WHAT CAN YOU LOOK LIKE?

March 15, 1958, and young politician in his 40's by the name of Jack Kennedy went to the spotlight. Kennedy's opening line became part of his legend. Previously, his father John had been lampooned in the press as trying to use his family's money and influence to buy the election. Reaching into his pocket he, pulled out a telegram he said he had just received from his dad. It said, "Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary—“I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide."

The Korach rebellion, the most serious of the many challenges to Moses’ leadership, was fierce. It involved Korach himself, a first cousin of Moses, three members of the tribe of Reuven, and 250 community leaders. The Torah states the outcry of the rebels. It dealt with the very core-structure of the Jewish people:  

The Rashi expand the words of Korach: All of them heard the words at Sinai “I am the Lord, your God”; the entire congregation heard it.

What was Moses’ response?

Moses heard and he fell on his face.

Moses did not utter a word. He just fell on his face.

Why did he fall on his face? The Talmud answers these questions:

What was the rumor Moses heard? Rabbi Shmuel said: He heard that they suspected him of having relations with a married woman.”

Woe. This is a new story. Moses heard about the rumors circulating that he committed adultery. Hence, he fell on his face.

But this seems insane, to say the least. Where did the Talmud get this from? Does the Torah merely state that Korach was challenging Moses’ leadership, not his fidelity?

How could anybody in their right mind believe such a story about Moses?

One of the greatest scholars and thinkers was Rabbi Judah Loewe, known as the Maharal of Prague (c. 1520 – 1609). The Maharal offers a beautiful interpretation of the above Talmudic story.

The Talmud teaches us that Korach’s argument was not hollow; it was majestic and profound, and hence managed to attract the hearts of 250 Jewish prominent men. The argument was this: Moses is disrupting a sacred marriage. He is ripping away a woman from her husband and living with her. He is getting in between the hollowed bond between a husband and wife.

At Sinai, G-d and the Jewish people entered into an eternal marriage-covenant. They are directly and intimately bound up with each other. “The whole community is holy, and the Lord is with them. What Moses is doing is getting in between the marriage between G-d and man.

The Torah is built on the unwavering principle that every person professes infinite dignity and stature, every soul is a “fragment” of G-d and every human heart is an image of the Divine. Every person has direct access to G-d at all times. Where then, Korach asked, is there room for leaders that are “above” the rest of G-d’s congregation, serving as middlemen between G-d and the people? It would be akin to appointing a negotiator and middle-man to constantly help a husband and wife communicate. True, when a marriage is in shambles, you need the therapist to intervene to explain the couple to each other. But in ordinary times that would be a disaster: the very basis of a marriage is the unwavering trust and loyalty between a wife and husband in a direct and personal relationship, day-in, day out.

Similarly, Korach complained, Moses’ leadership role was necessary for moments of crisis. But to have Moses as a life-long leader over the people? This is a form of “adultery;” it is a betrayal of G-d and His intimate relationship with every single Jew. We don’t believe in intermediaries.

Of course, Korach does not mean what he says. He claims to be opposed to the very institution of leadership, and at the same time, he wants to be the leader. “All are equal, but some are more equal than others”

Not a bad question. And yet Korach was wrong. He was wise, clever, but still wrong. He failed to understand the nature of Moses’ leadership—the nature of leadership espoused by Torah. Korach and his co-conspirators saw leadership as status and power. But Jewish leadership is not like that. Judaism is built on the premise of the dignity of the human person and the direct, intimate “marriage” between every Jew and G-d. Every single person is equal in the eyes of G-d and every single person is directly responsible for G-d and in a direct relationship with G-d. What, then, is leadership in Judaism? What was Korach’s error?

The answer to this became strikingly clear four centuries later.

Why do we need a leader at all?  For two reasons, one individual and the other collective.
Collectively, a person needs a leader like an orchestra needs a conductor; a play needs a director; a team needs a captain. The leader must co-ordinate, give structure and shape to the enterprise, make sure that everyone is following the same script, traveling in the same direction, acting as a unit, rather than a fragmented group. Individually, each of us is overwhelmed by material life; we have our egos that get in the way to accessing the spark of G-d within and the Torah’s truth. We need a selfless leader, a teacher to guide us and show us the way to access our souls and G-d. When the leader guides us he does not show us how he (Moses) accesses G-d, but he shows us how we have direct access to G-d through our Divine souls. The leader, in other words, does not stand in between us and G-d; rather, he stands behind us, pushing us from the back.

