Parashat Korah: On Envy

If only Korah had gone to our local synagogue (CBAJ) preschool with my kids. When the children are given differently colored pieces of paper or differently flavored popsicles, their teachers tell them: “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”

Korah never learned that lesson. He did get upset. He got upset about what other people, Moshe and Aharon, got -- namely leadership and priesthood -- and was not content with what he himself got -- the job of Levite.

This week’s parsha tells the story of Korah’s complaints and of the rebellion he tried to incite against Moshe and Aharon. He and a large group of followers, including two men named Datan and Aviram, gathered together against Moshe and Aharon, saying: “Rav lachem. You have too much. Everyone in the congregation is holy. Why are you two lording it over everyone else?”

The complaint sounds familiar. It is like the complaint of any kid who sees her sibling get a larger slice of cake: “Hey! No fair! Why does so-and-so get such a big piece and not me?” Korah was in fact a first cousin to Moshe, and an older one at that. Clearly, he thought the divine division of family goodies unfair.

The Torah holds up this example of envy as a reflection of the envy we all feel, whether in family relationships or in the world at large. And it is through this story that we can see what is wrong with such feelings.

First, envy is a form of greed. It is no accident the parsha begins with the word vayikah, “He [Korah] took.” The commentaries go wild trying to explain what it was he took, for in the Torah the word is without an object. Maybe that is the point. That one word tells us all we need to know about this Korah character – he was a taking kind of person. He was not content with his lot, but wanted a piece of the lot assigned to others.

Second, the Torah makes it clear that such a feeling of envy is in fact a rebellion against God. As Moshe says, “Truly, it is against the Lord that you and all your company have banded together” (16:11). In the desert, the roles of the high priest and the head-leader and the Levite all clearly originate from God, so that to complain of one’s role is to complain against God. The same is true in our own lives, though it is sometimes harder to see. God has granted each of us certain talents, strengths and challenges in life, so that to envy another’s lot is indeed a kind of rebellion against the God who made us the way we are. As an on-line Bnei Akiva article on jealousy puts it, “The life that God has given you is the life that you were meant to live.”

Third, the Torah shows us, quite graphically, the natural consequences of these feelings of envy and greed. What happens to Korah and his cronies when they try to raise themselves up by putting down Moshe and Aharon? Instead of going up, they go down, down under the ground: “The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up . . . They went down alive into Sheol” (16:32). The midrash points out that Datan and Aviram predict their own downfall when they say lo na’aleh, “We will not go up.” What they mean is: “We will not go up to talk to you, Moshe,” but through these words they predict their end -- they will indeed not go up, but down. Their attempt at self-aggrandizement has led to self-destruction. They have been literally swallowed by their own greed.

Emotionally, that is the way it works with people. Envy is not healthy. It lowers us, debases us. Its drive is an essentially negative one, the tearing down of another’s good fortune, and this negative tenor seeps into our souls. King Saul is a classic example of this process. One day Saul hears the people singing higher praises of David than of himself, and develops a ferocious jealousy of David. “The next day,” the verse tells us, "an evil spirit of God gripped Saul and he began to rave in the house” (I Samuel 18:10). Jealousy causes the unraveling of Saul’s spirit.

What is the alternative? How can we stop these natural feelings of envy, the natural desire to get a larger slice of cake than our siblings? The answer is in Moshe’s response to Korah.. Korah looked at Moshe and Aharon and said: Rav lachem. “You have much.” Moshe says back to Korah: Rav lachem benei levi -- “It is you sons of Levi who have much.” Instead of thinking about the greatness others have, says Moshe, think about the greatness you have been given. PBSkids has the following advice: “There is one really helpful way to beat the jealousy monster: Instead of concentrating on what you DON’T have or who you AREN’T, concentrate on what you DO have or who you ARE.”

As parents, we do everything we can to avoid provoking jealous feelings among our children, but we can’t make things perfectly equal and even, and we probably shouldn’t even try. Life is not always fair. Moshe and Korah were indeed given unequal portions, as are our children. The goal is to be able to face those differences and those inequalities with a comfortable, content sense of self, a self that focuses on one’s own gifts of rav, “much,” rather than desiring the rav-ness of others.

But the goal is not just to ignore another’s good fortune, but to be able to celebrate it. As Nehama Leibowitz points out, Korah was wrong when he said: Kol ha’am kulam kedoshim. “The whole nation, every one of them is holy [plural].” We are not each of us holy on our own, as individuals. We are an am kadosh, “a holy nation.” It is only together, as a group, that we become truly great, truly holy. Once we understand how inextricably linked we are, it becomes easy to celebrate others’ successes; their greatness makes us all great.