What we can learn from the one per cent!

RABBI ILAN RAANAN

Yeshiva College Shul represented by Rabbi Ilan Raanan

In 2006 Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, created a documentary “The One Per Cent”, about the growing wealth gap between America’s elite who, in 2004, controlled some 42 per cent of the country’s wealth, compared to the overall citizenry who had to share the remaining 58 per cent. 

“Occupy Wall Street” protested the greatest income inequality since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Its goals revolved around money and within the broad demographic spread of protesters was a single member of the clergy, a rabbi.

In our parsha, we have another “rabbi”, Korach the Levite, who stirred the masses against Moshe Rabeinu and Aharon the Kohen in a movement it would be apt to term “Occupy the Priesthood”. 

Korach didn’t challenge income inequality, but rather the spiritual gap between the priesthood and the rest of Bnei Yisrael, with his rallying call: “We, the 99%, are also holy!”

At the end of the parsha we find reference to a one per cent. The Levites subsisted off an agricultural tithe from the farming multitude as they served the nation and worked in the Temple.  They are now commanded to tithe this tithe and pay an overall one per cent “tax” to the Kohanim. 

This command follows a long list of priestly gifts that, without this one per cent, would quite comfortably support the Kohanim.

As a Levite I’m mindful not to follow in the footsteps of a rebel member of my tribe, Korach, but when I study this latter part of the parsha at first glance, I perceive an injustice. 

Korach sinned and was punished. I understand the concept of collective responsibility that casts a threat over the entire nation as a result. But why should the “nine per cent”, the tribe of Levi, have to pay this “one per cent” servitude?

In the midst of this all, the Torah goes back to the mitzvah of redemption of the first born.

On the one hand this deepens the question: It was the entire tribe of Levi that replaced the original first born members of the rest of Bnei Yisrael and not just the Kohanim, so why are the riches and royalties of redemption limited to the Kohanim? 

On the other hand, it contains an answer! Just as the range of the mitzvah includes animals and not just humans, the origin of the mitzvah targeted the Egyptian first-born animals and not just their children. 

The pervasive nature of this Tenth Plague and the resultant mitzvoth indicate G-d’s will that there should be a radical departure from the Egyptian philosophy of first-born/Priesthood from “rights” to “responsibilities”. 

And here is the lesson we learn from the 9%.  The entire nation is holy.  The Kohanim are their main mentors as the nation aspires to ever-greater heights of holiness.  To avoid an excessive spiritual gap, the Torah impresses upon the Levites the importance of fulfilling the all-important role of middle-mentor”!  When we look around we notice different levels of religious experience.  Just like a material divide within society doesn’t bode well, we need to make sure that huge religious gaps don’t exist within society.  Like the Levites, we need to reach out to the spiritual stragglers who lag behind us.  We must all be the 9%!