There was a disagreement between Moses and Korach this week.

What was the argument about? The Zohar explains that Korach was chasing something that didn’t belong to him. When a person chases something that doesn’t belong to him even what belongs to him disappears.

What can we learn from this? Korach was challenging Moses with some questions. If a person is a holy and knowledgeable person does he still need faith and certainty in the Creator? And if a person has total faith in the Creator does he still need knowledge? For both questions, Moses answered absolutely yes.

Why? Because our spiritual knowledge, our Torah, the way we understand things has two paths. One is the certainty and belief system and the other is knowledge. We need both ways. If a person just believes, one day he may stop believing and everything will fall apart. If a person just has knowledge then as the Tikkunei Zohar says he will become dried out, he doesn’t have the warmth of faith.

What can we learn from this? Many times we get jealous. Where does the jealousy come from? We see that someone has a better life and we think the Creator forgot about us. We think they have a better life than us, a better house than us and it must be a mistake and we need to correct it. The Creator is everywhere! So when we get jealous the other person is not the problem! The punishment of jealousy is the jealousy itself! If I find myself getting jealous of another person it’s not that jealousy is wrong morally, it’s that moment I am losing faith and certainty in the Creator. A person has to make himself strong and say to himself that there is a reason for everything, that the pain that a person goes through is part of a bigger picture.

Korach in the end when the earth opened and started swallowing him up said something beautiful; he said Moses is real and the Torah that Moses is teaching is real. He was capable at the end of his life to see that all his suspicions were wrong. He realized that it wasn’t Moses’ idea to wake up one morning and decide to become a leader or to make his brother a Cohen. It was all an exact plan from the Creator.

What we want from this week is to get to a place where we get along with each other. Moses and Korach were the reincarnations of Cain and Abel and for many generations, they have come back to correct the same situation.

Love to you all,

Eliyahu