Korach wants more. He wants what someone else has. It looks to him like their portion is better than his. There is comparison and jealousy and discontent.
Our Own Tendency To Compare
I invite you to feel into these patterns in yourself, the tendency to look outward and compare and evaluate, to say – that person is better than me, has a better deal than me, I wish I were like them, I wish I had their job, their honorable position in the community, I want more, I don’t like what I have, who I am, the way my life is. It gets down to that very basic instinct of the child who looks over at his sister’s cookie and says: hers is bigger. Korah and Moshe are in fact like siblings – they are cousins – and Korah is saying: why should he get more than me. So maybe bringing to mind a place of comparison for you and feeling that discontent in your body, just getting curious about it, what that sensation feels like somatically, to be looking out and comparing, almost like a leaving of your own body, the restlessness and abandonment of it, not present to the deliciousness of this cookie in front of you. You don’t have to judge that tendency in you, just noticing how it makes you feel, whether it is effective in making you feel happy and whole.
What’s Underneath
And maybe noticing, too, what lies underneath this tendency to comparison and envy, the deeper level of hurt and not mattering that undergirds it. That child that looks at his sister’s cookie and thinks it is always bigger, there is some unarticulated hurt there, some insecurity about his own belovedness and wholeness. He’s actually asking a deeper question with that envy; he’s asking – is love a scarce commodity such that if my sister gets more, I lose some, or is there enough to go around, am I always secure in that love? Do I still matter if she is here, too? Am I whole in and of myself or only if I have more or am more than someone else? Do I need to live in competition or is there enough to go around? Is my value relative or absolute?
Swallowed Up By Pain
The end result of those questions not being addressed inside us is what happens physically to Korach – we are swallowed up by the pit of that hurt, that sense of insecurity around our own value and mattering, as if the ground has indeed opened up underneath us and drawn us down into the enormous gaping hole of our own pain, as if we could disappear, as if we could fall off the face of the planet and it would not make any difference, a sense of total annihilation of self. This is what can and does happen to us sometimes when the pain that underlies our insecure comparing is not healed and tended to. It becomes a gaping wound that swallows us whole. I wonder if you have experienced anything like that, the enormous pain involved, looking around at others’ cookies and feeling the patheticness of your own cookie, your own life, your own value, the self rejection and self abandonment behind the wish to be someone else or have someone else’s life.
The Realm of “A Lot” and “A Little”
In our parsha, one of the signs of the comparative realm is the repeated use of the words rav, meaning “a lot,” and me’at, meaning “a little,” numerical evaluative terms used by both Korah and Moshe, back and forth – rav lakhem and me’at mikem (Numbers 16:3, 7, 9 and 13). You have a lot, no, you have a lot. There can be no healing on this level of discourse, as it is an engagement on the same level as the part, arguing about who has more and who has less, getting out a measuring stick and checking the veracity of the claims, remaining in the comparative realm.. It’s like the bickering that happens between those siblings over the size of their cookies. It doesn’t really address the underlying pain, the question of intrinsic value and wholeness that is being implicitly asked.
Other Areas of Numerical Evaluation
I invite you to notice how often we do that to ourselves and others, engage in the numerical comparative question around an emotional spiritual issue that needs tending. In my experience this often comes up around the issue of deserving compassion. How bad does your problem have to be to deserve compassion? Is there a quantifiable measure? Does this suffering I am feeling stack up in comparison to what others in the world are suffering? It’s as if we are putting numbers on people’s suffering, rationing out tenderness and kindness – you have to rank, it has to reach a certain threshold to earn it. There is a rav and me’at, a much and a little, quality to that endeavor, when actually, in God’s world, compassion is not a limited commodity. There is no scarcity and no need to evaluate and rank who needs it. We all need it, all the time.
The Divine Alternative (Going Back To Yaakov)
What’s the alternative to this evaluative, comparative, numerical way of thinking? How do we find healing for this deep hole of need inside us that leads to the comparison in the first place? The answer is to jump out of the whole relative comparative system into a different plane, to jump out into the divine plane. The answer, as always, is God. This answer is found in a much earlier part of the Torah, as God always puts the healing remedy before the affliction, makdim refuah lemakah (Megillah 13b). We find that remedy in Parashat Vayishlach, in something that Yaakov says to Esav when the two brothers meet after a long estrangement. Yaakov is trying to convince Esav to accept his gift, and Esav replies – I don’t need your gift – yesh li rav, I have rav, a lot, that same numerical word. Yaakov says – please take it because God has dealt graciously with me and yesh li kol, I have kol, meaning everything or all (Genesis 33:9-11).
