Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Orwell's 1984 and Korach's Rebellion

[Music] okay hi everybody thank you for coming and i hope the week is going well and uh today's sheer tonight's share is dedicated for a reforeshalema for bryan israel and an alias neshama for zelig david ben menachem and then there's another anonymous contribution for no reason mentioned so thank you mr mrs or miss anonymous and finally we have an anonymous contribution a mazel tov to rabbi poston and his family for the upcoming wedding for yaakov viennon to shelly our game business hashem they should have a bias number and be israel and adolph in addition we have a donation from mrs judy berson greenwald in memory of elio dove ben avraham dove aries ben avram yehuda and simma we hope that all of the debris torah should be eloy nishmotum okay so as i indicated last week the book of amit bohr starts off with a tremendous amount of promise an ideal society based on the different camps the different tribes the diversity of of community within diversity every tribe has its own flag and we talk about the levium torah of odigamilus and this ideal camp that is centered around the mishkan right in the middle but the last half of the book of amidbar actually everything seems to be disintegrating everything seems to be falling apart last week we read about the faith raglan which condemned the jewish people to wander in the desert for another 38 and a half years a total of 40 years and we talked about the federalism and today this week we have the sordid rebellion of korach which resulted in really the tragic deaths of not only korach and dustin vyaviran but of many many sadiq and 250 museum and not only that but then there was a plague which took fourteen thousand people we sometimes forget we sometimes think of the aftermath of ko records oh yeah karma some of the bad guys died korekdai in point of fact 14 000 people died that's kind of a major a major major tragedy and as always we try to understand a little bit what was going on because number one we do have a tradition that korach himself was very righteous korek himself was a great man the 250 heads of tribes the museum were also considered to be great great sadikim and really what do we understand from karak's rebellion so so the first interesting point about correct's rebellion is that you see the notion of hidden agenda because what ultimately is correct's claim karak's claim is essentially call her you might call him an anarchist or a radical egalitarian korok says in fact it sounds like a good message every jew is close to god every jew is capable of figuring out how to relate to god what gives one person the right to be a leader over another person what gives you the right to tell me how to serve god you know it reminds me a little bit of there was a book written by harvey cox harvey cox was a professor of religion i think at harvard university and he wrote a book about religion in america this is like 50 years old and uh one of the people he interviewed in the book you were just interviewing like regular citizens what's your feeling about religion it was not a jewish book per se so one of his people was a woman sheila happened to be i think she was a nurse and sheila says she has a very strong belief in god but she doesn't like organized religion so she has her own religion that she calls sheilaism and she connects to god in her particular way so i remember hearing many years ago a rabbi was saying that it's lucky her name would not was not judy because then she would have religion would be called judaism and then point to fact judaism is the religion of many many many people in which hey i'm jewish and this is what i think therefore that's a jewish religious teaching so you know korak is basically articulating the idea every man is a king every person of course what he he didn't really give a particular role to women that's another issue but he said every man is a king every man has his own relationship radical egalitarianism all of us heard at mount sinai i am the lord your god who took you out of mitzrayim so we know we know how to serve god now if you look at moshe bainer's initial answer it seems to be a non-sequitur because moshe bainer says you korach from the tribe of levy why are you complaining look at all the honor that god gave you look at the glory that god gave you god separated you out from all of the tribes to serve hashem why are you so dissatisfied with your lot but if you think about it moshe is not answering what korak taina is korach is not saying i am short changed i want more covert korach is saying everybody should be equal if korach is making the argument everybody should be equal moshe rabena was not answering that argument by saying hey labor you're important enough the answer is very very clear that there is a hidden agenda here some of you might have read in a prior life george orwell george rubble is known for the book 1984 but he wrote an earlier book called animal farm an animal farm is orwell's parody of the 1917 communist revolution the revolution that overthrew the tsar and the conceit was that the animals were oppressed the animals felt that they were being subjugated by their human masters so the animals led a revolution to get rid of tyranny and oppression and what happened was that eventually a certain animal became the dominant monah a pig who was called napoleon and it turned out that napoleon was as dictatorial and as cruel and as arbitrary as the human masters and in fact at the end they even assumed almost a human