Rabbis' Weekly Message

Dear Kol Rinah Family,

We had a spectacular, fun and meaningful Pride Shabbat last week. Thank you to all who came, and a special thank you Rabbi Micah Buck-Yael, for his words of Torah, and to Dean Rosen and Phillip Deitch, for sharing with us some of the history of the struggle for LGBTQ inclusion in the St. Louis Jewish community.

Tonight is our second Shabbat in the Park, at Villa Park in Olivette. Come to hang out starting at 5:30pm. We'll have a short service starting at 6pm, and then Kiddush and motzi (we'll bring the grape juice and challah). Bring a picnic dinner and stay and play, and chat. Everyone is welcome--all ages. Unless it's raining AT 6pm, we will be there for services. Please note that there will not be services at Kol Rinah tonight (unless it's raining at 6pm).

Candle lighting tonight is at 8:11pm. The days are getting shorter...

Tomorrow morning, services will be at 9am in the lower auditorium. I'll be leading Torah Talk at 10:10am and Rabbi Shafrin will be giving the sermon.

Mincha Saturday evening will be at 7:15pm, and Shabbat ends at 9:17pm.

As a reminder, if you know of someone who is sick or in the hospital, or just going through a rough patch, with their permission, give us a call or an email, so Rabbi Shafrin can call or visit, and so that the our Chesed Committee can see if they can be helpful.

And now for a little Torah...

In one of the most evocative, special effects-ready scenes in the Torah, the earth literally swallows Korach and his band alive after Korach rebels against Moses and Aaron: "The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, all Korach's people, and all their possessions. They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them; the earth closed over them and they vanished from the midst of the congregation" (Numbers 16:33-34).

And yet, we have Psalms (42, 44-49, 84, 85, 87 and 88) that are ascribed to the sons of Korach! The mystery is slightly clarified by the census later in Numbers, where it says that Korach and his band died, but "The sons of Korach did not die" (Numbers 26:11).

But they didn't exactly live, either, according to at least one tradition. Rabba bar Bar Chana, a figure similar to Sinbad the Sailor, tells that he was once shown a fissure in the ground where great heat was coming from. He was told to listen, and he heard singing coming from the fissure. And when he listened, he heard the voices saying, "Moses and his Torah are truth and they [referring to themselves] are liars" (Sanhedrin 110a).

So what happened to Korach's sons? They are still alive, suffering in the heat of the underworld, yet singing that Moses and the Torah are true, and they understand that they were wrong. They are at once being punished, painfully, yet are happy to be punished, and are declaring the rightness of Moses.

Now, this "just" a midrash, a myth of sorts about what happened to Korach's sons. But it contains a kernel of reality--the reality of what we really wish for our enemies. We want them to suffer, and to recognize that they were wrong and we are right.

We basically never get this kind of satisfaction. It's not even clear that Moses gets this satisfaction--because it's only a long time later that any human discovers the fate of the sons of Korach. Rather, we have to live with the justice that we, ourselves and our society, create in the world.

May justice be real, and satisfying to us all.

Shabbat shalom and see you in shul,

Rabbi Noah Arnow