(Delivered June 20, 2026)

Shabbat shalom!

With the rising hoopla surrounding the US semiquincentennial—in other words, the 250th anniversary of the founding of this nation—I am thinking not about fireworks, nor about military parades, nor about historical re-enactments. 

In the shadow of Parshat Korach, I am thinking about arguments. 

This nation’s founders really knew how to argue. They had to. Although they had a shared goal and a somewhat shared vision, they were not of a single mind, and they had little precedent to go on. They probably had one solid common principle. Like Shmuel in today’s haftarah they had serious misgivings about being under the rule of a king. 

But beyond knowing what they didn’t want, in order to move forward, they had to invent an alternative. And the way they did that was to talk it out. To argue.

Argument in the service of something greater than ourselves has intrinsic value, as our founders demonstrated. Had they not taken on the responsibility of thinking out loud together—sometimes peacefully and sometimes less so, but always with the goal in mind—we would not be here 250 years later to celebrate their labors. It took maturity and forbearance to work it out together, “in order to form a more perfect union.” 

It was, in a sense, holy work.

Of course, our Sages had this model in mind, millennia before George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the gang got into it. In Pirkei Avot, Chapter 5, Mishnah 17, we have the famous teaching:

 ‏כָּל מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם.
וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם אֵין סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם.
Every argument that is undertaken for the sake of heaven,
its result will endure.
But every argument that is not undertaken for the sake of heaven,
its result will not endure.

The Mishnah goes on to cite the ongoing halachic disagreements between the students of Hillel and those of Shammai as an example of a מַחֲלֹקֶת לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, an argument for the sake of heaven. Hillel and Shammai’s respective schools saw just about everything differently. BUT because they shared a common purpose—to preserve and codify Jewish tradition in a time of upheaval—their arguments were courteous enough. They managed to regard each others’ viewpoints with respect, even when they disagreed vehemently. Keeping their minds on their shared intention allowed them to soften their ego-engagement in order to prioritize searching for the truth.

Meanwhile, the Mishnah’s example for מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם is the argument that we have in our parsha this week, מַחֲלֹקֶת קֹרַח וְכָל עֲדָתוֹ—the argument of Korach and his whole group.

We are living at a time when more and more Americans are polarized beyond the willingness even to hear one another’s viewpoints, much less to examine them humbly in search of the truth. At times, it starts to seem like healthy argument is a lost art. And so, I think it’s worth looking closely at what happens in the parsha, if only to teach ourselves what not to do. 

Consider, for an example, the way the infamous Moses temper is already beginning to flare just a few verses in. Korach and his fellow rebels know how to push Moses’s buttons and Moses plays his part. Rather than respond to Korach’s provocation with de-escalation, he is activated right away, throwing the rebels’ words back at them and calling for direct confrontation the next morning, with God as the arbiter.

After laying into Korach, Moses tries to settle in and make some progress with Datan and Aviram, making an overture toward a separate meeting to work things out. But Datan and Aviram nurse their grudges rather than try to have a useful conversation. Their refusal to talk pushes Moses even further into hardening his own position. His anger boils over:

וַיִּחַר לְמֹשֶׁה מְאֹד וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל-ה’ אַל־תֵּפֶן אֶל־מִנְחָתָם 
Moses became very angry, and he said to God: don’t accept their offerings. 

When Moses grows angry, he presses his own advantage by using his elevated position to get God to reject the insurgents. 

Throughout the confrontation, Moses and the rebels alike are talking right past each other, refusing to listen, and allowing their fury to get the better of them. And in Chapter 16, Verse 21, after Moses’s anger boils over, even God gets into the fray, threatening to destroy the entire community. 

Only after Moses sees God amplifying his own anger does he, Moses, begin to settle down and behave more rationally, asking God to reconsider the impulse to collective punishment. Seeing our own behavior mirrored in another person can sometimes snap us out of our worst tendencies. Is that really what I look like? we ask ourselves. Surely I’m better than that.

Even prior to the fateful clash, Korach’s mode of argument is unfair and definitely not לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם. One commentator’s reading of our Mishnah illustrates why. The Malbim, a 19th century Ukrainian rabbi, notes that in the construction of the end of the Mishnah, the argument not for the sake of heaven is that of Korach and his whole group, not of Korach and Moses. He notes that rather than take his grievances directly to the person he wants an answer from, Korach triangulates with 250 other people, gathering an army that ultimately pays a price.

Korach uses his verbal skill and attention to human nature to speak to the ego of each of those 250 people. Preying on their resentments, insecurities—their sense of outrage—he stokes in them a feeling of injustice, which he then leverages against Moses for his own aims. He creates the illusion of a shared purpose, but there was never any intent for all of the נְשִׂיאֵי עֵדָה—these pillars of the community—to assume leadership roles. It was useful to Korach for them to imagine they might. He incites them to an insurgency that they think they’ll benefit from, but in the end it’s only to further his own hopes for power.

None of this is for the sake of heaven.

By contrast, the American founders had strong disagreements on many fundamental issues: federal vs. state power; industrial vs. agrarian basis for the economy; and especially, slavery. But despite those disagreements, they worked it through to the best of their capacity, with the greater good in mind. I don’t claim that their solutions were perfect, or permanent, as we can see all too clearly today. But their method was one that sought unity even in the absence of uniformity.

There’s a recurring phrase in Parshat Korach, thrown back and forth between Korach and Moses: רַב־לָכֶם. In the parsha, it can mean: this is too much, or you’ve gone too far, or you take too much for yourselves. 

And although this is clearly not the intent in context, I can’t help thinking about another meaning of the word Rav: teacher. Injecting this way-outside translation, we can read רַב־לָכֶם to mean, a teacher for you. And indeed this passage has something to teach us, a lesson we 21st-century Americans dearly need to learn. Discord without a shared purpose can be catastrophic, can swallow you whole. 

As we celebrate 250 years of the search for wholesome, enduring American values, let us each consider how we might turn toward one another in friendship and community, not ignoring disagreement but acknowledging it. May we recommit ourselves to מַחֲלֹקֶת לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם: to seeing our neighbors’ humanity. May we defuse the assumptions that encourage us to view everyone outside our own circle of understanding as villainous and stupid. Instead, may we discern the common purpose that American ideals at their best point us toward, and be tireless in holding that purpose in mind and heart as we move forward together.

Shabbat shalom!