shape and orwell was trying to be marames in this uh fairy tale or this metaphor the notion that often people who lead revolutions in the interest of equality are actually doing it for their own guyva and their own power so it's not a question of i'm going to make everybody equal rather i'm going to have power instead of you i mean was lenin and stalin an improvement over the czar again i'm not a pro monarchist i'm not saying life under desire was good but it didn't get better under lenin and stalin uh talk about robespierre and the french revolution talk about paul potts the mild-mannered school teacher who may have murdered 20 million people in cambodia in the interest of liberty equality fraternity so a lot of revolutions now again some say the american revolution might be an exception which i believe it is but some say the american illusion was also not not an exception it's not even the same enough that you have to be aware of the idea that when people call for let's be movado let's upset the authority of things because we want greater equality it's really a power grab in which i want to have power instead of you and this was this is what michael bainer saw michael urbana saw right through this on one hand korach is simply arguing that everybody be equal but meisha bainu knows that the real motivation is jealousy power a desire for control and therefore he tries to placate correctly saying listen you and i know what's really going on here is not equality what's really going on here is you want to be a boss so listen you should be happy the abstract gave you a lot of authority a lot of power and the light so beware of hidden agendas when people start talking about equality everyone should be the same it often just means substituting one power structure for another power structure maisharabenu knew this and that is why maisha rabbenu said rablachem binet levy in truth there's another person who know it and she is really the hidden hero of the story of korach and that is mrs own ben palace when he talks about who joined korach so it talks about there were 250 heads of tribes etc and then there was a man who was only mentioned once in the whole torah an own ben palace from the tribe of rouve he must have been a prominent person that he's mentioned people people who would read the torah would seem maybe know something about him but we know almost nothing about him at all and later when the terror describes the earth opening up and people dying and it mentions korak and dozens of iran and then a fire consumed the 215 cm who were bringing incense it doesn't mention on ben palace on ben palace pelosi dimension everybody else who was mentioned in the rebellion is mentioned again in the deaths right some died by being swallowed up in the earth and some died by a fire but on ben palace is not mentioned so the gemara sanhedrin says own ben pelos was saved by his wife you know own ben peles hears korach's speeches who needs authority who needs golem who needs leadership every person is equal in the eyes of god every person can determine how to serve god and therefore let's get rid of moshe let's overthrow moshe so one ben pelos comes home to his wife he's full of excitement and he says wow wow all of us can now be you know our true hashibus is going to be revealed and mrs on ben palace as a good wife offers a reality check to her husband and he basically says you're an idiot because what happens is if moshe wins you're in trouble and if korak wins you're in nothing you think korak is going to give you now there's she's not playing the religious card she's not giving muslims she's not saying you have to listen to moshe because moshe is the shalihikov guy you know she could have talked to him in that religious way he's talking in a coldly pragmatic practical way by telling him you're getting nothing out of it you are a loser whichever way this goes if moshe wins you're out and if kobach wins you're out and because of this it actually says she disawaited her husband i think maurice says another thing too that uh when dustin and aviram and correct's men were going from 10 to 10 to sign up revolutionaries so she literally uncovered her hair a married woman is not supposed to reveal her hair to other people and she uncovered her hair and scared them away apparently even correct people were still keeping the laws of samias and so were jewish which in itself was interesting and that's one way she scared them but the icker she convinced her husband and this was the opposite of correct's wife korak's wife played on his guyva played on his arrogance yeah yeah yeah why should you be inferior to moshe raveno and she poured gasoline on the fire as opposed to miss his own ben palace that extinguished the fire and then the gemara uses this as an example of a passage in mishlai that says the wisdom of a good wife keeps the home intact viabella but a foolish wife bia te her sena she destroys the home with her own hands right a wife can create the bias a wife can destroy the bias the wife that created the bias is the wife of own ben pelas the wife that destroyed the bias is the wife of korah so the notion of the hidden agenda is a very very significant theme and what's interesting is sometimes you wonder if an agenda might be so hidden that it might even be hidden from the person himself that's perhaps korak actually envisioned some notion of a free society but as the bali muster tell us we often have hidden motivations even subconscious urges that we're not even so clear about ourselves we might convince ourselves that something