Korah and his clan recently made headlines in the Israeli media, and not just because of the weekly Torah portion. Korah’s rebellion against Moses is regarded as the first political opposition in the Bible. It is now being compared with the almost obsessive opposition to Israel’s current national leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. “Anyone but Moses” was the rallying cry at that time. Today, it’s “Anyone but Bibi.”
“From Korah up until the present day: Things that even the opposition are not permitted to do,” was the headline on Israel’s leading news portal Ynet. “The opposition is not permitted to make use of dirty tricks and to overthrow a national leader without good reason and the backing of the people,” Deborah Saguri emphasized.
Numbers 16 tells of the political spectacle in the desert. Moshe Levee maintains, in the religious paper Srugim, that Korah’s criticisms against Moses are very similar to those being leveled against Netanyahu today. “Gifts are regarded as problematic in politics, and if we read the biblical account of Korah,…
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