Thank you for sending your first podcast to me, to which I listened with great pleasure.
You conduct your discourses in the pleasing manner of an experienced teacher, and the content of your first podcast was superb. It is a brilliant debut, and I trust it will prove most successful.
I certainly hope it does, because you have a lot to teach your students -- Jews and non-Jews alike.
A few comments and questions on the substance of the podcast (and the Torah portion on which it was built, Korach):
(1) I am deeply grateful for your praise of debate and argument as means of clearing air, arriving at truth, and building peace. The "argument for the sake of heaven" tradition of Hillel and Shammai (treated superbly at book-length by your late colleague, Rabbi Lord Sacks -- and you, by the way, are a rabbi whose name deserves to be mentioned alongside that of Lord Sacks) is a rich source of learning and should be mined much, much more than it is.
(2) I, too, was a high school and college debater and, later, the debate coach and the director of forensics at The University of Chicago. Good debating begins with the proposition that one must undertake to master both sides of an argument.
(3) For good or for ill, not every debate gets judged by the same Judge who decided the winner between Moses and Korach. Nor is the announcement of the winner -- or, more to the point, the loser! -- so decisive and apparent. Most of the time, we humans have a hard time deciding who wins a debate. The vehicles we typically use -- a show of hands; or having experts tell us -- are not always satisfying and not always conclusive.
(4) In your commentary on Korach, you described him as a "rich man" aggrieved because the children of Levi, consigned to the eternal priesthood, were deprived of an allotment of the land of Israel. But was that criticism of Korach fair?
(a) The incident occurred while the Israelites were still wandering in The Wilderness, between slavery in Egypt and entry into the Promised Land. Had anyone really had time to get rich during the period? The Torah doesn't tell us a lot about the day-to-day economy of the Israelites during the wandering, does it? We know a few things -- that possessions were carried out of Egypt; that occasionally God supplied rather miraculous nutriment to tide the people over crises; that from time to time a collection was taken up (to build a golden calf on the plain below Sinai; later to build and outfit the Ark of the Covenant; etc.), and one wonders about things such as wherefrom came the goods that were donated and the tools with which labor was performed.
(b) What's more, didn't the decision to make Levi landless come right in Parashat Korach itself, after Korach, his two allies, and their families were swallowed up by the earth? It was almost as if it were punishment of the Tribe of Levi, Aaron and his descendants included, because of Korach's presumptions and rebellions.
(c) But if, by provoking such questions, you send your students, like me, to go read Torah looking for answers, you really have done your job quite well, haven't you?
(5) You are certainly right, however, that Korach's argument, as revealed by its time, place, and manner as well as by its substance, was not ultimately an argument of principle as it was one of a contest for power -- not questioning authority in a principled way, but simply asserting one's own entitlement to govern others without offering a justification of oneself. Moses recognized the nature of Korach's argument and, rather than reframing the debate and attempting to elevate it, called it out. Fortunately, he could appeal to God, from whom legitimate authority flowed, to decide the matter openly. (Most of us don't have that happy recourse, alas.)
(6) You are right that we get a sense of the egalitarian dimension of Korach's argument, and that, at first blush, particularly to modern minds, there is a certain appeal to a demand for equality for the sake of equality. (This is certainly an American curse, and as Tocqueville warned, fetishism about equality can be destructive of liberty and other principles and values. but, of course, it is hardly an American curse alone). I loved your illustrations of the kind of criticisms that Korach might have thrown at Moses: "You weren't even a slave!" "You married a non-Israelite!" These echoes of condemnations of our time -- "You haven't suffered enough!"; "check your privilege!"; "you associate with the wrong people!" -- ring true, and instructively so.
So, you get a rave review, two thumbs up, five stars, from me!
Dear Rabbi Moffic,
Thank you for sending your first podcast to me, to which I listened with great pleasure.
You conduct your discourses in the pleasing manner of an experienced teacher, and the content of your first podcast was superb. It is a brilliant debut, and I trust it will prove most successful.
I certainly hope it does, because you have a lot to teach your students -- Jews and non-Jews alike.
A few comments and questions on the substance of the podcast (and the Torah portion on which it was built, Korach):
(1) I am deeply grateful for your praise of debate and argument as means of clearing air, arriving at truth, and building peace. The "argument for the sake of heaven" tradition of Hillel and Shammai (treated superbly at book-length by your late colleague, Rabbi Lord Sacks -- and you, by the way, are a rabbi whose name deserves to be mentioned alongside that of Lord Sacks) is a rich source of learning and should be mined much, much more than it is.
(2) I, too, was a high school and college debater and, later, the debate coach and the director of forensics at The University of Chicago. Good debating begins with the proposition that one must undertake to master both sides of an argument.
(3) For good or for ill, not every debate gets judged by the same Judge who decided the winner between Moses and Korach. Nor is the announcement of the winner -- or, more to the point, the loser! -- so decisive and apparent. Most of the time, we humans have a hard time deciding who wins a debate. The vehicles we typically use -- a show of hands; or having experts tell us -- are not always satisfying and not always conclusive.
(4) In your commentary on Korach, you described him as a "rich man" aggrieved because the children of Levi, consigned to the eternal priesthood, were deprived of an allotment of the land of Israel. But was that criticism of Korach fair?
(a) The incident occurred while the Israelites were still wandering in The Wilderness, between slavery in Egypt and entry into the Promised Land. Had anyone really had time to get rich during the period? The Torah doesn't tell us a lot about the day-to-day economy of the Israelites during the wandering, does it? We know a few things -- that possessions were carried out of Egypt; that occasionally God supplied rather miraculous nutriment to tide the people over crises; that from time to time a collection was taken up (to build a golden calf on the plain below Sinai; later to build and outfit the Ark of the Covenant; etc.), and one wonders about things such as wherefrom came the goods that were donated and the tools with which labor was performed.
(b) What's more, didn't the decision to make Levi landless come right in Parashat Korach itself, after Korach, his two allies, and their families were swallowed up by the earth? It was almost as if it were punishment of the Tribe of Levi, Aaron and his descendants included, because of Korach's presumptions and rebellions.
(c) But if, by provoking such questions, you send your students, like me, to go read Torah looking for answers, you really have done your job quite well, haven't you?
(5) You are certainly right, however, that Korach's argument, as revealed by its time, place, and manner as well as by its substance, was not ultimately an argument of principle as it was one of a contest for power -- not questioning authority in a principled way, but simply asserting one's own entitlement to govern others without offering a justification of oneself. Moses recognized the nature of Korach's argument and, rather than reframing the debate and attempting to elevate it, called it out. Fortunately, he could appeal to God, from whom legitimate authority flowed, to decide the matter openly. (Most of us don't have that happy recourse, alas.)
(6) You are right that we get a sense of the egalitarian dimension of Korach's argument, and that, at first blush, particularly to modern minds, there is a certain appeal to a demand for equality for the sake of equality. (This is certainly an American curse, and as Tocqueville warned, fetishism about equality can be destructive of liberty and other principles and values. but, of course, it is hardly an American curse alone). I loved your illustrations of the kind of criticisms that Korach might have thrown at Moses: "You weren't even a slave!" "You married a non-Israelite!" These echoes of condemnations of our time -- "You haven't suffered enough!"; "check your privilege!"; "you associate with the wrong people!" -- ring true, and instructively so.
So, you get a rave review, two thumbs up, five stars, from me!