is right we're objective to say that people reviewing people come and complain to him about an injustice that they felt was being done to them so people would often say it's not the personal hurt that i feel i'm i'm really talking about the principle of this it's a matter of principle so if yaakov said if if it was a matter of principle why didn't you come to me until you're hurt i mean you knew that other people were getting hurt by similar things but that didn't bother you so when a person says it's the prince it's not personal it's the principle it almost always is personal right people try to convince themselves i'm acting out of principle when in fact it's personal slights personal humiliations and the truth of the matter is this was true with everybody the ebenezer actually says that every single group that was affiliated with korach had their own agenda which they made believe was an argument for egalitarianism and equality korach wanted to replace mo shannara he says the so the many levine wanted to become kohanim many bachairim wanted to take the place right because remember the firstborn were replaced by the livium right so the firstborn weren't happy that they were replaced by the livium levine were unhappy they were replaced by the colonial korok was unhappy because he felt he ought to be leader instead of motion and we'll discuss why that was every single group had its own agenda had its own agenda even though they make believe that they're advancing a common cause and this is actually a famous for it i think they said cypher uh the mishna in pirkei of ice discusses uh the following it says every mahlikas every argument that is the shame shamayim for the sake of god to advance the glory of god sofo his kayem will continue to endure now that's a positive statement that means we will study it we will analyze it we will remember it and both opinions both sides of the dispute are going to be honored and it gives an example of what is the mach lokas the many many mach lopez but we still learn them we analyze them and just as we try to explain base hillo which is the we also try to analyze beit shamani because since they both acted for the sake of heaven both opinions are entitled to respect and to study and to analyze but then the mishna goes on and says any mach lokes that is not for the sake of heaven ain't so full as kayam eventually is going to be remembered in disgraceful way i mean it's not that we'll forget about it because after all we read kore every year but you know we're not going to give any respect or any deference to those opinions so the much locus is hillel and shamai the mahlokas not lashing shamayim is korah viadosa in his congregation so the kasam cipher says the language here is asymmetrical because when you talked about a mach logist you gave both sides base hello bait shamani when you mention the lokas shalol shame shamayam you only mention one side korach v adaso but that's not korach versus anderson that's correctly odessa now la maisa you can understand maybe why you had to say it that way because you the missionary didn't want to say korach umosha because that would have implied that moshe was not lashing shamayim but still it could have said shalom shamayim is korach kennedy moshe korach's fight against moshe was not the shame shamayim but it doesn't do that it only mentions one side of the mach locus the same cipher says this teaches you an important fidish when you have a mach like it's not the shame shamayim even the people on the same side are in reality fighting against each other because each person is doing it for their own reasons the levium are doing it because they want to be kohanim the bacharam are doing it because they want to be levine shayvetrouvain feels that they lost the bachara to icesafe because her supposed to have a double portion and that was given to isif kairak wants maisha it's not even clear exactly what job does karah want moshe and ira just moshe whatever it is but korak wants to replace them so when you have a maklocus not the shame shamayim it's going to be bottom because the so-called common agenda is not really a common agenda it's every person going for himself i don't want to comment on politics particularly in the medina israel but you know as you know the government has fallen the government has collapsed there will have to be new elections and indeed i think that the status of the government that we've had the past few months is exactly the example and i don't mean to say anyone is a russia i'm not usually i don't mean in that way but the notion of everybody had their own separate agenda with no common purpose and as a result they unite but there's no real unity because everyone is pursuing their own agenda and as a result it's not so full this time it's not going to endure it's going to collapse by by definition we hope although i have to say that for a religious person it is not great to have lapids as prime minister for even one day but the hope would be you know that we'll get elections i don't know how soon they expect elections did they announce uh when they would be elected when october um that's a little too long but okay uh but hopefully uh the damage can be uh kept down to a uh to a minimum before we have uh new elections pass throughout the ship but somebody wrote me that he's hoping that the new prime minister will be ben david although i don't think rasheed will be a prime minister i think he'll be a monarch but okay whatever it will be so that's the idea of any mach locus not the shame shamayim is ain't so