Dvar Torah - Ekev 5784

The Torah says (Devarim 11:6): “and what He did unto Dasan and Aviram, the sons of Eliav, the son of Reuven; how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up…” When Moshe describes Hashem’s tremendous wonders and miracles that took place in the desert, he includes the culmination of Korach’s insurgency, when the earth opened and swallowed the rebels. The question is, why did Moshe omit Korach, the main instigator of the rebellion, and only include Dasan and Aviram?

Rabbenu Bachye answers that Moshe did not include Korach because he was ashamed of what Korach did because he was his close relative [his cousin]. Accordingly, Moshe mentioned only Dasan and Aviram, the other major rebels, who were not related to Moshe.

Rav Henoch Leibowitz, ZT”L emphasizes that we can learn that if Moshe was embarrassed because of the sin of his cousin, all the more so should we be embarrassed for our own sins. Indeed, as Elul approaches in one week, we need to focus on the seriousness of our sins and to work on doing tshuva and changing before the onset of Rosh Hashanah.

However, there is another way to look at our past sins. In parshas Masei, the Torah lists all the places that the Jews dwelled on their journey from Egypt to Israel throughout the forty years that they were in the desert. Rashi (Bamidbar 33:1), in his last explanation quoting the Midrash Tanchuma, brings a parable to describe why the Torah lists again all the stages in the desert that it already discussed previously. It is like a king, whose son has suffered a serious illness, so the king took him to a distant place to cure him. When they returned home, the father lovingly listed all the stages, such as “we slept here, we caught a cold here, you had a headache here”, etc. According to the Mizrachi, who comments on this Rashi, these were all places where the Jews angered Hashem. The problem is that the parable does not fit. The son did not do anything wrong, and so each stage listed is a source of joy to the king that his son proceeded to recover from his illness. However, the listing of the stages is actually not a source of joy, but instead represents a criticism of the Jews, who angered Hashem at all of these places. Why did Rashi use this parable?

Rav Henoch answers that there are two aspects to sins. Korach sinned and did not do tshuvah, so his death is a source of embarrassment to Moshe. However, the Jews in the desert did Tshuva. Therefore it is a source of joy, and the parable about the son who recovers from his illness fits well with the Jews, who do tshuvah to “recover” from their sins.

We see that as we approach Elul, it is a source of joy to Hashem when we do tshuva. However, we also need to focus on the areas that we have not yet done tshuva. Now is the time, with only five weeks to go before the Yom HaDin, when we need to work on ourselves. If we can successfully prepare for Rosh Hashanah and change ourselves and do tshuva for our sins, then we can feel true joy as we face the Yomim Noraim, and look forward to the year ahead for ourselves, and for all of Klal Yisroel.