On the one hand we have Doson and Avirom who were known ba’alei machlokes and clear villains in the story. But we have other prominent Jews who asked Moshe Rabbeinu various sheilos-- pointing out the seeming logical absurdities of various halachos. They also portrayed the halachos of matnos kehunoh as a kind of unethical money-making scheme contrived by Moshe Rabbeinu to keep his family rich at the expense of other Jews.

In Parshas Yisro, Hashem tells Moshe exactly what Ma’amad Har Sinai was going to entail, and in Parshas Vo’eschanon it says that the revelation at Har Sinai was designed intentionally to insure that there would be no doubts as to Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy. The Rambam explains that Klal Yisroel themselves were privy to a level of nevuoh where they heard Hashem communicating directly with Moshe Rabbeinu. They were made to understand by their own powers of nevuah that Moshe Rabbeinu is a genuine receiver of Divine information. Hashem saw to it that there would be an unshakable foundation for our belief in the Torah’s divine origins.

So what led the followers of Korach to question the authenticity of Moshe Rabbeinu’s nevuoh?

The Meshech Chochmoh in the beginning of Sefer Shemos says our absolute confidence in the truth of the Torah is based on two things. One, we ourselves had the gilui schechinoh directly at Har Sinai. And secondly, after Moshe Rabbeinu was chosen to convey the Torah from Hashem to Klal Yisroel, his free will was effectively removed from him. This ensured that Moshe Rabbeinu was incapable of corrupting the information Hashem gave to him. That is why Moshe could be the perfect vehicle and tool for transmitting the Torah.

Rav Chaim Volozhin asks why the Mishna put the term “Moshe kibbel” and then “umosruoh li’Yehoshuah” instead of “Yehoshuah kibbel”. The answer is because only Moshe was a perfect vehicle to receive the Torah. Hashem Himself described Moshe as His eved ne’eman—completely humble and devoted to rotzon Hashem.

There was no trace of his own ego and sense of self. With complete submission to Hashem, there was only once voice talking in Moshe—the voice of Hashem.

Some people cannot relate to such high levels that other human beings can attain. They are limited in their ability to conceive of such selfless devotion without any ego, probably because they themselves possess an ego drive that dominates all other traits. They don’t understand the possibility of a human being without such a drive.

Korach projected his own drive for power and authority onto Moshe and accused him of being motivated by personal gain, just as Korach was.

But the truth is, you can have two things simultaneously. You can have a human being on the highest level who did not allow that greatness to affect his ego and make him feel superior to others. This was the paradox of Moshe Rabbeinu’s humility that Korach and his followers couldn’t fathom. Many people today don’t understand that this paradox of greatness and humility co-exist in all our great talmidei chachomim.

After we discussed the sin of the meraglim, people had questions about it. The main failing of the talmideim of Rebbi Akivah was in this area. After becoming great in Torah, they let that greatness get to their ego and it didn’t allow them to see the greatness in their colleagues and to grant them respect. They couldn’t balance the appreciation of their own tzelem Elokim with the appreciation of the tzelem Elokim of other people.

Our society is plagued with a similar lack of balance. When people move to the top of the social pyramid of Jewish society, you often find that their egos get inflated in proportion to their power and influence. They are consumed by their own ego and try to see to it that everyone around them recognizes their status. He promotes himself in public as a “godol hador” by cleverly manipulating the Jewish media as his P.R. machine. But this is a perversion of Torah.

The fundamental of Torah greatness is humility and avoiding self-promotion. Such people who project themselves a gedolei hador are by definition not talmidei chachomim. Genuine talmidei chachomim promote Hashem and His agenda instead of their own.

In addressing the recent scandal surrounding a so-called talmid chochom who was exposed as having been involved in very unsavory activity, people have to realize one important truth. With all the Torah knowledge he may have allegedly “mastered”, such a massive demonstration of egoistic narcissism is the antithesis of being a talmid chochom. I refused to accept this particular individual as a bachur in my yeshivah because I detected he was a tremendous ba’al gaivoh.