called this kaima and that's a they themselves are uh barley machiavelli i do want to point out though that the natsiv does suggest an interesting dichotomy the native wants to differentiate between korach dassan and aviram and the 250 nasiem who brought incense and a fire came and consumed them very similar of course to nadav and avil arun's own children and the native uh wants to posit that although korach and dawson villavira may have acted out of non-proper motives the museum actually knew they would die and they wanted to kind of sacrifice their life to experience the closeness to hashem that you get from bringing the incense meaning they really acted again not halal proper but they acted lashing shamayim to give their lives in the ecstasy of divine worship and he says and that's why they have the very big significance of being memorialized on the mizbeach of all the carbanas because remember what happened the 250 museum brought coals in the copper bowls and they put incense on those coals and a fire came out of the mishkan and consumed them so what does hashem say afterwards take the copper bowls and beat them flat make them into flat sheets and make them as an extra covering over the mizbear so that actually means from korach onwards every time you looked at them as bad every time you brought a carbon under ms bayer there was a reminder of what the museum did because this was a sipoi la mizbeach now admittedly the postures of this symbol is not what the native says because the tyre itself says what the postures of the symbol is that people would look at the copper plating and they would remember that this was as a result of 250 nissim dying because they try to usurp the priesthood so it's not a positive it's a reminder beware of trying to usurp the role of aaron the kohen because this resulted in the deaths of many people that is the posture that's what the terror itself says but then it says the fact that they were given a role on the mizbayach does mean there was a certain kedusha in their motivation and therefore he's machalek by the way i've said before about dustin valveira and that doesn't of course or were of course until they died with korach they were of course the perennial troublemakers and a rabble riser rabble rousers that mojobano had to face over and over and over again and people sometimes ask takasha gee four-fifths of the jews uh were said to have died in mitzrayim so uh dustin and aviram made the cut of the top 20 percent how could that possibly be i mean there's like bad guys and i think the short answer is they're not quite as bad as you might think cause i'll tell us dustin and aviram were the task masters or were among the task masters in egypt and whenever a slave did not meet their quota of bricks the egyptians demanded that the task masters reveal the identity of the one who did not complete his job so that person could be disciplined or whatever it is the sun and aviram refused to reveal the names of those jews and they were beaten for it they were beaten because they refused to reveal the name of yiddin so they had great great musiras nephesh for chloe smile and that got them out that made them that made the 20 cut in fact i would suggest i don't have a makar for this that this might be the source of their enmity against moshe revenue because here were these guys who are in the field they're getting beaten every day and now you have this mosha fellow who grew up in the lap of luxury as a an adopted son of para and then when he gets a little trouble with the law you know he he has a passport he he can leave mithraim and go to midon for many years while everyone else is suffering in egypt and then he comes back and he's the he's the redeemer he's the big shot now if i'm a guy that's been beaten around for years and years and years and years and some other person shows up again this is from a human perspective obviously moshe is the shaliah hashem i'm going to be jealous i'm going to be resentful why is he the leader when i'm the guy that got beaten all the time so i think there actually is a psychological basis for the jealousy the enmity the bad feelings that dasa naviram felt towards moshe ribeno because at least there was an aspect of their life in which they truly were people who sacrificed for amy israel of course hashem had to take them because if they were undermining moshe's authority the whole torah is going to be bundled because you know we didn't hear most of the time i mean you understand this we didn't hear most of the torah from god we heard the first two commandments and some opinions say all ten commandments but most of the mitzvos of the torah the overwhelming majority of the torah we hear only from moshe rabbein who heard it from god if you undermine moshe rabena's authority you're essentially undermining 611 mitzvoths or maybe 603 myths depending on how many mitzvoth we heard so none of any of you did have to die because that would be a cancer that would destroy the jewish religion but we shouldn't dismiss them as like totally totally evil people and uh going back to the native and it says the 250 naseem were certainly not rishayam even in the way korach and dassan and aviram and naviram were so now let me share with you a very very fascinating uh gematria that the shame mishmoel brings in the name of the arie without explaining the ari does not explain it and the shame ishmael offers a beautiful explanation for it the uh rizal writes that the gematria of the word moshe moshe's name is mem shin 345. the gematria of khorak is 308. the difference between