Um... oops?

[rhu]

So I'm working on my dvar Torah that I agreed to give this coming Shabbat, and I found a few more sources, and suddenly I realize that the logical conclusion of what first got me interested is something banal and obvious. Do I backtrack? Change topics? Plow ahead anyway?

Here are my notes so far. They're pretty jumbled and rough.

I was struck while reading the parsha by the word "chayyim", as I remarked last week. Why does the Torah specify that Korah's followers plummeted alive into the pit?

What I was hoping to justify as an explanation is that since they didn't die immediately, they had a chance to do teshuvah, to repent. What rachmanus, what mercy, this shows. And jik found a source via Google that supports this view:

Moshe loved all the Jewish people, including Korach and his followers. These people were sinning terribly, since by quarreling with him, they were actually defying Hashem's will. Had they died immediately, they would have left this world without doing teshuvah, and they would thus have lost their share in Olam Haba — the World to Come. Therefore, he prayed that they descend alive to the pit, hoping that while still alive, they would regret their wrongdoings and do teshuvah.

Problem one: this answer is not sourced at that web page, and I can't find it anywhere else.

There's the famous (too famous) aggadah on Sanhedrin 110a, where Rabbah bar bar Chana is taken by an Arab to the spot where the earth's mouth opened up, and once every 30 days as the mouth of gehinnom passes beneath that spot one can supposedly hear them say "Moshe and his Torah are true, and we were wrong!"

This is preceded by the following explanation. In a few more chapters, the Torah says "uvnei korach lo metu" (and the sons of Korach did not die): Tana, mishum rabeinu am'ru: makom nitbatzer lahem b'geihinom It was taught, in the name of our rabbis, they said: a fortified place was set aside for them in gehinnom v'yash'vu alav v'am'ru shirah and they dwelt upon it and recited shirah -- songs of praise and thanksgiving.

On this passage, on the words "a fortified place", Rashi explains: nitbatzer is melashon (Is. 27) 'ir b'tzeirah from the language in Isaiah 27 of a "fortified city." Hitkin lahon HKB"H God made for them (for the sons of Korach) makom gavoah a high place shelo haamiku kawl kach gehinnom that they should not something??? all of gehinnom v'lo metu and they did not die. So homeletics aside, Rashi seems to me to simply be explaining the logistics of how a makom nitbatzer would save them. One commetary I saw and have since lost track of suggested that they were then able to climb back out of the pit before it closed.

On v'am'ru shira Steinsaltz brings in this explanation in the name of the Raybatz: "To praise Hashem because he made a miracle like this for them -- that as we say in the midrash that they initially opened the rebellion (machloket), in any case they did teshuvah, and they atoned for themselves."

Query: Is this shirah the Psalms 42 et seq that are brought in the name of the sons of Korach? You'd think so, but no one seems to say it directly.

On the other hand, the Yalkut explains homiletically on Ps 42:1 that:

Anyone who does teshuvah from the sin that is in his hand, HKB"H (God) adds on and calls him by the name "chaviv" (beloved friend). Go and see in the case of the sons of Korach: when they did not do teshuvah they were not called "shoshanim vididim" (roses and precious ones); once they did teshuvah they were called "shoshanim vididim", as it is said: (prooftext from our verse) "A song for the shoshanim, for the sons of Korach, a Psalm, a song of the yedidot"

The Midrash tanchumah on this parsha comments on our verse (Num 16:33) "Yesh omrim chayyim n'dunin ad achshav" -- there are those who say they were sentenced(?) to live until now.

So I'm somewhat confused: Were they granted some sort of immortaility? If so, was that a reward -- in which case they'd be kind of Elijah-like. Maybe given that one who atones, his sins are counted as merits, then if they were guilty of the highest rebellion, and their once-every-30-day-voices are teshuvah gamur, then are they considered worthy to that level?

Or is this a punishment, a sort of eternal torment?

Or is it in between? Their eternal job is to warn us of the consequences of rebellion?

I don't find any of those answers satisfactory, and I don't find any of them explicitly supported or repudiated in any of my sources.