The Rambam quotes the gemara which says the Torah is compared to water because the Torah seeks out humble people. People who are consumed with their ego are by definition not talmidei chachomim. Not only must you understand the Torah, but you have to let it change you and transform your thinking process.

We have an interesting way of learning. We confront a Rashi-- and on its face, it makes no sense to us. We can either dismiss Rashi as simply being wrong, or we can step back and say, Rashi had an approach in the gemara which led him to write what he wrote. If I spend hours on this Rashi and at the end I can’t figure out what approach Rashi was taking to sugya, then that’s my problem, that’s my limitation—not Rashi’s.

Our whole approach to limud haTorah is one of humility and submission to our rabbeim and prior generations. Understanding Torah properly along the lines of our millennia-old mesorah begins with humility. When the gemara declares a final conclusion, I can’t say it is wrong. If I don’y understand it something is wrong with me.

The complaint of Korach was that the Torah doesn’t make sense according to his logic. A beged of pure techeiles shouldn’t need a single blue fringe on the corners. A room full of sifrei Torah should need a mezuzah. A poor almono shouldn’t have to give mantas kehunoh.

But the Torah is Hashem’s logic—not human logic. We have to submit our logic to the logic of Torah. That is how we learn, that is how we grow above our human limitations and connect our minds to the will of Hashem. Sometimes we are confronted with a gezeiras hamelech. The Torah disqualified certain people from giving testimony in Beis din. The gemara calls it a gezeiras hamelech – decree of the King. That’s it—we accept it even though we don’t understand it. The Torah had its own logic and the logic of 3500 years of how to understand it. It begins with humility and not with one’s ego.

Throughout my shimush of the gedolei hador of the last generation, the trait of humility was abundant. Humility towards the Torah and humility towards other people.

The people whose egos dominate their lives are not talmidei chachomim. They have not let the Torah impact them and transform them no matter how much information they have accumulated. The Torah didn’t change them and that is exactly why they are capable of doing the despicable things they do.

Korach was on the one hand jealous of Moshe Rabbeinu’s power and authority. But he had insight into his great potential and his future generations. He though this meant he could change the Torah to fit his aspirations. But Moshe said there is morning and there is evening. There are immutable boundaries that cannot be negotiated away. Not in the natural world and not in the world of halacha. Just as men are men and women are women, there are Kohanim and Levi’im and Yisroelim. You can’t switch from one to the other. Hashem set up an immutable system and part of our humility is to understand there are absolutes. Whether it “works for me” or “it doesn’t work for me” is irrelevant.

In our upside down world, people think everything is relative to our personal perspective-- and nothing is absolute. Men can think they are women and visa-versa. No one knows who they are and what they are. No one thinks there are absolutes in this world.

The Torah gives absolutes that are as immutable as day and night.

Another point brought out in this week’s parsha is the misconception that being the Kohen Godol is the highest madreigoh and avodas Hashem. The Misshna in Horiyos tells us this is a mistake. A mamzer talmid chochom takes precedence over a Kohen Godol am ho’oretz. Each individual has his own unique kedushoh. It all depends on what you do with it and how you develop it. So despite the fact that the kohen godol can do the highest avodah, we each have our own unique avodah that no-one else can do because of his individual circumstances. The mamzer can take his life circumstances and through limud haTorah can turn them around completely. And the kohen godol can rest on his birthright and do nothing with it whatsoever. That is the purpose of having different positions in Klal Yisroel. They provide different ways to maximize one’s individual spiritul potential. They don’t automatically reflect one’s inherent greatness or self-worth.

Korach thought that if he wasn’t the nasi or he wasn’t the kohon godol, it reflected a lower self-worth and it became an ego issue. So what does he do? He declares everyone is the same. He didn’t mean it. It was just a scheme to level the playing field and allow him to rise to the top. It was like the Communist system. Everyone was declared equal, but for some mysterious reason, those higher up in the Communist Party suddenly became more equal than others.

Korach didn’t want democracy. He couldn’t understand that Moshe Rabbeinu was the greatest novi and also the most humbl of human beings at the same time. That is what the Torah demands of a talmid chochom.