moshe and korach is 37 345 to 308 is 37 and 37 in turn is the gematria of hebel havel was the son that was killed by cayenne kill tavel they were the two twins they were the twins that were born from mother minham so therefore arithmetically we can say moshe minus hevel equals korach or you could express it korak plus sevo equals moshe right because kodak 308 plus hevo 37 equals 345 right so moshe minus korach equal i'm saying moshe mine is equals correct correct equals motion atkan divrei but there's no particular explanation of what is the significance of these three names moshe korach and eva so the shame of shmuel goes back to the whole story of cayenne vegeta chava called her first son cayenne because she said kannisi ish es hashem now what does it mean kanisi so here this there's something important here uh we usually translate konisi i acquired kenyan i acquired a man a son with god but in biblical hebrew kenyan is not so much acquiring that's a rabbinic uses that's a missionary keeper usage is a word for creating for example when avraham avinu talks about hashem as kone shamayim varets that does not mean the acquirer of heaven and earth kone actually means the creator of heaven and earth it's a synonym more or less of beaureg so when chava says konisi ish as hashem what she actually is saying is i created a human being with hashem and she's calling herself the creator of life because adam just gave me zera but what took that zera and made it into a human being the processes within the woman's body so she says i created a man with god havel means futility right if you go back to the famous refrain in ecclesiastes in the book of cohes a very depressing book in some ways where hamelech meditates on the futility of life havel havolim a marco helles have al havalim a cole hover now the famous king james translation is vanity of vanity says the preacher that's king solomon vanity of vanities all is vanity but it's a little confusing because the word vanity in english in the 1600s is not the same as vanity today vanity today means pride arrogance you're so vain that's not what heavily means and that's not what vanity meant then either vanity is much closer to futility nothingness worthlessness for example taking hashem's name in vain means saying hashem's name for no reason so have all of a limb is not talking about guyva or arrogance it means melaka saying i look at the physical world and i see it as empty meaningless without purpose and he goes through all the different things people spend all of their time making money and amassing possessions and then they die and they don't take anything with them and all of gohelis is a long muster schmooze that a life that is devoted to materialism is ultimately going to be empty and it's not going to even make you happy there's not even real happiness in it there is just frustration there is pain [Music] and of course the end of cohes tries to give you the ultimate message that the only thing that matters is fearing hashem and doing his mitzvos because that gives your life meaning and purpose and even joy so the word hevel means not vanity in the sense we use it today but it means futility nothingness and in fact it's connected to the word for breath heavel is like the breath of the mouth because a breath you don't see it right it comes and it goes it's like gone a puff of air so the shame ishmael says that cayenne and heaven their very names express different aspects of the human personality the human personality on one hand is creative takes initiative in fact that's part of being in the image of god we can master our environment we can control our world we can conquer disease we can drain the swamps cayenne represents the aspect of human personality that is creative domineering that's not in itself a bad thing in fact but sullivan local means we're not supposed to look at sickness and say oh god we'll take care of it yeah god takes care of it but we have to do irish douglas we have to drain the swamps we have to build the cities we have to conquer disease so cayenne is that faculty in the human being that you might call it egotistical but it's also the source of creativity it is the source of accomplishment it is the source of initiative havo futility is that aspect of the human personality that is humble and submissive and subjugating to god subservient to god so cayenne emphasizes the godless adam and havel represents the shiftless god now each by itself could lead to destructive qualities when you have too much cayenne and you recognize your greatness your strength your power what is the problem that of arrogance of rejecting god of saying whatever god does i can do i can create life i can destroy life as the torah itself warns for ramallah when your heart gets high and mighty you forget god and you reject god and you say kokhi the otsumyadi it is my power in the might of my hands i've spoken before that in some ways the experience we've had over the past three years with corona is a great source of making us humble again we think we've created systems that control our environments and yet everything collapses it's not just the diseases the ripple effects economies collapse lives collapse hashem could send tiny little viruses that change the world you had these whatever it is you had five nine how many a tiny small number of arab terrorists who hijacked some planes that literally changed the entire world part of all of this is to us to recognize we're not in control too much cayenne there is arrogance and guyva and merida you need heavel humility