To Increase Their Yearning2 min read

Many of the tzaddikim explain the juxtaposition of the episode of the Meraglim and Korach’s rebellion by offering various reasons the sin of the spies served as the impetus for Korach’s complaint. The following is a particularly beautiful idea taught by R’ Shlomo Carlebach z”l.

Although we would all love to reach our spiritual goals with ease, we know this isn’t the way growth is achieved. Any effort in the way of holiness and closeness to Hashem is going to be rife with setbacks, errors, and obstacles. Still, although the road to success passes through dark tunnels of failure, those very difficulties yield some of the greatest fruits. Lessons learned in the process of getting back up after a spiritual lapse are often the most impactful lessons we ever learn. In addition, having tasted the bitterness of failure, our appetite for the sweet flavor of success increases ten-fold. In the words of Rebbe Nachman, “All obstacles are only for the purpose of building up desire.”

Although on a basic level, the Meraglim did klal Yisrael a tremendous disservice by causing them to wander in the desert for an additional forty years before entering Eretz Yisrael, their grave error and the obstacle it caused paradoxically strengthen klal Yisrael’s collective desire for the Holy Land. Moshe and Ahron understood that on the deepest level, the sin of the Meraglim had a positive outcome. They knew that the forty additional years of aimless wandering would succeed in deepening klal Yisrael’s connection with and commitment to the Land of the Soul. However, Korach didn’t see the value in this process at all. Korach believed nothing could possibly be gained from making a mistake. He thought that if he could only become the Kohen Gadol, he would take klal Yisrael into the land right away and nothing would be lost; the feeling would be just the same as entering Eretz Yisrael in another forty years.

The tzaddikim taught that the process of experiencing difficulties before achieving our spiritual growth is likened to a seed which must rot and disintegrate in the earth before taking root and beginning to push through the earth to the heavens above. This is the reason Korach was swallowed by the earth. Because Korach didn’t believe that something positive could result from failure, he was buried in the earth like a seed whose growth process embodies this deeply counterintuitive reality.