We have 250 great Jews who Chazal say committed the same sin as Nodov and Avihu-- the sons of Aharon. The problem was that they felt because of their higher level different rules apply to them. The average Jew has 613 mitzvos, but he should have either more—or less. But there is no such thing. We all have to fulfill all the mitzvos according to the job Hashem gave us. As a Levi, I cannot do the avodah as a Kohen. I also can’t get maftir Yonah on Yom Kippur—as important as I might think it is. But the reality is my father was a Levi and I am a Levi. That’s just the way it is and there is nothing I can do to get maftir Yonah - no matter how deeply I yearn to get it. Every human being is given his situation and his unique avodas Hashem to do. There are absolutes which cannot be moved.

When people begin looking at Torah and Mitzvos as a tool for their own ego enhancement, they fail to see the greatness of genuine talmidei chachomim. They automatically assume everyone else is doing it for their own ego enhancement as well. They never had the opportunity to be meshameish genuine talmidei chachomim and see their humility and subordination to the Torah, to the logic of the Torah, to the mesorah of how to learn Torah, and how to interact with other human beings who possess the same tzelem Elokim.

It begins with submission. Korach could have used his amazing insight to perceive the truth. But once his jealously got hold of him, it twisted and colored everything he saw.

The story of Korach is critical to learn about the absolutes of rotzon Hashem and traits of humility and submission to the will of Hashem that are prerequisites to becoming a genuine talmid chochom. If a person sits down to learn and perceives Hashem’s presence in front of him, and he is aware of a 3500 year mesorah which preceded him and which he is joining, then the only response is humility and submission. But if you look at your knowledge of Torah as a platform for promoting your ego, then it is not Hashem’s Torah anymore.

Only through submission to Torah will you come to understand it better. When you take more time to try to figure out a shittah that doesn’t make sense-- because you know that there is something wrong with the way you are thinking-- then you can discover your mistake. Then you can grow beyond it, and get true a pshat in the sugya. You can properly absorb the ideas of the Torah, the values of the Torah and the teaching of talmide chachomi who themselves submitted themselves to the Torah.

But if you dismissed Rashi after five minutes, then you have impoverished your understanding of Torah with your ego. You’ll never grow beyond your own self-centered small-mindedness.

Parshas Korach presents us with many different archetypes of personality. The clash between Korach and Moshe Rabbeinu is the clash between unbounded ego and unfathomable humility. Moshe was able to be the one who gave over the Torah because there was no ego getting in the way. It was the pure will of Hashem going through him. Korach wanted to insert his own ideas into the Torah and make it democratic.

Certain people like Doson and Avirom are troublemakers and rabble-rousers from the start. Then you have people with great potential, but become twisted by corrupting middos.

And then you have people who are trying to reach higher levels of avodas Haashem with the purest motives, but think they aren’t limited by the same rules that other have. Every Jew is given his way of doing avodas Hashem. We don’t change the rule to fit our ambitions or our conceptions of spirituality. We all have opportunities and nisyonos that are unique to our circumstances and personalities. We are judged in life by how we take those opportunities and nisyonos and build ourselves through them.

Some people have the nisayonos of unbelievable poverty or wealth. Some build themselves despite their nisyonos and some people resign themselves to their circumstances and cut corners in middos or halacha thinking what else can I do?

We all have nistyonos. The mamzer has a nisayon of a severely disadvantaged social status. But he can overcome it by dedicating himself to Limud Torah. The kohen godol has the nisayon of being born into the highest office of kehunoh without earning it. He can fail his nisayon by just doing nothing and remain an am ho’oretz. The mekallel in Parshas Emor had a nisayon of social rejection because he didn’t have a place among his mother’s shevet. We don’t blame him, but he failed his nisayon. Use your nisyonos to build yourself up despite your circumstances.

Korach was very wealthy and this wealth was a nisayon which lead to his ego becoming inflated beyond description. Because of that, he couldn’t understand the concept of hachno’oh to a Moshe Rabbeinu and to the absolutes of the Torah. The application of these lessons to our own lives is crucial to become benei Torah. We have to think them through and integrate them into our own middos and outlook on what a genuine talmid chochom is, what submission to mesorah means, and what our unique avodas Hashem is.