Korah - The BAS Library
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Korah

By Elie Wiesel

What an ugly and overwhelming story, that of Korah! Disconcerting on more than one level, distressing in more than one sense, it confronts the reader and forces him to reread it, so overwhelming and invasive is its perplexity. It is not at all astonishing that Rashi, the greatest of our biblical and talmudic interpreters, felt the need to draw our attention to the Midrash and its rich discussion of this first revolt—organized against Moses.a Truth to tell, Korah is difficult to understand. Something about him escapes us and troubles us. Could it be that he is so nearly transparent, […]

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Footnotes

1.

Rashi is an acronym for Rabbi Shelomo Yitshaki (1040–1105), an outstanding scholar who wrote commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud (the collection of Jewish laws and teachings). Midrash is a genre of rabbinic literature that includes nonliteral elaborations of biblical texts.

2.

During the Byzantine period, Onkelos produced an Aramaic translation of the Bible that Rashi later relied on.

3.

A tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl; a mezuzah, a scroll inscribed with Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13–21 and the name Shaddai, and placed in a case affixed to the doorpost of Jewish homes, in accordance with the command to “inscribe [the words] upon the doorposts of thy gates.”