What gives the leader the power to do this is not his charisma, wisdom, cleverness, ambition, and strength. The single most important quality of a true leader is absolute humility. “Moses was the most humble among all people on Earth,” the Torah states. He is transparent. He is invisible. Thus he can become a conduit through which every person can access the truth of G-d.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that we read the story of Korach we commemorate the 26^th yartzeit of the Rebbe.

Britain’s past Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks shared this moving personal account:

As a young man, full of questions about faith, I traveled to the United States where I had heard, there were outstanding rabbis. I met many, but I also had the privilege of meeting the greatest Jewish leader of my generation, the late Rebbe. Wherever I traveled, I heard tales of his extraordinary leadership, many verging on the miraculous. He was, I was told, one of the outstanding charismatic leaders of our time. I resolved to meet him if I could.

I did and was utterly surprised. He was certainly not charismatic in any conventional sense. Quiet, self-effacing, understated, one might hardly have noticed him had it not been for the reverence in which he was held by his disciples. That meeting, though, changed my life. He was a world-famous figure. I was an anonymous student from three thousand miles away. Yet in his presence, I seemed to be the most important person in the world. He asked me about myself; he listened carefully; he challenged me to become a leader, something I had never contemplated before. Quickly it became clear to me that he believed in me more than I believed in myself. As I left the room, it occurred to me that it had been full of my presence and his absence. Perhaps that is what listening is. I then knew that greatness is measured by what we efface ourselves towards. There was no grandeur in his manner; neither was there any false modesty. He was serene, dignified, majestic; a man of transcending humility who gathered you into his embrace and taught you to lookup.

Feivel Shapiro, a member of the Antwerp Jewish community, lost his mother early on when she sadly passed away after an illness when he was still a young child, only a tender 12 years old. Some twenty-five years after his mother's tragic illness and passing, Feivel's business pursuits found him in New York City. During one of those hot NYC summer nights, he came to 770 Eastern Parkway, the Chabad Headquarters, to pray the evening service with the Rebbe's Minyan.

After the service Feivel, was hanging around the foyer outside of the Rebbe's room. He decides he is going to go in and see the Rebbe even though he does not have an appointment. Unassumingly he goes over to the person in the front of the line and says I need to go in before you, as I urgently need to leave soon, and the person agrees.

The door opens and the person from the previous audience comes out and Feivel walks into the Rebbe's room. The Rebbe's secretary is shocked by his Chutzpah and follows him in, intending to pull him out this brazen intruder. The Rebbe looks up and tells Feivel to sit down. The door closes. Silence.

Not having intended to be there, in fact, he had nothing to say at all. For a few short, but very long, moments, the middle-aged Belgian businessman sat, opposite the Rebbe facing him, in complete silence.

Finally, he introduced himself. Feivel Shapiro. Antwerp. From a family of not Chabad, but Belzer Chassidim.

Then, as if on cue, the Rebbe goes over to a drawer and begins looking for something.  The Rebbe returns to his desk with a letter and begins to read from it, which as it turns out, is an actual letter from… Feivel's late mother to the Rebbe from just over 25 years earlier. In this letter, she writes that she is terminally ill, and she is going to die. "I am not concerned about myself. Rebbe, I am only asking you to arouse extraordinary mercy from Hashem, on behalf of my children." Feivel is in shock and overwhelmed. He was just a child when his mother passed away, his memories of her in his childhood were all he really had to keep her with him and was never aware that this letter of hers to the Rebbe, on behalf of him and his siblings, even existed. Twenty-five years later, her love and concern were still alive there in the Rebbe's room!

Feivel asked the Rebbe a favor: I have no writings from my mother. Would you allow me to have this letter?

The Rebbe refused and explained:

"Every single year on the night of Yom Kippur, before I go out to Kol Nidrei,” the Rebbe explained, I read your mother's letter…"

This is a Rebbe. The Jewish people deserve such a person in their life; Korach did not realize what a real Rebbe is. A quarter of a century later, he reads

A man once asked me, why do I have a picture of the Rebbe in my home? I answered: For the same reason people hang a mirror in their home. The Rebbe’s picture is essentially a mirror. But with one difference: When you look at the mirror you see what you look like; and when you look at the second type of mirror—you see what you CAN look like; you see what a human being is capable of making of himself. You see not what you are, but what you can become.

We and our children need tons and tons of such mirrors…

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky