To the Editor:

By casting Koran in the guise of a religious hero and martyr, Robert J. Milch [“Korah’s Revolt,” February] has tried to give the modern rebel against the halakhic system and Jewish authority a foothold in traditional Judaism. Such a foothold, however, is not there to be had. A heroic vision of Korah is not borne out by biblical texts, commentaries, or tradition. In fact, Korah’s revolt is seen as the archetype of feigned altruism: “And which controversy had no noble purpose? The controversy of Korah and his company” (Pirke Avot V:20). History, too, denies the durability of brands of Judaism that have done away with Halakhah and its authority.

As Mr. Milch rightly points out, religious and political rebellion are not readily separable. If Korah saw himself as a Levite deprived of his ancestral rights, his sudden egalitarianism and scorn for authority sound much more like sour grapes than religious zeal.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in his article, “The First Rebellion Against Torah Authority” (Shiurei Harav, 1974), identifies two distinct strains of complaints voiced by Korah: resentment toward authority—as personified by Moses; and, perhaps more crucial, resentment toward a specific system of Halakhah, or structure, for Jewish life.

The Midrash relates that Korah and his congregation came before Moses dressed in blue garments that required tzitzit, or fringes. Does a garment that is all blue still require a blue fringe? they asked. Yes, answered Moses. They jeered, and asked him another question: must a house that is full of Torah scrolls have a mezuzah—a parch ment with particular biblical passages written on it—affixed to the door? Yes, Moses answered again, and again they jeered.

Mr. Milch’s psychoanalytic treatment of the Midrash manages to miss its point. What the Midrash is getting at is the nature of the relationship between theory and the individual actions involved in Halakhah, and the relationship between the Jewish community and authority. The two Halakhot the Midrash chooses to illustrate these relationships—tzitzit and mezuzah—are binding upon individuals. They cannot be performed by proxy or by the general community. Tzitzit worn against a man’s body and the mezuzah that a person attaches to the door of his house show the recognition of God’s presence in regular, workaday life. This binding of the individual to God . . . is inherent in all of Halakhah.

The Midrash explores this relationship through the issue of content as opposed to structure. “If we have grasped the meat of a theory—the blue color of the garment, the Torah scrolls that fill a house—what need do we have for the particulars of the Halakhah?” Korah was asking. Moses saw a pressing need: the focus in Judaism is on individual actions because action is the filter of ideology. The Halakhah is the meeting point between theory and practice in the Jewish scheme of things, and the actions prescribed by the Halakhah are the clothes that theory wears in order to have an impact on people’s lives.

The metaphors of tzitzit and mezuzah also address the relationship between community and authority. Just as the blue garment is not complete without its blue fringe and the house full of Torah scrolls is not fit for living in without its mezuzah, the Jewish community is not complete or focused without a source of authority—teachers—as well. For the primary function of the Jewish leader is to teach, and thus to lead. But the leader is contingent on his people in the same way that the blue fringe’s value is contingent on the garment and the functional quality of the mezuzah is only present when it is affixed to a house.

Mr. Milch’s article raises one of the basic problems in Jewish life today: can commitment to and involvement in a Jewish way of life come about without commitment to Halakhah—and its authority? The answer in Moses’ day was no. The answer today is the same.

Adina Klahr
Lawrence, New York

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To the Editor:

As a direct descendant of Aaron, I suppose I should take exception to Robert J. Milch’s attempt to rehabilitate the Levite Korah. After all, Korah tried to crack our monopoly of the sacred service until the LORD made it terminally plain, to him and any bystanders with similar notions, that they were on the wrong track. That he should now be getting a sympathetic press after centuries of midrashic animadversion may be alarming to some, but the process was already under way in Deuteronomy. In its reference to the uprising, this book pointedly omits the name of Korah from the cast of villains, although he got top billing the first time around. In fact, Deuteronomy tends to play down the role of the high priests, urging all Israel to be a nation of priests, which was Korah’s position all along (Numbers 16:3). The LORD does not change, but times do. It may be a risky thing to say in an area where the earth is constantly threatening to open up, but I do not hold it against Korah—or his apologist—for daring to suggest that ancient dicta may be subject to humanistic review.

Albert L. Reiner
Greenbrae, California

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Robert Milch writes:

Adina Klahr agrees with my appraisal of Korah’s position on the mitzvot pertaining to the blue fringe and the mezuzah, and she also agrees that the real issue was authority and not the specific commandments that he challenged. Her response to this, however, is somewhat circular and, in addition, highly selective in its treatment of the evidence, for she validates authority by appealing to authority, and she pulls this off by ignoring what Korah had to say about various other laws that do not fit into her schema—most especially the mitzvot involved in the case of the impoverished widow—and by failing to deal with the present-day manifestations of the issue that were mentioned in my article.

While it is possible to maintain that certain mitzvot, essentially value-free and abstract, have no humanly ascertainable purpose and exist only to be obeyed, Korah apparently held that such a cavalier view cannot be taken with respect to commandments whose purpose is evident, especially when legalistic emphasis on their form, rather than their content, may be detrimental to the quality of the observant Jew’s everyday life. Even if Korah were pursuing his own interests in raising this issue, it is still a serious problem. The gravity of the problem becomes even more apparent when it is recalled, as I pointed out, that in this respect Korah may have been a mouthpiece for concerns felt by the same sages who were creating the elaborate halakhic legal system, although they were simply setting him up as a straw man to be refuted and discredited.

The attitude of the sages to Korah is quite ambivalent, and the unattributed saying from Pirke Avot cited by Miss Klahr may not mean what she suggests. The passage says that “controversies in the name of heaven will in the end be established, and controversies not in the name of heaven will not be established,” which is more or less the same as saying that only time will tell. Admittedly the passage mentions Korah’s controversy as an example of the second category, but since we are not yet at “the end,” and human history is still in progress, this is hardly an absolute dictum but simply a subjective judgment reflecting the view of Korah current at the time that Pirke Avot was compiled.

According to R. Travers Herford, in his commentary on Pirke Avot, the author of this saying may well have been Rabban Gamaliel the Elder, who is quoted in the New Testament as having said much the same thing about the early Christians: “For if this idea of theirs is of human origin . . . it will collapse; but if it is from God, you will never be able to put them down” (Acts 5:38-39). Undoubtedly Gamaliel expected Christianity to die out, but if he were to come back today, and discover that it has flourished for the past two thousand years, surely he would not conclude, on this account, that Peter was right and he was wrong. By the same token, taking the passage in Pirke Avot as embodying a pragmatic rule of thumb to be followed in regard to differences of opinion, it cannot be claimed that the traditional view of Korah is necessarily correct simply because it has prevailed for an equally long time.