Kol, “All”
This word kol, “all,” is the key that offers an alternative to the rav comparative mentality. The two brothers have a history of jealousy and grabbing, of comparing their cookies. Esav is willing to let go of the fight for now but on some level he is still inhabiting that comparative numerical universe, saying – yesh li rav, “I have a lot.” There is still a sense of thinking, like Korah, in terms of rav and me’at, a lot and a little, a relative comparative analysis that implies limited resources and competition. Yaakov, on the other hand, has jumped into a different plane with his yesh li kol, “I have all” statement. It’s not technically true, of course. No one has kol, has everything. What he is expressing here is an orientation towards life, a deeply religious orientation. Yesh li kol. I have everything I need. I am whole in and of myself. There is no lack in me because there is no lack in God. I am full, content, not looking outward, not making comparisons. I know that inherent in myself – yesh li kol. I have all. I am complete.
The One Who Fills Us
Only God can fill us this way. Only God can fill that deep hole of need and hurt in us so completely. Hazan et hakol, we say in birkat hamazon (Grace after meals)– the One who nourishes kol, nourishes all of us, yes, but perhaps also – nourishes the kol in us, nourishes in us the capacity to feel, like Yaakov, that yesh li kol, that I have everything I need. We look outward at other people and wish we were different, wish our lives were more like theirs, we think that will fill the hole in us, but it does not. We can’t fill that hole on the numerical evaluative front, even if we are on the more side. We have to jump out of the numbers game entirely and let God fill us and nourish us as only God can. God is the kol, the All. When we connect ourselves to that kol, to that eternity, to that entirety, to that completeness, we feel that mirrored in ourselves.
The Hole Is The Way In
It turns out that that gaping hole of need in us is actually a portal, an access point that allows us to connect to divine nourishment. We try to close off that hole – we don’t want to feel it – but in doing so, we also close off the way in to its filling, the entrypoint to our connection to the divine.
Maybe sensing that in yourself now, letting the intense need behind the comparative mindset open you up to God’s nourishment, letting the hole lead you to that divine connection and be filled by it. Yesh li kol. I have everything I need. Sensing that completeness, as if you contain the whole universe inside you, as if you are the entire universe, because you are. Maybe feeling it in your body as a swelling aura, something alive and beautiful that shines forth from within you but also encloses you. You are full and boundaried, self contained, content and complete in your own skin.
I imagine an entryway with a sign over it that says love or compassion or self worth or happiness or whatever it is you are most in need of. We think there are guards in front of the entrance that require us to bring a certain amount of something, money or deeds or effort or accomplishments. We think there is a line to get in and we have to be in the top 10 %,, that maybe we have to push our way in, edging others out of the way. Feeling that stress in your body. But no, it turns out, magically, that in God’s world, you just have to walk in, trusting that you are enough, claiming your completeness, letting go of the competition and joining hands with the others walking through the doorway with a smile, maybe even helping them in, relaxing in the nourishment that is your birthright as well as theirs. Yesh li kol. I have everything I need. Resting in that.
Grace, Not Earned
This nourishment, this wholeness, is never earned..Yaakov says, as a preface to his yesh li kol statement, ki hanani Elokim, for God has dealt graciously with me (Genesis 33:11). God has graced me with kol. We are already whole, each of us, born that way, for eternity. There is no way to lose that. Our only job is to return to it. No grasping, no need to prove anything. Just relaxing into your inherent all-ness, your inherent worthiness and honor, the divine truth of that, even in the reality of your messy humanity We are not perfect, but there is no need for perfection. It’s as if everyone is squabbling around us to get ahead, to get more, to be more, to be better, and we just stand still in the midst of all that shoving and pushing, knowing that we are not perfect, but it’s ok, we are enough, we are somehow still connected to the kol, still whole, just as we are.
Gratitude
When we feel that way, that deep self acceptance and enoughness and contentment, there is a tremendous overflow of gratitude that naturally arises. Instead of wanting my sister’s cookie, I am so fantastically nourished by my own cookie that I overflow with gratitude and joy and song. There is one last use of kol that I want to bring in – kol haneshamah tehallel yah (Psalm 150:9). My whole soul will praise God. Kol haneshamah – the kol, the all-ness of my soul – my capacity to feel whole, to feel All, to feel that, like yaakov, yesh li kol, I have it all right here inside me, that capacity is what sings out from me in praise – Halleluyah! Such glorious good news. That we are already whole, made so by God, that we are loved beyond numbers, beyond evidence or evaluation or comparison, intrinsically, for who we are, as we are, right alongside our beloved brothers and sisters. They, too, are the kol, the All. When we connect to our own kol, our own sense of wholeness, we also connect to theirs, and are moved, like Yaakov, not to fight over the cookie, but to offer it to them as a free overflowing gift.
There is no scarcity in this divine nourishment. Take it in, fill yourself up, fill up the hole that calls out for it. You are kol, and so is your sister. Rejoice and give thanks to the One who made it so.
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