Bringing Korach Back Up

I’ve got two old posts on Korach, here and here. If you haven’t read them yet, enjoy.

I also recently came up with a new insight into the relationship between Korach and his most famous descendant, Shmuel ha-Navi. In many ways, Chana and Shmuel are the correction of Korach’s flaws (the Yerushalmi even says that Korach ‘continued to fall’ until Chana’s prayer). As I wrote before (in two installments), Chana, through Shmuel, was able to challenge and ultimately replace a problematic leadership structure not by direct confrontation, but by silent protest and infiltration, ve-acamo”l. It dawned on me that Shmuel certainly did inherit Korach’s rebellious streak or anti-establishmentarianism, but manifested it in a completely positive manner.