Korach:the distribution of gifts

Korach: the distribution of gifts

The beginning of Prashath Korah repeats the phrase: Rav licha, you have  more than an equitable amount.  There has been a maldistribution in your favor.  A redistribution is justified.  The situation is unfair.

We live in an unfair world.  In the US, the land of opportunity,  we celebrate that inequality, we call it motivational.  Striving  ( note the relationship to strife) to have more  is the American way.  The strikings of Korach  and his group comes to a bad end. 

Economists ( Marx, Piketty) claim that inequality of wealth  leads to rebellion.  The downtrodden rise up against the oppressive overlords and wrest political and economic power from them.  Was this what Korach's band was trying to do?  The currency of the time was  priestly privilege  which brought both social status and economic benefits. There is a sense of demagoguery here. A sense that Korach wanted to get something for himself and his descendants; and that the followers were fooled into joining him. Korach is the model for Stalin, Hitler, Clinton(?)

Korach's message was populist. After  the earth swallows him and the fires consume his followers, the people complain (17;6) " You have killed the people of Gd"  Korach had a message that resonated with the people: equal opportunity, meritocracy, democracy.  And the story of Korach and his minions is cautionary about these concepts.  Gd intervenes to demonstrate whom Gd favors.

There are two demonstrations of Gd's will in the parsha.  There is the bake off: the contenders ( Korach and his gang vs Aaron)  with the incense.   This is a lethal expression of whom Gd favors.  This idea comes from Moshe.  Then there is the blossoming staff, Gd's idea: less dramatic but somehow definitive.

Is equality the goal? Gd did not make a world that is fair along every axis.
 If I don't use my talents to the fullest, I have cheated the world.
The same goes for you.
Don't be misguided.
 Bloom!

"Everybody has her own talent. Some people can sing. Others can walk around the house" ( Esther Goldberg at age 7,  The Rockstar Girls, 2005)