And Korach took… (Bamidbar 16:2)

We need not go further than the first word of the Parsha (VaYikach – And He TOOK) to discover the tragic and fatal flaw that foiled Korach. He was a taker. Ultimately, he had a selfish agenda. Had we been there, and had not the Torah revealed this to us, we too might have been taken by his seductive rhetoric, platitudes, and pithy aphorisms. He managed to sway hundreds of good and great people. We are not only meant to analyze and criticize Korach and to poke him post mortem like a pinata. NO! If the Torah is spelling all of this out for us, and it is aimed at our ears then we are all at risk. It is extremely important for us to take heed and guard ourselves from a selfish agenda.

When I used to teach prisoners, we were learning about the laws of a Beis HaKnesses and the Chay Adam was quoting a Gemara from Brochos that says, “If someone does not come to Shul, he is called a wicked neighbor.” I noticed immediately that the men were exchanging glances and I realized what was happening. I told them right away, that we are not learning this important piece of information to weaponize against anyone else, and to bludgeon others. If somebody else fails to come to Minyan then we have another Mitzvah, “Judge your people righteously”, and to find a good reason why he may not have come. Maybe he’s sick, or depressed, or occupied with some other Mitzvah. However, when you are waffling in bed and deciding whether or not to come, and you have no legitimate excuse, then you are at risk of gaining the title “wicked neighbor”. Let this piece of information be used by you and for you to be spurred into action, and not to be employed against anyone else.

Any valuable piece of Mussar or rebuke offered by the Torah is meant to caution each and every one of us. It is told that there was an itinerant speaker, a Maggid that came to a town and in preparation for his speech he quietly approached the Rabbi for a tip.

He asked the Rabbi if there was anything he needed to know. The Rabbi said despairingly, “They are YENIMITE JEWS!” The Maggid asked with wonderment, “YEMENITE JEWS!?” “No!” the Rabbi corrected, “YENIMITE! (in Yiddish YENEM means “others”) They always think you are talking about someone else, but just not them!”

Armed with this inside information the Maggid prepared a specialized and catered lecture for just such a crowd and he gave over his best stories and Torah sources for taking personal responsibility and not pointing fingers at other people. It was masterful and powerful. Afterwards, everyone crowded around and thanked him. They said, “That was the most important speech we have ever heard, because that guy over there, he really needed to hear it!”

The Chovos HaLevavos gives a clear “if/then” promise without any qualifications. If one engages personal interactions with a selfish motive then the mission will certainly fail, in this world and the next. However, if one acts out of a sense of dutiful concern then success in both worlds is guaranteed. We can all testify with our own experience to our reaction when confronting a zealous sales person in a store. Nobody wants to be a mere instrument for somebody’s even holy agenda. The person can be pleasant and charming but the weight of the agenda eventually crushes the relationship, like hugging one of those cuddly teddy bears on the front of a Mack Truck.

Reb Dessler says that at any given moment a person is either a giver or a taker. Either the “Nefesh Elochus” – the “G-dly Soul”, which is capable of living in a grander context beyond self, is driving our lives or the “Nefesh Behamios” – the “Animal Soul”, which is stuck on self, is dominating and animating our deeds. So, the world is neatly or not so neatly divided into two categories, two parties, two camps and two camps alone. There are givers and there are takers. We have to ask ourselves many times a day, “Which camp are we in?!”