Moshe's Greatness From Within: The Answer to Korach

1“They gathered against Moshe and against Aharon and said to them, ‘You take too much upon yourselves! For the entire congregation, all of them are holy, and Hashem is in their midst. Why do you raise yourselves up over the congregation of Hashem?’”¹ At first glance it is hard to see what Korach meant to prove by saying that “the entire congregation, all of them are holy, and Hashem is in their midst.” Surely Moshe and Aharon, whose holiness is greater than theirs, could still be heads over them all the same.

2A little further on, the verse says, “Moshe heard, and he fell on his face.”² Chazal ask, “What report did he hear? That they suspected him with regard to eishes ish, another man's wife.”³ This is very puzzling. Had Bnei Yisrael really sunk so low as to suspect Moshe, the man of God, of such a thing?

3aAs the passage continues, it says, “He spoke to Korach and to all his company, saying: In the morning Hashem will make known who is His, and who is holy, and He will draw him near to Himself; and whom He will choose, He will draw near to Himself.”⁴ The Midrash asks: “What is ‘morning’? Moshe said to him: The Holy One, blessed be He, set boundaries in His world. Can you mix day with night? The verse says, ‘And there was evening and there was morning,’ ‘And God separated between the light and the darkness,’ for the world's use. Just as He separated between the light and the darkness for the world's use, so He separated Israel from the nations, as it says, ‘I have separated you from the peoples to be Mine.’ And so He separated Aharon, as it says, ‘And Aharon was separated, to sanctify him as holy of holies.’ If you can mix up the separation He made between the light and the darkness, you can annul this. That is why he said to them, ‘In the morning Hashem will make known who is His, and who is holy, and He will draw him near to Himself.’”⁵

3bBut what does the separation of day and night have to do with the holiness of Aharon the Kohen? And why did Moshe see it as an answer to Korach's claim?

4Let us first cite the words of my holy father and teacher, zt"l. On the verse “When Moshe had grown up … he went out to his brothers,”⁶ he said that Moshe's greatness, hinted in the word vayigdal, “had grown up,” was this: he did not wait for his brothers to come to him; he went out to them. Those are his holy words. But what do these words mean, and what greatness lies in this?

5We can explain it as follows. We know that a leader of Israel draws his strength from Klal Yisrael, for the tzaddik receives his flow of blessing and his levels for the sake of Klal Yisrael. As Chazal said: “Did I give you greatness for any reason but for the sake of Israel?”⁷ The tzaddikim likewise explained the verse “From among your brothers you shall set a king over yourself”:⁸ all the king's strength comes “from among your brothers,” that is, from the strength of Israel.

6But this rule, that all of a tzaddik's strength comes from the strength of his brothers, the people of Israel, applies only to ordinary tzaddikim, not to Moshe and Aharon. They are the root of creation, chosen by Hashem, and the whole world was created only in such a way that they would be the tzaddikim and leaders of Bnei Yisrael by virtue of their own stature and holiness.

7With this we can explain Chazal's saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moshe “each generation and its judges, each generation and its kings, each generation and its sages, each generation and its leaders, each generation and its prophets.”⁹ Notice the wording. Why does it repeat “each generation” every time? It could have said that He showed him all the generations with their leaders, their judges and so on. We may say that the wording teaches that every tzaddik draws his strength from the Klal Yisrael of his own generation: that is “each generation and its leaders.” Hashem showed Moshe how great his own stature was: Moshe does not draw his strength from Israel; he has it because that is how it is set in the very root of the creation of the whole world.

8This lets us explain the matter here. Korach's claim against Moshe and Aharon rested on this: their strength flows from the strength of Klal Yisrael and is only a kind of “reflected light,” light that comes back to them from below. If so, how can they raise themselves so high over the people in their greatness and holiness? That is what Korach said to them: Rav lachem. The words mean “You take too much upon yourselves,” and literally “Much is yours”: how did you reach your greatness? Only through “for the entire congregation, all of them are holy,” and by its strength. Korach and his company backed up their words with “and Hashem is in their midst.” We see, they said, that Hashem, blessed be He, desires the deeds of Israel so greatly, and has made all the flow of blessing depend on Klal Yisrael to such an extent, that, as it were, “Israel sustains its Father in Heaven.”¹⁰ If so, surely all the strength of the tzaddikim too is nothing but the strength of Klal Yisrael.

9Their mistake was that they did not know what we have seen: there is a difference between other tzaddikim and Moshe and Aharon. The strength of Moshe and Aharon was as Chazal explained on the verse “In the morning Hashem will make known.” Hashem separated the light from the darkness and built this into the creation of the world, giving each its own domain, one in the day and the other in the night. In the same way He built into His world the strength and greatness of Moshe and Aharon. The root and existence of all creation rest on precisely this order.

10This is also contained in the verse “And there has not arisen again a prophet in Israel like Moshe, whom Hashem knew face to face”:¹¹ not only without any intermediary, but even without any outside help from the strength and merit of Israel, by virtue of his own stature alone.

11aThis lets us explain Chazal's saying that they suspected him with regard to eishes ish. My holy ancestor, the Rebbe of Lentshna, is quoted as teaching on the verse “You shall not covet your fellow's wife.”¹² He asked: the Torah was given to the whole of Klal Yisrael, so why would it need to command tzaddikim about so disgraceful a thing? He explained that ishah, “wife,” hints at eish, “fire,” the fiery fervor of avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem. The Torah is commanding: when you see in your fellow, another tzaddik, a holy fire for avodas Hashem, then “You shall not covet your fellow's wife”: do not covet that tzaddik's fervor for yourself. Serve Hashem with your own strengths instead, until you too are privileged to attain fervor in your own measure.

11bWe can explain our passage along the same lines. Eishes ish, “another man's wife,” here means the fire of avodas Hashem. Korach and his company claimed that Moshe takes the flow of his holy fire from Klal Yisrael. It is not his own fire, they said; it is as if he were taking another man's fire. That is the meaning of “they suspected him with regard to eishes ish.” But in fact, Chazal say that the moment Moshe was born the whole house was filled with light.¹³ From the moment of his birth he was holy to Hashem, and his greatness and strength did not come to him from Israel but from his own stature, as we saw with “face to face.”

12This is the meaning of my holy father's saying that Moshe's greatness was that he did not wait for his brothers, Bnei Yisrael, to come to him, but went out to them. Moshe's wondrous greatness, beyond that of other tzaddikim, was that he did not need any of Bnei Yisrael to come to him in order to reach his stature through them. It was not Klal Yisrael that gave Moshe his strength; on his own account he was already worthy of all good.

13As is well known, the holy Zohar teaches that Moshe extends into each and every generation, into every tzaddik and sage who engages in the Torah.¹⁴ May Hashem grant that we be privileged to receive even a tiny portion of his lofty knowledge, so that we may serve the Creator, blessed be He. May the words of the prophet be fulfilled in us: “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Hashem, as the waters cover the sea.”¹⁵ And may we soon be privileged to greet the righteous Redeemer. Amen.