A True Leader

This week's section describes the near dethroning of Moses by a clever and charismatic Jew called Korach.

Rashi in his commentary (16:19) explains that Korach managed to convince the ENTIRE Jewish nation to join him in his battle against Moses.

How did he do such a thing? What possible argument could he have used to drive the entire nation insane? Why didn’t the people realize their debt to Moses, who led them out of Egypt and guided them through the desert? And what has all this got to do with us today?

The question that Korach asked was, is Moses a true leader or not? Was it necessary to rely on his every word, no matter how illogical it may have seemed?

Korach thought not. "Maybe in order to leave Egypt we had to follow you blindly, Moses. But now, well, we all saw G-d at Mount Sinai. All of us are holy! It’s time we started thinking for ourselves!!"

And with this argument he was able to convince the entire nation to disagree with Moshe.

This is the same attitude that caused the Jews to disagree with King David and all the prophets after him as well. Each time G-d sent us a divinely inspired leader, there were always those who rose up to challenge him. This finally resulted in the terrible exile that we are suffering, for almost 2,000 years.

We pray that G-d give us just one more chance and send us the Moshiach; a true leader. Surely this time, we will have learned the lessons of history we won't make trouble for him.