CHOCHMAS NASHIM: KORACH THE ANCIENT GEORGE WASHINGTON: REBELION CELEBRATION
By: Suri Davis
So interesting that I write this dvar torah on the 243rd anniversary of the anniversary English rebels declared freedom from the king. What does it mean to live under a king…one might look at today’s Saudi Arabia, and the disappearances and deaths of those who oppose the king.
Interesting for me when I began writing my book The Legal History of the Right to Die in America, I researched the history of suicide in America, which legal theory came from English law, as many of our early laws were British born. When a man committed suicide as a subject of the king, he had a value as the servant to the king, and the king would reclaim that value by having his officers go to the man’s home and take his belongings from the family to compensate the king for the intentional “theft” of his subject. A criminal ordinance issued by Louis XIV in 1670 was far more severe in its punishment: the dead person’s body was drawn through the streets, face down, and then hung or thrown on a garbage heap. Additionally, all of the person’s property was confiscated.
WHICH MAKES this even more fascinating is that those who are learning Daf Yomi, are learning Masechet Arakin, which is about the valuation of people of different ages and genders and with certain special needs. Person A may vow that he will pay the value of Person B to the holy sanctuary.
This criminalization of suicide was changed During the Revolutionary era, lenience toward suicide became one way for colonial governments to distinguish themselves from their British counterparts. By 1792, seven states had prohibited forfeiture, though they remained silent on the question of ignominious burial and posthumous desecration. People as valued chattel to the king or government.
Why this discussion? Because both Korach and his people and George Washington and his people rebelled against the king. Korach’s rebellion we mourn, yet we have named a Torah portion in his honor. This is so because one might have thought that the reason Korach rebelled was for his ego. The answer is that it was Korach’s desire to get closer to G-d, he went about it the wrong way. Korach did not rebel by stating there is no G-d, but by questioning why he, who was also a Levite, could not be an appointed officer in the service of G-d, he wanted to be able to serve G-d on a higher level.
Why did the revolutionaries rebel? Ego? Or religious freedom, equality, not to be mere chattel to a king. To own land, to find one’s own destiny, there were real goals. The king was taxing his subjects to the point where they could no longer advance.
In a prior dvar torah, I distinguished between G-d and other kings, in that other kings, like Pharaoh, wanted to subjugate their servants, to break them, like Pharaoh, Hitler, modern day Saudi Arabia and Iran. But G-d has given a life manual in which we can shine, we are challenged to be G-dlike.
It is so very difficult to review history because our perception changes over time, as individuals and a community.
We review Korach’s history and see that it turned out poorly for him and his followers, so we determined his acts were poorly conceived. We celebrate the 4th of July and after 243 years, we can see a nation strong in moral precedence- – far from perfect, but struggling with our morality and ethics daily.
I ponder about the 30 years I have been practicing law, the changes that I’ve seen. When I started law school in 1986, the Supreme Court, in Bowers v. Hardwick, permitted Texas to pass a law stating that homosexuality was immoral and illegal, and permitting Texas to jail homosexuals. [How they knew what was going on behind close doors???????], When I was completing my Masters in Tax in 2014, the Supreme Court then found, in Obergefell v. Hodges, that the constitution’s 14th Amendment gave homosexuals “a fundamental [legal] right” to marry. The world had changed.
It is so very difficult as we live our lives to determine what is right and wrong in many situations. We are persuaded by our peers and community, indeed we choose our community so that we join a group of people with whom we share values, to ease our ability to stay on a path we feel is true….Korach persuaded over 4,000 Jews to follow his path…
Korach’s inentions were noble, his execution of his desires was not. Our ancestors’ desire for religious freedom, the ability to pursue life, liberty and happiness was noble. We celebrate all that we have accomplished in such a shore period of time in history, in the diaspora. We thank HKBH/G-d, that if we still have to be in exile, that he has permitted us lands where we can live and practice our religion in peace.
We celebrate our Day of Independence from a king who did not believe in religious tolerance. We thank G-d that we are not independent from our true king, G-d, that He watches over us always, as we say in our shmoneh esreh prayer: V’al nifliotechah v’tovotecah shebichal et, erev vavoker vatzaharaim/thank you G-d for every single small miracle of nature which occurs every second of every day in the evening, morning and afternoon [the fact that our feet and back lift us, our eyes see, our lungs continue to fill with air] we take it for granted every day, but we thank You, G-d for these minute by minute miracles which sustain us. As we sought independence from Pharaoh so we could serve G-d, we are thankful for our independence from the English king, which permits us to continue to serve G-d.
Happy 4th of July.
Shabbat shalom.
-Suri