Shabbat Parshat Korach

This week's Torah Gems were prepared by

Anochi Atoncha
Shabbat Parshat Korach


"If Hashem will create a creation, and the ground will open its mouth and swallow them and all that is theirs, and they will descend alive to the pit, then you shall know that these men have provoked Hashem!" (Bemidbar 16:30)

Rashi: If Hashem will create a creation - ...to put them to death through a death through which no person has died up to this point.

Associated Press - Tue Jun 23, 2009; EIN GEDI, Israel - Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him.


Clearly, a hole in the earth that swallows humans is not a new creation. To the contrary, in this part of the world this odd phenomenon happens all the time... most recently last Tuesday.


So what does the Torah mean when it says "b'riah yivra Hashem", Hashem will create a creation? Rashi, who appears to have known about Middle Eastern sink hole hazards, explains that it is not the hole itself that is the creation, rather it is the manner of death of Korach and his gang. In fact, verse 29 suggests that the rebels will die no matter what the outcome of Moses' challenge.


"If these men die like the death of all men, and the destiny of all men is visited upon them, it is not Hashem Who has sent me."


What kind of death is this? The Torah does not say. In fact, we are told twice that the men are swallowed alive by the earth! So it could be the case that punishment visited on the rebels is a kind of suspended death, in which they are forced to spend eternity in a hole, not dead, and yet not really alive.


But the punishment is worse even than this. Pirkei Avot teaches that "an argument for the sake of Heaven will endure; an argument not for the sake of Heaven will not endure." Korach's rebellion is then offered as the paradigm of the argument not for the sake for Heaven.


So Korach's punishment is that he and his co-conspirators must spend eternity bearing witness to the death of their argument with Moses.