modesty but have out can lead to paralysis indecision hopelessness in which you think you can't do anything you look at a world and you say hashem yazar had too much faith can be negative in that way god will take care of it i don't have to take care of the poor person god will take care of it i'm not going to research disease god will take care of it so as a result shame shmuel says when cayenne killed heaven and have cayenne eventually died as well tyen was also killed by a great great grandson both cayenne and heaven needed a teakun for their neshamas they did not complete their mission they did not complete their tufket and this goes back to the kabbalistic idea of gilgal that when a neshama does not reach its teaching it needs to be reincarnated to be able to achieve that which it failed to achieve now gilgal is not mentioned in the gemara and it's not directly mentioned in the mid-russian it's it's it's it's in the zohar invital many makubala in fact all the mukubalim go into gilgal in great detail the classic book is by rafael vitale the atonement of the arie called shah gilgulem the gate of reincarnation i believe rabbi pinchas winston actually translated and annotated the book in a big fat volume i do want to say that gilgal is not considered a fundamental article of faith ref sergio gaon the greater of san jacon rejected the idea of gilgal there is ultimate resurrection of the dead that's true but there's not going to be interim kilgulam and uh saddagon even said that uh gilgal was imported into judaism from other faiths meaning to say the machor of gilgal was not even in yadus it came from other religions that is your sadducen's physician the rambam does not mention gilgal my guess is since he doesn't mention it he also would not subscribe to it on the other hand besides the arizona ramosa cordovero and all of the tombidim of theresa and of course the villenegon as well gilgal is mentioned by the ramban right the ramban is pre ariz alcabala and in fact the ramban even uses gilgal to explain in part the mystery of why do saddiquim suffer right why do righteous people suffer part of it is because it's a kapara for a various that were done in a prior in a prior life so i'm not telling anybody they must believe in yoga but gilgal is certainly a mainstream idea in the world of kabbalah and the world of khasidas so says the shame mishmoel cayenne needed a chicken because although cayenne represents productivity creativity initiative he needed to be balanced with humility and havel neither they taken because although havel was humble and submissive to god he needed to be more proactive in using his co-house to make a difference in the world so the shame of shmuel learns and this will be the arizona cayenne was reincarnated into korach and hevel was reincarnated into moshe so it's so fascinating that the mahlokas versus moshe is a reenactment of cayenne versus heaven but the outcomes are in reverse in cayenne versus havel it was cayenne who killed havel in korach versus moshe it was moshe's decree because moshe decreed that the ground should open up right so in a sense he'll have his revenge so to speak moshe kill table but here's the point cayenne's neshama was put into kairak that's why karak was a man of action a man of deeds a man of greatness a man of accomplishment but his avoider was to accept the authority of moshe rabbenu and exhibit the humility that would have been misaki the neshama of cayenne who himself was consumed with jealousy for heaven moshe had the neshama of hevel that's why it says he was the most humble person he was the most modest person who ever lived that was the tahuna of heaven but moshe was masakai in the neshama of heaven because in spite of the fact that moshe was the most humble person who ever lived al pine right the most humble person moshe became a leader moshe became a monarch moshe became a person who was able to take care of 3 million people moshe didn't say he tried to do that initially when he turned down the leadership but he didn't say oh who am i moshe stepped up to the plate moshe took responsibility moshe understood that humility is not an excuse for inaction and passivity so moshe was misakin the pagamin haval sorry why do you say what what did he have to do that was word have also the word hevel itself just shows that he was uh passive that he didn't uh that he he basically left everything to hashem that's the shame heaven hebrew itself says that you know you don't see it directly so much in the story but he's saying the name the name is miramiz to the kayak of heaven so well i will tell you i'll give you one example of this it actually says that cayenne was the one who innovated corbanos because have although hevel improved on cayenne but hevel did not have the makshava of the korb until he saw cayenne do it so cayenne was the innovator and havel just built on what cayenne did have could not have come to this saga on his own so that's one example so maybe like this kairak had the media of cayenne and wasn't did not incorporate the habbo maisha was haval and he incorporated the positive miles of cayenne so now the equation is a beautiful equation he says maisha and kyrah are fundamentally the same both are great both are wise both are productive both are able to accomplish wonderful things but the difference is moshe had the quality of heavel and correctness meaning the difference between moshe and korach is humility korak plus havel gets you a mysharabena and maisha without heaven gets you a karah and this is a very powerful thought because in a sense