and should be treated as such.

Instead, Moses accuses Korach in turn of jealous power-grabbing. Korah and the other rebels cheiftains are Levites, a step down in the ritual hierarchy from Aaron his children who form the extra-special category of priests or kohanim. Moses seems to think that Korach and his people are simply envious of Aaron's position.

Moses shifts the focus on the debate, and challenges Korach and his followers to make an incense offering to God alongside Aaron and himself the next day. Moses says that God's response to the offering will reveal who is holy and worthy.

The next day, God expresses one of those flashes of destructive rage that rabbis and scholars have tried to justify for centuries, that lead some Christians to sum up the God of the Old Testament as dealing in "fire and brimstone." According to Numbers 16, when Korach and his followers made their incense offering, "the ground under them burst asunder, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, all Korach's people and all their possessions. They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them; the earth closed over them and they vanished from the midst of the congregation…a fire went forth from God and consumed the two hundred and fifty men offering the incense."

Korach's rebellion is met with mass violence and collective retribution. How does our tradition make sense of this?

In Torah Queeries, a great collection of weekly commentaries on the Torah through a queer lens, Rabbi Jane Litman points out that in classical rabbinic interpretations, Korach is painted in a much more terrible light than the plain text suggests. Midrashic stories speak of Korach as a man of great wealth driven only by greed. Though there are no women mentioned by name in Numbers 16 – not even Miriam who you think might be around – the rabbis invent an evil wife for Korach. She's kind of a Lady Macbeth figure who resents Moses, mostly because he made her husband shave his head and beard as part of a ritual in the mishkan. (This is weirdly also a trope in Yiddish folks songs about women being horrified and disgusted by their husband's new appearance after they shave their beards, but that is a story for another time.)

Rabbi Litman argues that the rabbis must come up with these imaginative midrashic tales that discredit Korach because really, they should be on his side. The shift from Temple-based Judaism - the system involving priests, Levites, and incense offerings that Moses and Korach are wrestling over in the text - to rabbinic Judaism was essentially an egalitarian one. Rabbi Litman writes that rabbinic Judaism "stemmed from the religious straegy of relocating worship from the ancient Temple into the home and the synagogue. As a result, study, prayer, and good deeds replaced showy public sacrifices, and religious leadership shifted from the hereditary priesthood to the populist rabbinate."

While in the text of Parshat Korach, God sides with Moses and sends Korach and his followers down to the depths of Sheol, our Jewish practice today enshrines Korach's view of the tradition. The fact that a place like TBRS can exist, operating as a site of spiritual nourishment without a priest or a rabbi (though we love our ordained friends), is more in line with Korach's assertion that "all of the community are holy, all of them."

I hear echoes of Korach's rebellion when we say "no one is getting left behind this time." When we say "no movement about us without us." When we say "every life is a universe." I think we call in the spirit of Korach's rebellion when we remember that each person has their own Torah, the wisdom of their lived experience, and something to contribute to our communities, as well as our movements for justice and liberation.

The earth may threaten to burst open under our feet, and the burning fire-pans may singe our eyebrows. But we have a community of rebels willing to seek friends and allies, speak truth to power, and be unapologetic as we call each person holy.

What will we build together, spiritual descendants of Korach as much as Moses?

Shabbat shalom.