Rabbi Sidney Applebaum of Congregation Beth Judah in Brooklyn, the shul where I grew up, used to say that he waits all year to deliver the sermon for Parashat Korach.
Rabbi Applebaum — who was loved and served his congregation with love (he had a lifetime contract) — watched destructive efforts advanced against some of his closest colleagues and friends.
He said cynics slandered these people, spreading criticism while meandering through the weekly Kiddush, and built social alliances through carpools, coffee klatches, bowling matches and poker games.
In Korach, we encounter jealous relatives of Moshe Rabbeinu and his brother, Aharon the High Kohen, who stir up a rebellion of broader disaffection among the Jews. Two recurring agitators, Datan and Aviram, emerge as supportive ringleaders from outside the family, and they soon craft a coalition of 250 prominent leaders who also want a piece of the action.
“You take too much [authority] for yourselves,” the defiant ringleaders proclaim (Numbers 16:3).
Moshe is not a politician, and there is no one more modest and humble than he. He has no ambition to fight for political survival and, frankly, would walk away from it all if God would allow it.
Ultimately, it takes a miracle from God to maintain Moshe’s position.
Politics can bring out the worst in people. In America, Democrats find fault in virtually everything that George W. Bush ever did or said. Republicans find fault in virtually everything pertaining to or emanating from Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. And think of Israel, with more than a dozen such parties.
Regardless of where someone is on the political spectrum, party politics often becomes cynical and appalling. When George W. Bush makes a slip, the comedy shows replay it. And when Barack Obama refers to America’s 57 states — probably having used a Heinz ketchup bottle earlier that day at lunch — his opponents ensure that his slip goes viral on YouTube.
In 30 years of public life, sometimes I have misspoken or mispronounced a word, even uttered a malapropism, because I was tired or because my mind was racing three paragraphs ahead of what I was saying. However, I am not famous, rarely speak in front of a camera, and thus have survived.
As venomous as secular politics can be when partisans engage in character assassination to vie for power and prestige, the matter becomes so much more dispiriting when Korach-style politics comes into the synagogue or church.
A new pastor is hired — or a rabbi or cantor — and the search committee’s opposing minority vows that she will never have a day’s peace. Soon cynics are making lists, and there begins a very tragic congregational descent into what might be termed “the other kind of clergy abuse.” How well does the selected pastor select his ties? Does the rabbi iron her skirt? And when will she stop arriving at services only on time, when the list-makers demand that she always arrive five minutes early?
Moshe Rabbeinu and Aharon the High Kohen held power without mobilizing voters to stand with them. They did not campaign or take polls. They did not engage in “spin” or “damage control.” Rather, God opened the mouth of the Earth, and it swallowed the rebellious. No chads to count.
In “Tending the Vineyard” (Shaar), Rabbi Berel Wein notes that the phenomenon does not always end so neatly. Nor is this tragic phenomenon unique to the Jewish people. G. Lloyd Rediger makes that clear in “Clergy Killers: Guidance for Pastors and Congregations Under Attack,” as does Kenneth Haugk in “Antagonists in the Church.” In literature, stage and screen, one is reminded of even more tragic figures: Sir Thomas More (“A Man for All Seasons”) and St. Thomas Becket, for example. And Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg wondered whether more of our 6 million martyrs might have been saved during the 1940s if some of our secular organizations had not similarly been plagued by organizational politics.
Every time I meet a rabbi or pastor who now is a full-time stockbroker, lawyer, real estate agent or therapist, and I ask why he or she left the rabbinate, the answer is often the same. She did not leave to make more money (although she has found that she now does earn more), and he did not lose his passion to serve God or to pastor a flock. Instead, I hear, “I just couldn’t take the politics anymore.”
Thankfully, Moshe Rabbeinu had God to steer him through the Korach rebellion with seismic support. Had Moshe and Aharon needed to hit the Sunday talk-show circuit to win back popular support, we might never have made it to the Promised Land.
Rabbi Dov Fischer, adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School, is a columnist for several online magazines and is rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County (yioc.org). He blogs at rabbidov.com.
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