From the Clergy Corner with Cantor Phil Baron

Parashat Korach-30 Sivan, 5773 
by Cantor Phil Baron

I’m proud to announce that I’ve almost finished reading Moby Dick.  Okay, I started it in 2008, but still…

It’s a book that is by turns exciting and colorful, scholarly and literary, and also filled with an enormous amount of information that I don’t care about.  It was clearly written before the acronym TMI (“Too Much Information”) was in the culture.  It was also written when people’s attention spans were evidently as boundless as the ocean.

In case you haven’t gotten around to reading Moby Dick, the “Cliff’s Notes” version, or seen the movie, the basic story is this: a guy named Ishmael signs onto a whaling voyage.  The captain (Ahab) is a spooky guy who is really upset that a white whale the size of the Goodyear Blimp chomped his leg off a while back.  They chase the whale around the globe, trying to kill him.  The whale wins.

That takes 1000 pages, and more chapters than the Torah.

Which brings us to this week’s Torah portion. That’s where the scholarly/literary part of Melville’s writing comes in, because Moby Dick is nothing if not biblical in its story telling, characters, and themes, though its central character is no Moses.  Ahab, of Arab decent (but named for a 9^thBCE king of Israel) is an obsessed, vengeful man whose unwillingness to accept defeat drives him inexorably toward his own destruction.  Like Korach, Moses’ challenger and adversary in this week’s parasha, Ahab refuses to let anyone or anything, be more powerful than him.  For Korach, this is a problem because the guy he’s trying to replace has some very serious connections.  You see, Korach thinks he’d be a better leader for the Hebrews than Moses and is doing lots of negative campaigning, besmirching Moses’ character and positioning himself to take his place.  But he forgets one very important piece of information: Moses was chosen by God.  My advice to Korach would be, “Find another job, boychik!”

Ahab has much the same problem.  In fact, Melville’s whale has often been called God-like, and “ineffable” in its whiteness – a symbol of purity and power, something holy.  Nevertheless, Ahab throws himself onto a collision course with the supernatural.

And then there is the ocean, beyond fathoming, seemingly, a power without conscience. In Melville’s words:

“But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is also a fiend to its own off-spring... Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.

The Torah’s natural forces also display a savage justice in this week’s parasha, as Korach, in an ultimate contest of legitimacy with Moses is swallowed whole by the earth. There can be no doubt about Moses’ supremacy, or God’s.

Did Melville also make a connection between God, Moses, and Moby Dick on one hand, and Korach, Ahab and his loyal crew on the other? Chapter 58 tells all. Here is an excerpt:

 “Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews, when under the feet of Korach and his company the live ground opened and swallowed them up forever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews.” 

Melville again conjures up Korach, or at least Korach’s tainted and twisted ambition in his warning to all who would follow Ahab’s course. For Ahab is like the wild and amoral ocean, where fish eats fish, and violence is commonplace. Yet, is there not in all of us the potential to become the possessed, satanic captain of the Pequod if we stray from our moral center? Melville beseeches us to make the right choice or be forever lost at sea.

“Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”