June 24th, 2017 — Shabbat Korah
Rabbi Sharon Brous
It’s not expressly clear why Korah, who rose up before Moses and Aaron to declare that all people are holy, deserving of voice and dignity, deserved to die a gruesome death. Scripture is perhaps purposely ambiguous: on one hand warning us of the greedy, narcissist posing-as-populist who seeks only his own profit and aggrandizement, and on the other alerting us to the very real shortcomings in our systems, which too often prey on the most vulnerable and silence voices of dissent.