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HEBREW TABERNACLE CONGREGATION June 12, 2010 D’var Torah
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Ethan is currently a seventh
grader at the Institute for Collaborative Education. He enjoys playing
baseball, football, basketball, and most of all soccer. Ethan has played on
teams since he was five years old. Healso takes private tenor saxophone
lessons and plays for the ICE Middle School band. Ethan looks forward to
attending Camp Baco in the Adirondacks this summer. He is an avid New York Mets
fan and loves to spend time with his friends and family. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This week’s Torah portion describes a
disgruntled group of people, led by Korach, Datan and Aviram, who are unhappy with
the leadership of Moses and Aaron. The narrative takes place in the desert
where our ancestors were journeying towards the Promised Land. Korach was a Levite and so were most of his
followers. Levites were assistants to the priests, so they knew a
lot about the required animal sacrifices as well as looking after the sacred
furnishings of the Tabernacle. Korach
thought, “What right do Moses and Aaron have to
be our leaders?” What did Moses, under God’s instruction do about this? He told the people that followed Korach to
go to the tent of meeting and told them to
bring fire pans for making a fire offering to God, so God could choose who is holy. During the day of reckoning, God opened a hole in the earth that swallowed up the ringleaders of the
rebellion. Furthermore, God made the fire consume
the 250 people that had supported Korach. When some Jews blamed Moses and Aaron
for the death of these people. God became angry and caused a plague to
kill 14,700 more people. The defiance
against Moses and Aaron was considered to be
defiance against God. What I found interesting is that
people still got upset after God had killed the 250 supporters of Korach. They had already witnessed the power of
God, so why would they defy God again? After witnessing how God crushed Korach’s
rebellion with one blow, wouldn’t they be afraid to
speak out against God? The Jews
challenged God again because they felt that the
250 rebels did not deserve to die. How
could they worship a god whom they perceived
as a mass murderer? I think that God has gotten kinder in
the past 3000 years or so. Humanity
has done many foolish and horrible things that
could have easily made God angry. Throughout history, other nations have
defamed the Jewish religion as well as persecuted and murdered their Jewish
populations. This has occurred many
times throughout history, yet God appears to
be silent. Does that mean that God has become kinder and more forgiving? We cannot predict what God will do
next. We don’t really have a way of telling whether
God is angry or happy, except when we pray to him. I believe that God is generally happy and
pleased. Maybe it is because many Jews are still loyal to God, continue
to pray in synagogues and have not lost faith. Perhaps that is why God hasn’t crushed
another rebellion as in the days of Korach. If this is so, how can we explain the
senseless murder of Jews in the modern age?
I don’t think that God wanted all of
these Jews to die. The perpetrators of
the Holocaust were obviously blinded by
hate and rage against the Jews. I
believe the difference between the slaughtering of
Korach’s followers and the death of Jews during modern history is that God didn’t
cause these to happen. Throughout the ages, there have been
people that argued that Judaism is a false religion or that Jews are an inferior
race, or that there is a Zionist conspiracy to take over the world. In the twenty first century, I believe that
all of these theories should be put to rest and replaced by
universal religious tolerance. I
believe that no matter how much we oppose other faiths’
traditions, we should try not to change other people’s religions or beliefs. I don’t believe in religious
propaganda. I think that if someone wants to change religions, it
is up to them to make that decision. This Torah portion inspired me to
think about human nature and how we never learn from our mistakes, even though
we may adapt and thrive. In the book, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of
children were stranded on a deserted island, low on supplies and had to choose a
leader from their group. Ralph was chosen as the leader, but some
children in the group didn’t want him to continue as the
leader. Like Moses, Ralph was not
corrupt in any way.
Just as was the case with Korach and his followers, Jack and his
followers in Lord of the Flies simply wanted to
seize power for themselves. As in the
case of Korach’s rebellion, there was violence
and bloodshed and a lot of children died or were injured. In this situation, God did not
intervene. Only the adults appeared at the end of the book to rescue the
children who survived. Some commentators wrote that in
Parshat Korach, there were different groups of rebels who had different reasons why
they disliked Moses. If the rebellion
had actually succeeded, the different
groups would probably have ended up fighting amongst themselves. The conflict wasn’t really about God at
all!!! It was all about power!!! Like God, I like to cooperate with my
friends and peers and so do my parents. I need cooperation from people and they
need cooperation from me. Like most people, I work better in
groups when we get along. If people
are arguing, nothing gets done and it can get heavy
on my shoulders, which I don’t like. God also needed cooperation to help get
the Jews out of the desert and to the safety of Canaan. I would like to thank my parents for
making this all possible, for setting up my bar mitzvah and doing all the fun
stuff like arranging the party. I
would also like to thank my Mom for reading from
the Torah and my Dad for volunteering with me. I would like to thank the most helpful
tutor in the world, Nina Nesher. I want to thank my brother for being my
brother and encouraging me and sometimes telling me that it won’t be so hard to
do. I would like to thank my friends
for being there for me and accepting the fact
that I couldn’t do something with them because I had to prepare for today. I would like to thank my Hebrew School
friends for making Hebrew School more interesting. I would like to thank my Hebrew School teachers, especially Neil and Jillian
and Shelly Koy, our wonderful principal. Finally, I want to thank all of you
for being here today, for cheering me on and helping me through this entire experience. Shabbat Shalom
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