So now I'm without a conclusion and I'm worried that pretty much all my source material is "yeah, I learned that in tenth grade" stuff. My own thoughts are befuddled about what the message is. And it doesn't help that I don't believe in a literal gehinnom the way many of these sources do.

Help?

Comments

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

I'm struck by the ir b'tzeirah image. Both from the point that it's a high place (where the baal tshuvah stands is "higher" than where the one who never sinned stands), and from the "ir" idea. I'm bothered by the idea that their rebellion was such a big sin. Accusations of nepotism under the circumstances plainly visible to all would have been reasonable. Is G-d talking to everyone so plainly that Korach can or should know that Aaron his brother has in fact received divine assignment to the Kohanate? They are swallowed alive because, really, they don't deserve death, just something like death -- Miriam also received a little death in her tzaarat, for a similar type of rebellion. In a similar way, someone who has done something ... improper ... but doesn't really, in all justice, deserve death, someone who has, i.e. committed involuntary manslaughter, flees to a *city* that G-d has set up for him. In fact, the manslaughter's sentence is to live, but away from normal society. The person has to be set aside from the rest of the community, protected from the consequences of his actions by a fortification (as it were) set up by G-d. There are two approaches: the person can stay in a holding pattern until his release (e.g. by the death of the Kohen Gadol), or he can use the time as a retreat of sorts, and end up creating kiddush haShem.

Sometimes people cause maklokhet so terrible that it can split apart the Jewish people. I wonder if Korach can be re-visioned as a hero, confirming that sometimes maklokhet is necessary. Should he have taken it on faith that Moses had appointed Aaron non-nepotistically? I shudder. The fact that his rebellion leads to his remaining alive (how does G-d deal with other challenges? plagues! poisoned quail!), and protected, and able to praise G-d (does the Satan of the non-Jewish tradition praise G-d after his rebellion is struck down? or look for a midrash about the jealousy of the nachash in the garden?), suggests to me that there's a level of divine approval happening here.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

But the sources are all talking about bnei Korach being (potentially) saved. There's a debate (under the circumstances, I shy away from the word machloket in Sanhedrin about whether Korach (a) died in the pit, (b) died in the fire, (c) fell into the pit alive and then had his soul burned out by the fire, (d) didn't fall into the pit and wasn't burned by the fire... but was killed in the ensuing plague. No one there suggests that the K man himself lived out the day.

On the other hand, it is interesting that at the start of the sidra there are four conspirators -- Korach, Datan, Aviram, and On. We never hear about On after that; there's a great bit in this sugya in Sanhedrin where his wife basically talks sense into him and he survives (and they quote a prooftext from Proverbs that basically means "a good wife will save you from a lot of grief."

So anyway, we've got these four conspirators at the beginning, who are immediately reduced to three (with 250 collaborators). When judgment befalls them, we are explicitly told that Datan and Aviram and their entire families and all their worldly possessions descend into the earth. We are told that the 250 men who were "with Korach" are burned.

But we are never told what happens to Korach. That's why the gemara has the 4-way dispute I cited above. We are told that three sons of Korach survive --- whether by siding with Moshe before zero hour or by doing teshuvah while falling into the pit is unclear, but pshat later on is "uvnei Korach lo meitu", the sons of Korach did not die.

But the Torah never explicitly says what befell Korach. Is it possible that after Moshe's oration, Korach did teshuvah, but the rebellion that he had started was no longer in his control? Perhaps Datan, Aviram, and the 250 who brought strange fire remained in rebellion and were punished, but perhaps Korach and his family woke up that morning and already did teshuvah before the nes?

Must think more.

And I haven't even touched your "ir betzeirah" stuff. Are irei betzeirah equivalent to irei miklat? Must consider....

Thanks!

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm sorry, I thought I remembered that Korach and his band were heard making the praise, not that bnei Korach were.

I'm riffing without a text in front of me, but the fact that the conspirators were burned ... juxtapose w/ Aaron's sons, and all the midrashim thereon?