More on Korach: 4th of July and "Wicked" reference

Tosefta: Additional Information on Parashat Korach

          During this past Shabbat’s dvar Torah on Parashat Korach, I made the point that often it is the victors that dominate the historical narrative.  On the surface, Korach’s observation that we are all a kingdom of priests,  seems much in line with the early Rabbi’s attempts to democratize our religion, moving Temple-based rituals to the home and synagogue.  Yet it is these very same Rabbis, perhaps concerned about their own early contested claims to authority, who created midrashim after midrashim vilifying Korach as a megalomaniac, keen on destroying the entire community to feed his own insatiable ego and lust for power.  We never hear from Korach himself because he is buried in an abyss.

          This past Shabbat, I shared that I was first confronted with a non-victor’s view of history when, at age 9, I encountered my visiting elderly British uncle’s view of the War of Independence.  “Oh yes, your so-called ‘Revolutionary War,’ bunch of ungrateful colonists who failed to appreciate all their mother country had done for them.  Well you were more trouble than you were worth, so we cut you off – good riddens!”  I never heard this version of the 1776 before.  It was shocking!

          I wonder, if Korach had been given the chance, how might he have narrated events found in the Torah portion named for him? When stories have clear villains and victims, perhaps we should be skeptical, and at least imagine there might be more to the story.  Even in the most obvious story of good and evil, villain and victims, like the Holocaust, to pin it all on Hitler, dupes us into a false sense of security, that it could never happen again because Hitler was an aberration.  But Hitler did not act in a vacuum.  He had many people who either helped and even more who sat back and did nothing.  Nor did Hitler act in a vacuum (and neither did Korach for that matter).  Be it a vindictive Treaty of Versailles, the evil report of the spies and a sentence to desert-wandering for 40 years, or needing a wheelbarrow full of Deutschmark to buy a loaf of bread, demagogues need the right set of circumstances to succeed.

          Finally, I referenced the words to the song, Wonderful, from the Tony-Award-winning musical, Wicked.  In the referenced scene, I described how the Wizard got the title, Wonderful.  Within the song, Elphaba and the Wizard debate the difference between lying and history.  It seemed like a great text to share with you in closing.

WIZARD: See - I never had a family of my own. So, I

guess I just - wanted to give the citizens of Oz everything.

ELPHABA(spoken): So you lied to them.

WIZARD: (spoken) Elphaba, where I'm from, we believe all sorts of

things that aren't true. We call it - "history."

(sung) A man's called a traitor - or liberator

A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist

Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader?

It's all in which label

Is able to persist

There are precious few at ease

With moral ambiguities

So we act as though they don't exist.

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/