this portrays kodak in a very different light and this is what we call him a tragic figure by a tragic figure we mean it along the lines of the greek concept of tragedy which i will use in interpreting even the circum of the torah you know if somebody's walking in the street and god forbid a brick falls on his head and he dies that's very very sad but under the greek definition of tragedy that's not tragedy that's just a bad thing that happened it's very sad tragedy as aristotle defines it is you're destroyed not from something outside of you but you're destroyed from a fatal flaw that is within you and that's tragic and that's why tragedy is always connected to greatness when a person is great but there's a begum in them that's tragic because i look at a person who had so much potential so much uh who could have accomplished so many things but because of that in their own media they were not destroyed by an explosion they were not killed by a terrorist i mean died to a miracle but ultimately what destroyed kyra was not the ground opening up that was just the last step what destroyed kairach was the begum within his own personality that's why we say korach was very great there were many many indicators that he was very great first of all korach was of those who carried the arena kodesh that itself was a very elevated madrega there is a ghazal that said korach understood the mystery of the para aduma the most mysterious mitzvah in the torah korach saw with ruach that he would be the ancestor of schmuel hanavi who is shako kamehav and in reality the fact that he was the ancestor meant that the shairish the root of the godless that would culminate in shema was already in korach as a potential so korach had great great potential but the tragic lesson is no matter how great you are jealousy and covert can destroy you the altar of slovakia used to say jealousy and covered take away everything they'll take away your yom kippur you can be middle or you can be the middle of yom kippur you know crying and sobbing and doing shiva but if you expected to get master yona and you didn't get it that's the end of your yom kippur what did they tell the story they tell a story attacker about a real froome guy he was dominating and crying and sobbing and saying to hashem i'm nothing i'm nothing i'm a worthless cle i'm up for the affair then he didn't get them after yoga the coverage went to somebody else so the guy started yelling and screaming he says what are you giving it to him i'm such a bigger person so the ref said to him afterwards you know listen i understand you're hurt but i just heard you saying a moment ago you're a nothing you're a nobody so what what are you so upset about he said listen when i'm talking to god i'm a nobody but compared to him what do you mean he said i'm much better than him right what's the shot right and so the answer is we don't realize or maybe we do realize how covet poisons poisons everything it poisons everything you can be the greatest person and the cover destroys everything you can be destroyed from within we know that um there's a uh i think said or i'm sorry said that if hashem offered him a proposal that you could change places with avraham avinu you should be up for him iran could be you would we take that opportunity you know we said well wow i could be abramovino i wouldn't take it because what does god get out of the deal until until we do the change there's one avraham and one zusha and if we simply change there's also one abram and one zusha yeah so i'm much better off because i'm avraham but what does hashem get from that what does the college broker get by me being abram and not iran being me it's just a one for one switch and this is ms because we look at even our relationship with hashem from an egotistical perspective instead of asking what it is that hakanesh barco gets out of what out of what we're doing you know which reminds me a little bit we read a few weeks ago to go back a little bit uh about the naseem when the heads of the tribes when the michigan was dedicated they all brought the same karbanos and not only that the torah repeats it 12 times it's a long list now the terry doesn't waste words the terror could have given us and then it could have said and everybody else brought the same thing why does the torah repeat it again and again and again and one of the answers there are a few answers but one of the answers is the torah wants to highlight that no nasi wanted to compete with the other nasi in fact the real hero is nothing number two because after nachshon aminata brought a beautiful korban the second nasi who was isakhar nisan obensur has to make a critical decision should i turn this into a competition a one's upmanship or should i kind of say we're all on the same page he was kevaya [Music] we're not in competition we're there to serve i may have mentioned this before a story with the puna victor of the great punisher of unforgettable person that he was a legendary fundraiser in fact the that mirabi uh used to say in when neil armstrong and the the other astronauts landed on the moon so people were discussing can there be life on other planets suppressive says i'm not a scientist i don't know for sure but i have uriah that there's no life on other planets if there would be life on other planets the ponovichov would be there collecting money and uh if the pundits drove didn't go to mars there is nothing there because if there's something there he would have gotten to mars somehow to collect money so he was a legendary fundraiser so once he came to