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Dear Ones,

Roughly 15 years ago, I enrolled in a seminar for clergy taught by Reverend Doug Hester, a Lutheran pastor from San Antonio. Doug had been a student of Rabbi Edwin Friedman (1932 – 1996), and the months long seminar focused on teaching Friedman's work to the assembled clergy.

Rabbi Friedman's renown among not only rabbis, but clergy of other faiths as well, grew out of his pioneering application of Family Systems Therapy to religious communities and houses of worship. He showed that many of the same dynamics and emotional forces that drive behavior (both healthy and dysfunctional) in families exist in religious congregations, as well.  I learned so much from those seminars, far too much to summarize in a blog post! 

But my most memorable takeaway grew out of being the only Jew in a class of at least twenty clergy. I learned that the highs and the lows, the joys and challenges of synagogue life are not exclusive to the Jewish community. All of the clergy in that seminar told similar stories, albeit clothed in the particular religious language of one denomination or another. And all those stories grew out of the universal, nonsectarian, human challenges of creating and maintaining an idealistic and caring community, particularly when the inevitable disagreement or conflict arises.

This week's Torah portion, Korah, and in particular, the way our sages "spin" the dramatic story that the portion tells, has a lot to teach us about the nature of conflict and disagreement.

Korah is a distinguished member of the Levite tribe who leads a rebellion against the leadership of Moses and his brother, Aaron. His revolutionary language has a populist tone. "All of the Israelite people are holy," he says, "and God is in their midst. Why, then, [Moses], do you raise yourself above the community?"

It's a rather seductive argument, and it's easy to sympathize with what sounds like Korah's championing of the holiness of the entire Israelite community.  But as the story unfolds, and especially as the sages amplify the story in the Midrash, we have reason to question Korah's integrity. Korah is actually a close relative of Moses, and the rabbis make the case that his "populism" is based in ego, in familial resentment and a desire for greater power and recognition. They paint Korah as a self-interested demagogue more than a man of the people.

Later, in Pirkei Avot, that wonderful section of the Mishnah containing so many familiar rabbinic sayings and proverbs, the rabbis use Korah's rebellion has a negative example. Quoting the Mishnah:

"Every dispute that is for the sake of Heaven, will in the end endure; But one that is not for the sake of Heaven, will not endure. Which is the controversy that is for the sake of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Hillel and Shammai. And which is the controversy that is not for the sake of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Korah and all his congregation.”

Hillel and Shammai were two of the leaders of the Sanhedrin in ancient Israel. When it came to the pressing matters that came before them, they nearly always disagreed. Yet, as they wrestled with issues of Jewish law, they never ceased to show each other respect. The debates that they had with each other "endure," in the sense that millennia later we still study those debates because there is so much we can learn from them.

But the text from the Mishnah tells us that the dispute between Korah (and his followers) and Moses will not "endure" in that way. As one commentator, Joshua Kulp, puts it "Korah and his congregation rose up against Moses’s leadership in Numbers 16.  Their intent was not a pure complaint against the perceived autocratic style of Moses’s leadership.  Rather it was a blatant attempt to gain power for themselves.  As our Mishnah teaches, it was not a dispute for the sake of Heaven, but rather for their own profit.”

What can we learn from this? As Joshua Kulp reminds us, "In Judaism debate is legitimate. Indeed Jews are famed worldwide for being an argumentative people, and this is considered (at least by most Jews themselves) a positive attribute.  What is problematic is not debate itself, but debate that does not attempt to reveal the truth, and especially God’s truth.  Debate that is only self-serving, an attempt to be victorious over the other side is considered to be illegitimate.”

We Jews are blessed that we come from a tradition which encourages questioning and honors (and normalizes) honest and even passionate differences of opinion, so long as those disagreements aim to pursue the truth. Those are the disagreements from which we can all learn, the ones that will "endure.” 

With love, as always,
Rabbi Steve Folberg