Numbers 16:1-18:32 | 1 Samuel 11:14-12:22 | Mark 14:53-72

This week's edition of The Set Table contains:

Questions and Commentary on Parashat Qorach
Chayyei Yeshua - A Devotional Commentary on the Besora Reading
Looking Ahead

Questions & Commentary on Parashat Qorach

1. How does the story of Qorach show us a perversion of the quest for equality? 

Benjamin Ehrenfeld

This week's parasha tells us of a man who gathered a group of followers in the wilderness community together to stand up for their rights. These former slaves had been lorded over for so many years and for a "promised land," which none of them had seen any sign of, they were following these two men named Moses and Aaron. The Lord had made it explicitly clear that he intended all of the community to be holy and that he would dwell with all of them. So Qorach essentially asks, "Why is that this man and his brother are the leaders? When we heard the Voice, the Lord said all of us would be holy. Now we're hearing second-hand from them about the Lord's will. This doesn't seem right." This is what the text says: 

"They [Qorach and his cohorts] combined against Moses and Aaron and said to them, "you have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord's congregation."

    Numbers 16:3 (NJPS) 

Moses proceeds to do what he normally does when there's a major issue with the community . . . he falls on his face. Why? It is almost as if he is aware that people are going to die because of this. One could see from a certain point of view that Qorach may have a right to question this. The LORD DID say that they were all supposed to be holy. Why this seeming hierarchy? 

Why was this so important to maintain that the LORD causes the earth to swallow up Qorach and his uprising a few verses later?

There are many possible answers, but I offer the following for your consideration: the difference between equality and anarchy is the demarcation of responsibility. Qorach challenged the fundamental demarcation of responsibility that the Lord had set up for the people. A community cannot stand when everyone is trying to be the one who they think is on top. Furthermore, the one on top won't stay there for very long if that person thinks he or she has it all. When the Lord calls the people to be holy, he repeatedly gives responsibilities to all the different classes of Israelites. No one responsibility is treated as being better than another. This is what Qorach forgot. He forgot that he was a Levite, a status that may have been enviable by others in its own right. He asked for the blessing that God promised his people by undermining the system that made that blessing possible. 

We have all met people in our communities who ask, "Why is he/she so special . . .  who made that person in charge...why can't I be picked?" Some of us have said these things ourselves at one point or another. This is the voice of Qorach. This is the voice of Qorach the Levite who could not accept what made him special. He had to take hold of that at the expense of those who he felt dealt themselves the better hand. Equality does not mean everyone gets equal everything. Equality means everyone is valued for who they are and what they do bring. This is not to say that we shouldn't stand up for injustice, but the parasha teaches us to examine very closely what it is that we think we are being deprived of. Is our value really being undermined, or do we just want a piece of someone else's pie that we think is better than our own? 

2. Who are God's Priests? 

Yitzhaq ben Benoni

Parashat Qorach recounts the unfortunate story of a dispute over priestly election. According to rabbinic tradition, Qorach (son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi) pointed out how the leadership and priesthood of Israel were assigned to Moses and Aaron, both of whom were sons of Amram, the eldest son of Kohath. Since Qorach was the eldest son of the second son of Kohath (Izhar), he felt entitled to hold the position of leadership in his family. But this role was assigned instead to Elizaphan son of Uzziel, the youngest son of Kohath (Tanhuma Qorach 3; Numbers Rabba 18:2). Thus, the rabbis associated the revolt of Qorach with the many other disputes between brothers in the Torah: Cain vs. Abel, Isaac vs. Ishmael, Esau vs. Jacob, Joseph vs. Reuben (or Judah), Manasseh vs. Ephraim, and so on. The repetition in the Torah narrative of such disputes between firstborns and "Benjamins" of the family are so numerous that they seem to stand in tension with the legal portions of the Torah that try to guarantee the firstborn's right to his unique inheritance. Thus, for example, we find elsewhere that a man who has two wives (one beloved and the other hated) must not bequeath the double portion of his possessions to the firstborn of the beloved wife if the hated wife gave birth to a son before the beloved wife (Deuteronomy 21:15-17). This passage, like many other prescriptive texts guaranteeing special rights to the firstborn, is countered by the aforementioned descriptions on how last-born sons meritoriously achieved their elder brother's blessings. An ambivalent discussion emerges then within the Written Torah over the question of election through divine selection vs. election through human meritocracy.  

Mark 14:53-72 - Who is Yeshua?

Sean Emslie 

This may seem an odd question, but earlier in the book of Mark, Yeshua asks his talmidim, who people were saying he was and then he asked who they thought he was. They respond:  

"Some say you are Yochanan the Immerser," they told him, "others say Eliyahu, and still others, one of the prophets." "But you," he asked, "who do you say I am?" Kefa answered, "You are the Mashiach."

    Mark 8:27-29 

The answer given by Kefa was important and in a parallel passage in Matthew, Yeshua responds that Kefa's affirmation of Yeshua's Messiahship was to be the foundation on which the Messianic community would be built (Matthew 16:16-18).   

In this week's Besora reading we come to the trial of Yeshua before the Sanhedrin and Yeshua's answer to the question of his identity. In this passage from Mark, we read: 

The cohen haggadol stood up in the front and asked Yeshua, "Have you nothing to say to the accusations these men are making?" But he remained silent and made no reply. Again the cohen haggadol questioned him: "Are you the Mashiach Ben-HaMevorakh?" "I AM," answered Yeshua. "Moreover, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Almighty and coming on the clouds of heaven."

    Mark 14:60-62

When he was asked who he was, Yeshua identified himself as both Messiah and the Son of God (Ben-HaMevorakh) and further identified himself as the Son of Man, the apocalyptic figure of Daniel who would come at the end of days. What can we learn from our Messiah about the vital issue of who Yeshua is as we are building  Messianic Judaism for today and for the future? 

First, it is vital that we recognize and honor Yeshua as the Jewish Messiah. We need to take this to heart that we are a Judaism with a Messiah amongst us and empowering us to live God-honoring, Torah-faithful lives. The affirmation of Yeshua as Messiah led the early talmidim to exclaim: "We have found the Messiah. We've found the one Moses wrote about in the Torah, also the Prophets - it's Yeshua Ben-Yosef from Natzeret!" (John 1:41, 45). 

Like these talmidim we have found the Messiah!  Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah, the Hope of Israel, the Root and Offspring of David and the One in whom the promises made to the Ancestors is uniquely answered.  

Second, we should embrace Yeshua as the Son of God, the very word of God who became a first century Jew to live a life of absolute faithfulness to the Father as our example and to lay down his life for our atonement.   

NEXT WEEK'S READINGS - PARASHAT CHUQQAT-BALAQ

Numbers 19:1-25:9
Micah 5:6-6:8
Mark 15:1-15