This week, as Parshat Korach unfolds, the ancient desert narrative feels oddly current. Korach’s rebellion, challenging Hashem’s appointed leadership and descending into chaos, speaks to the fragility of community and the cost of ego. The ground opening to swallow him and his followers is not just melodrama; it’s a metaphor for what happens when ambition eclipses purpose and when performance surpasses integrity.
Motzaei Shabbat Headlines
When Shabbat ended, I turned on my phone. The news was jarring: the U.S. had bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in the largest B-2 operational strike in history. My first reaction wasn’t shock, or fear, or even anger. It was weariness. A familiar ache that’s lived in my bones for decades.
Born into Battle, Raised on Base
I was born in Oct. 1979, just days before the Iran Hostage Crisis began. As an army brat, I grew up on military bases, where “deployment” marked the seasons and “conflict” was a constant undertone. Living just outside Fort Stewart, Georgia, the booming thuds of artillery, the rumbling of tanks, and the sounds of the trains moving equipment for deployment became familiar long before I understood their meaning. These sounds were my lullabies – my safety blanket, if you will. It was knowing that the steady cadence of troops training to protect us meant I was safe. Our windows shook so often from field exercises that even now I rarely notice small earthquakes.
During Operation Desert Storm, I was ten and terrified. I had vivid nightmares that Saddam Hussein would come for us. My father, a Command Sergeant Major, was my anchor. His presence, his discipline, and his clarity shaped the lens through which I saw a chaotic world. On 9/11 and in the days and months after, he was still that voice of sanity, reason and my anchor in the storm. When he passed in 2004, I lost that anchor. Yet I came to realize he did not leave me untethered. He left me his legacy through his memory, his blessing of accepting me as a Georet (Jewish convert) and the knowledge that I had another grounding source: the Torah.
Garments and the Illusion of Holiness
The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 18:3) recounts how Korach mocked the mitzvah of tzitzit, asking why a garment made entirely of techelet would still need fringes. It was a clever question, but one that missed the heart of the commandment. As we reflected last week in Parshat Shelach, tzitzit are not decorative. They are reminders or guideposts. They are threads of the covenant calling us to live with clarity and conscience.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, zt”l, taught that Korach’s failure was confusing the appearance of holiness with its actual pursuit. “He declared the people already holy,” Rav Hirsch wrote, “and therefore in no need of striving, of elevation, of Torah.” But true holiness is not intrinsic, rather it is earned by each of us as we stitch day by day into the choices we make into the fabric of lives we lead.
Growing up, my father’s uniform was my tzitzit. It reminded me of who we were and what we stood for. It wrapped him in honor and duty, and it wrapped me in safety. And though I now wear different garments, mine is now shaped by tradition and modesty rather than rank and regulation… but the thread continues. What we wear matters not because of what it signals to others, but because of what it demands of us.
Our garments may differ. But they both carry reminders of mission, of identity, of our sacred responsibility.
Korach’s Cry and the Chaos That Follows
Korach’s rebellion begins with a cry for equality: The entire congregation is holy… why do you raise yourselves above the community of the L-rd?” (Numbers 16:3). On the surface, it sounds righteous. But Pirkei Avot 5:17 unmasks it as a dispute not for the sake of Heaven.
Growing up in a world shaped by the dual cadence of hierarchy and duty, I was taught that authority meant responsibility, not self-importance. My father didn’t strut his rank; he carried it. Quietly, firmly, and with gravity. His leadership taught me that being a leader wasn’t about elevation, but rather it was about bearing the weight of others.
Korach didn’t bear the weight of anything. Instead, he exploited uncertainty. Rabbi Francis Nataf notes that Korach rose up just after the sin of the spies, when morale was collapsing. His cry wasn’t a call to purpose – it was a hijacking of pain. He repurposed Hashem’s call to holiness from the previous parsha “kedoshim tihyu” (you shall be holy) not as a challenge to become, but as a claim that we already were.
Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, zt”l, saw the danger in such spiritual shortcuts. “The mitzvah is not a mood,” he wrote, “it is a covenant.” Holiness isn’t a status. It’s a journey. And by declaring the endpoint was reached, Korach erased the road.
Bava Batra 74a tells us the earth still echoes with the voices of Korach’s followers crying, “Moshe veTorato emet, vehen bada’in” or “Moses and his Torah are true, and we are liars.” The tragedy wasn’t that they were swallowed. The tragedy is that they woke up too late to the truth to live by it.
A Haftara Echo: Rebellion and Responsibility
This week’s haftara offers us a quieter model of leadership. The people ask Shmuel for a king. He grants their request, but not before standing before them and saying: “Whose ox have I taken? Whom have I wronged?” And the people answer: “You have not wronged us” (Samuel I 12:3-4).
Shmuel, a descendant of Korach, is his spiritual opposite. Where Korach grasped for the opportunity of power, Shmuel releases it. Where Korach masked ambition in holiness, Shmuel clothed his legacy in humility. One name was buried by rebellion. The other was wrapped by integrity.
What Ends the Murmuring
Even after Korach’s downfall, the people murmur. What ends the unrest is not punishment, but rather it is blossoming. Aharon’s staff – once dry wood – blooms with almond flowers overnight (Numbers 17:23). A quiet miracle. Showing that a leader doesn’t shout but nourishes.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, zt”l, taught that the almond, the first tree to blossom, shows that true leadership is swift in purpose and generous in fruit. Authority rooted in service endures because it nourishes. And it sustains even when the ground shakes.
Worn From War, Rooted in Truth
The list of conflicts I’ve lived through reads like a history book: Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Iran. These weren’t just headlines. They were the fabric of my childhood. Solders rotating to the field to be prepared to go the front lines. Deployments. Letters home. Flags Waving. Yellow ribbons. And far too often, seeing folded flags handed to families whose world would never be whole again, those who returned home carrying both physical and invisible scars that changed their lives and the lives of their families. All of us military families still carry the cadence of this life.
Because of this upbringing, I’m not anxious, scared or numb. I’m seasoned. And I’ve come to believe that real strength often comes to us as stillness or a memory, other times it looks like choosing not to follow the noise.
Shabbat: A Foretaste of Redemption
Korach reminds us that not all strength is loud. Sometimes it’s quiet. Like Aharon’s staff. Like Shmuel’s voice. Like Shabbat.
Shabbat is more than just a day of rest. It is the rhythm that has held us, the Jewish nation together, whether it was when exile scattered us, when fear shadowed us, or when war followed us. Shabbat was the sanctuary we carried wherever we went.
Growing up, it was the cadence of the military that structured my weeks: the schedule, the drills, the departures, the returns. Now, as an adult, it is the steady beat of Shabbat that gives shape to my time. Not a rhythm of readiness for battle, rather a readiness for peace.
Ahad Ha’am wrote: “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” And Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l, called it “a pre-enactment of the world as we hope it will be at the end of time.”
Each week, as we are commanded to light the Shabbat lights and sing Lecha Dodi to welcome in its peace, we affirm that holiness is not distant, but rather it is near. During times of uncertainty and war, some take on extra mitzvot: lighting early, baking challah, learning, or offering an extra prayer, as acts of hope and resistance. Some choose to light an additional candle for peace, a flame kindled in sorrow, resilience, and faith. For me, I chose to add an additional candle to light to welcome in the Shabbat after Oct. 7, 2023, to keep a light alive for all the innocents and as a reminder: the darkness will not win.
Now, the cadence of Shabbat grounds me the way my father’s cadence once did. I often think about how our hands hold different kinds of service. His hands were trained for war, strength, and command. Mine were shaped by love, compassion, and Torah, to reach instead for healing. Both try to protect what matters most – peace.
Shabbat reminds us that redemption isn’t just a dream we await. It’s the cadence in which we live. Shabbat is a practice in sacred defiance taking it one week at a time with each lighting, each meal, each prayer, and each breath as we work to bring wholeness of Hashem into a world still yearning to be whole.