chicago and this was before jets so it got married to thrall to chicago there probably wasn't even a direct flight would be like a 20-hour flight and he comes to chicago he comes to a shoal the same time as a mashulich from the verdict a much smaller yeshiva came so when the mushrik from the vardik sees the punivet giraffe he turns white because he figures i can't compete with him he's such a better fundraiser than me so i'm not going so he finally decided i'm not going to get money tonight i'm just going to listen to the part of it so the part of it spoke and made jokes and torah and inspiration and mice him beautiful beautiful talk a beautiful sheer everybody loved the panavitcheroff he had an amazing charismatic personality he was truly a person who made the name of hashem beloved in the eyes of others everyone who met him just thought oh torah is so wonderful because he's so wonderful at the end of his speech he said rabosai there's a very hush of a yid from binet barak who's here who's also collecting for a yeshiva it's a very fine yeshiva i ask you that everything you would have given to me give to him well suffice it to say the meshulah from the verdict got a lot more money than he ever got before he because he got everything the partnership rub would have collected so he goes over to the puna butcher up and says i'm so grateful rebbe thank you but you traveled you're an old man and you traveled so many hours and you just give all the money to another yeshiva panavitarov said i don't know what you mean another yeshiva we work for the same team we work for the same cause if i collected enough money that 20 people could learn in a yeshiva for a week let's imagine he said why do i care if they're under the roof of panavic or under the roof of nevada what's the difference the rebina shell islam is getting the same nas now that is an extremely rare attitude even for great russia shivas you're not going to find it very much actually the producer of dozens three fingers that's how the mirror was it was actually somewhat the same way i'm told muir did not allow him to keep money that when people gave him money he had to hand it over right away because when he saw lakewood people and they smell people he would give money money to them because he also didn't have a sense that his yeshiva should get the money but the punishment sharov was the boss there was nobody over him so he made whatever decisions he made and this is really the opposite of competition and if i could quote a person i use i don't quote that much ronald reagan he was not i don't i don't endorse all of his politics but he once said you can't imagine how much would be accomplished if we didn't care who would get the credit if we factor out covert in life how much we could accomplish how much we get sidetracked how much we get angry how much we get upset how much it can destroy us and that is really the tragedy of korak and in fact i'll just end with his thoughts that rashi brings that one of korach's arguments and quotation marks against moshe was from takailas from sithus we know that whether we have to queue this today or not he's a maklocus but at a time when we knew for sure uh what the hell was and what the uh creature was that produced the blue dye so some of your stitches have to be white and some of your citrus have to have the sky blue of the trailers so korak asks moshe what if you have a talus that's totally tachylis do you have to put on citrus so moshe said yeah so korra said i don't get it if one string of tequilas is enough to be a fulfillment of the mitzvah if the whole talus is defendless why do you need white strings at all so first of all the correct whole argument anyway doesn't make a lot of sense because uh you still have to have strings i mean a talus that's tris does not give you any scissors so what's his dinah but be it as it may the bali mushrooms taina in a general sense it doesn't really explain the specifics that what is a reminder of hashem because the trellis is the color of the sea and the sea is the color of the sky and the sky is the color of the ki sayakawid so when i look at the sales i remember the sapphire throne of hashem i remember my connection to hashem so to us is the keyboard to accra so why do you have to have takrelas and lovan because if the felis reminds me of my tesher to hashem love on reminds me that i'm not there yet i haven't accomplished it yet to fail us is my goal but love on is the humility that tells me i'm still not there korach understood to us kesher to hashem he didn't understand the need for love and that fits the shame ishmael a kairak master us but didn't understand the idea of of lovan and this is something that we need to keep in mind in a way if you think about this this was the opposite of the miracle last week we spoke about the morocco who felt were not worthy enough to have a kesha with god and that was destructive because you have to know your worth karach is the opposite he has such a sense of his worthiness that it's not counter balanced with humility so in a sense the miragulum had the love on without the tishalas and kairach had the shamas without the lavan and that might be why the parsha of sithis at the end of last week's parsha is sandwiched between the story of the spies and the story of kairak because it has a relevant message to both sides it tells the miraglen remember the the list and it tells kaira remember the lover because we need to combine cayenne and hevel within our personalities so and we have a good shabbos and thank you for coming [Music] is