Editor’s note: Due to an editing error, the Torah Thoughts column in the July 8 edition addressed the wrong Torah portion. The correct parashah for the week of July 8 was Chukat, Numbers 19:1-22:1. The Haftarah was Judges 11:1-33. J. regrets the error.
Parashat Korach
Numbers 16:1-18:32
Haftarah: I Samuel 11:14 -12:22
I have recently offered care to a young woman undergoing treatment for an eating disorder. In the treatment program, the young women learn about the distorted thoughts that eating disorders produce in their minds. They are encouraged to relate to the eating disorder as to an alien entity within them, which subjects them to self-destructive rules, warnings and threats.
When asked what “rules” their own personal eating disorder imposes on them, the young women offer strange imperatives like, “You may not eat more than one-fourth of the food on your plate.” “If you don’t do what I say, you will be fat and ugly for the rest of your life.” “You must be the thinnest person in the room or else you are worthless.” “You must be the last person in the room to finish your meal or I will make you miserable for the rest of the day.”
The program staff’s favorite book, “Life Without Ed” by Jenni Schaefer and Thom Rutledge, contains an extraordinary little chapter called, “Compare and Despair.” This chapter articulates the deep truth that any time we compare ourselves to other people, we are sure to suffer. For there is always someone, somewhere, who is thinner than we are, prettier/handsomer than we are, smarter, richer or more talented than we are (depending on what our inner rules are about what we are supposed to be). Comparing ourselves to others is a sure-fire recipe for self-loathing.
This is precisely the teaching of this week’s profound parashah. The Torah tells us that Korach rose up against Moses and Aaron, protesting, “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and God is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above God’s congregation?” (Numbers 16:3)
Korach’s challenge of Moses and Aaron’s leadership is the fruit of what contemporary meditation teachers call “comparative mind.” Just beneath their apparently lofty words lie the thoughts, “What makes you think you are better than the rest of us?” and “I could do it better than you.” This is raw envy, expressing itself in a battle over leadership, and the results are literally disastrous.
Rebbe Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev offers the following fascinating insight: For people who labor only to give pleasure to the Creator (i.e. for the good of the world), it makes no difference whether one does the work oneself or it is done by another. Only people who work for the sake of receiving personal reward need to do the work themselves. And this was the sin of Korach, hinted at by the peculiar phrase, “And Korach took,” (16:1) suggesting that Korach wanted to take the leadership role — and the credit — for himself. Had his chief concern been for the good of the people rather than for his own ego, it would not have mattered who was in the forefront, and the community would have been spared a terrible trauma.
Our everyday attacks of envy generally do less spectacular harm than that described in the parashah, when the rebellious group is literally swallowed up, falling to a fiery death into the earth. Our envy of other people’s gifts generally does subtler damage — to our relationships with others, to our own sense of self-worth, and to our awareness of the greater good.
Unlike the young women in the eating disorders treatment program, most of us do not walk around asking, “Am I the thinnest person in the room?” But in a subconscious way, we may in fact look around, wondering, “Is there someone here smarter than I? Wiser? Richer? More talented? More powerful?”
The truth is, there is always someone more powerful, smarter, more attractive or more gifted than we are. But this very question is the fruit of spiritually disordered thinking, as if the goal of life is to be the “best” at whatever criterion we use at a particular moment to bolster our self-esteem.
In fact, as Rebbe Levi Yitzhak states, the purpose of life is “to give pleasure to the Creator,” that is, to do good for others and for the world. We need not be “the best” or the most admired, for these things do not matter. What matters is the collective effort of the human family to better the world. How much illness, how much suffering, how much despair could be relieved if we could all live this truth? May it be so.
Rabbi Amy Eilberg is a spiritual director in private practice.