A Coalition of Malcontents from Korach to Bennett - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

so as you know a new government is being sworn in in israel today i even think it may be happening around right now and while there are many different takes on everything i'll share mine with you which of course is just mine and mary would very well may be wrong but once i saw the connection i just couldn't unsee it okay so a little background prime minister netanyahu has been prime minister for 12 years now and during that time he has made no shortage of enemies and that's the fate of any prime minister you're going to step on toes particularly considering he was well known to be one of the trickiest politicians in israeli political history and you know after all staying prime minister in israel for 12 years a country in which gold in the ear said something to the tune of a country where everybody is their own prime minister well let's just say there's a reason he was the longest-running prime minister in israel's history and as many of you know israel has gone to elections four times in the last two years each time failing to form a majority of 61 seats of the 120 knesset seats that that would just agree to be part of the coalition and make the government it was a crazy thing because elections happen we have a government and all of a sudden election after election after election no government is forming but now after four elections that the time was running out towards the fifth election a shocking coalition came together which nobody could believe as it was composed of the most unlikely bedfellows one could imagine from the right of center yamina party uh led by naftali bennett to the left-wing really anti-religious merits party which couldn't be more different from lim and most like shockingly was the arab party which is totally anti-israel and anti-zionist and is being dependent on to keep this fragile 61 seat coalition intact i mean this whole thing made me realize there's something fundamentally broken about the system here in israel and many people feel upset and scared and betrayed the trade particularly those who voted for naftali bennett who explicitly promised not to join lapis government who in rotation no rotation he said it's against my ideology the video has been played again and again and he just blatantly lied at least on that front and anyone in the country who's looking at this seemingly impossible and totally incompatible coalition knows that what keeps them together is not a shared vision for the future it's not shared values or desires it's a deep shared resentment and it's for some even hatred for prime minister netanyahu a lot of people say the same thing happened in america that it didn't matter who people who just came together and said anyone but trump so anyways well while i don't think anyone would compare prime minister netanyahu to moshe rabbani the similarities between the similarities between the new government coalition and co-op forex coalition those are hard to miss so let's think about for a moment about who was in koras coalition the participants can be found listed in the very first verse of the parashat son of uttar son of kahat son of levi separated himself with the tan and aviram santa valiable and on the son of pellet the offspring of i hope this slide is on i can't see it for some reason they stood before moshe with 250 men from the children of israel leaders of the assembly those summoned for meetings they're prestigious men let's just keep that for a second if it hasn't been there so we're talking about prestigious people there now rabbi sachs beautifully lays out these separate grievances of each of the parties in this rebellion and the reasons they have for their resentment the first korah i mean you could see it clearly from his genealogy that's spelled out right there in the first verse but a midrash spelled it out even more clearly from korra's perspective from his own words he says according to numbers rabbah this is a midrash my father was one of four brothers amram the father of moshe was the firstborn of his sons aaron was awarded the priesthood and moshe was given the kingship who is worthy of receiving the next honor if not for the second brother he was talking about utah his own father i yitzhar's son should have been made prince of the clan but instead moshe appointed elite staffan ben uziel alisafan the son of uziel and that was from the fourth and youngest brother meaning they just skipped over karat's father should the youngest of fathers of fathers brothers be greater than i i will dispute with him and undo whatever he does he was just committed to undoing whatever moshe albani did he was gonna fight and he wasn't gonna say what it was really about which was his own prestige and his own insult and humiliation now rabbi sex goes on to explain other grievances so there was data of iran and owen the son of pellet each of them were from the tribe of rouvain of ruvain of ruben and it isn't hard to imagine their issue they were descendants of rookman the firstborn ever since reuben's sin regarding his father and the concubine ruvain lost his firstborn status and clearly his descendants never really accepted or came to terms with it and there's debate about the grievance of the 250 princess some say that they were i'm sorry something got in my eye here some say that they were prestigious leaders who felt like they should be in charge and others said they were first borns who never accepted losing their status to the tribe of levy around the sins of the golden calf if you remember that whole the whole deal so anyway either way there was no shared vision there any one of them emerging victorious would have meant a victory for them but not for any of the others but it didn't matter their shared resentment was so strong and so blinding they just couldn't see anything else and this parallel was so compelling that memes like this were circulating all over the internet could you put that up anyway i don't know if you can see it but it shows all of the uh the coalition is sitting around the table and under that it says the the uh what is it in his assembly it just talks about them and makes the direct connection and everybody has been talking about this and it's not that often that just mainstream israelis are so deeply referring to the parallels of the torah portion to what's happening in israel today and that's the thing so they all came together out of a place of resentment and jealousy they wanted something that wasn't theirs and as where fomo cast points out when you want to take someone else's place in the world what happens you lose your own you lose your own place and they did and the earth swallowed them up because their arguments weren't sincere they were just pretext there's nothing truthful about it for when your argument is about truth the sages point out if you win you win because you were right so you won but if you lose you win even more because now you've dispelled a falsehood that you once believed in which we all have and you're even closer to the truth and we have learned that truth is god's seal and fundamentally that's where korach and his rebels went wrong and that is where the current government may be going wrong as well i'm not saying this is all definitive i'm just saying this is my heart on the issue because the idea of leadership in the torah is not about control or power or prestige it's about service it's about humility it's about serving as a vessel to bring the nation to a greater service of god to bring the people of israel into a deeper and more loyally loving relationship with god it's not a coincidence that moshe was the most humble man ever and he was the ultimate leader the two go hand in hand the less there is of self and one who serves god rabbi sachs beautifully explained the more there is of god the less there is of the self and one who serves god the more there is of god and that's why i've always felt that there's something inherently contradictory about elections in general because the real leader the true leader the leader we've been waiting for will not be jumping up and down asking to be leader a true leader doesn't think they're worthy of being a leader and doesn't have aspirations of power or prestige or title or control and so again why i appreciate prime minister netanyahu and believe he's done very many great things for israel and i'm not comparing him to moshe albania but this crazy coalition of malcontent the coalition of resentment we see taking power today certainly does summon images of korach and his rebels both in shape and in style now our korach and his men didn't understand which motion our own did is that a true leader understands that he's there to serve and not to rule to help the nation fulfill their potential and not for him to fulfill his own ambitions this highlight was taken from the land of israel fellowship every week hundreds of families from literally around the world come together on our live zoom sessions to strengthen each other to inspire each other and to learn torah from the land of israel in which we connect the dots between the bible the hebrew language and the confusing events of our times go to www.thelandofisral.com or click on the link below to join thank you