I’m not sure that the God of Israel agrees, we’ll see.
But, that does seem to be the conventional wisdom of the modern era. Democracy rules. There have been some failed attempts at other forms of governing, but it’s never turned out good for most of the people under that type of authoritarian regime.
Yet we find today, in the CoronaVirus pandemic era, China has been pushing its model of governance, with one party rule, as more responsive to the crisis. They are claiming to meet the true needs of the people (public health), over what governments in the democratic west, are capable of providing their citizens.
With a second wave of infections growing, the lockdowns, forced business closures, contact tracing, drone and robotic patrolling, facial recognition technology used, immunity certificates, and other invasive methods used or being discussed to use by democratic governments, to control the outbreaks, we find elements of China’s governance model spreading like the virus itself, from east to west, eating away at citizen’s privacy and civil rights.
Citizens in western democratic countries, might awaken soon, to find themselves in many ways, living in countries, with surveillance and restrictions, much closer to China’s regime, than the democracy they lived in, before the pandemic, with its potential for lawless protesters and rioters.
That said, in the Book of Exodus, we find The God of Israel, just before the revelation at Mount Sinai, commanding Moses, to tell the people of Israel, “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests [teachers of spirituality and morality-leaders to bring the world to God] and a holy [separated and elevated] nation [because of their special mission]...” (Exodus 19:6).
In last week’s Torah reading, Parshat Korah, we find a rebellion brewing against Moses and Aaron’s leadership, instigated by Korah, their cousin. Korah comes to Moses and Aaron with a mob of 250 community leaders and puts forth the pro-democracy argument, that they’ve taken too much power for themselves, “Why do you think you’re so much better than everyone else? We’re all part of the God’s holy people, and he’s with all of us. What makes you think you’re the only ones who should be in charge?” (Numbers 16:3).
What’s really bothering Korah?
Commentators discuss that. Both the Ibn Ezra and the Ramban, agree it took place about a year after leaving Egypt.
The Ibn Ezra argues that the rebellion took place, right after the inauguration of the Mishkan (Tabernacle), when Aaron and his sons were designated a Divinely created Aristocracy, to replace the firstborn, as the ones to perform the sacrificial service. Korah, a firstborn (Exodus 6:21), was embittered by this, and the 250 leaders with him, were also firstborn. Korah easily stirred them up.
Nachmanides, the Ramban, says that the rebellion took place right after the failed spying affair, described in Parshat Shlach. People resented the decree to stay in the desert [isolation?] and die off for another thirty nine years, and that only then, the next generation (of under twenty year olds) would enter the Holy Land. Again, easy pickings for Korah’s “democratic” rhetoric.
A series of proofs that Moses and Aaron were indeed the divinely chosen leaders now ensues.
Moses claiming everything he said and did was God’s will, declares that to prove it, the earth should open and swallow Korah and others with him, and it does. Then a fire from God breaks out and consumes the 250 community leaders. But that only postpones the rebellion.
The next day, the mob still inspired by Korah’s democratic vision, protests to Moses and Aaron saying, “You have killed the people of God.” God tells Moses to get away from them and He’ll destroy the rebels. But Moses and Aaron instead, pray for mercy. Then, Moses tells Aaron to run and get the incense pans for atonement, as a plague [like the CoronaVirus] breaks out. By the time Aaron stands between the living and the dead, and the plague is quelled, 14,700 democratic activists have died (Numbers 16:28-17:15).
Note the huge spike in infections in America and elsewhere, and yet they protest injustice and for Democracy...
God now orders Moses to tell the remaining 12 tribal leaders, to take bare almond staffs and place them in the Tent of Meeting, along with the staff of Aaron. The next day when Moses goes into the Tent, and removes them to show the leaders, their staffs are still just sticks, but Aaron’s has blossomed, sprouted buds, and grown ripe almonds. God then tells Moses to put Aaron’s staff back into the Tent and keep it as eternal proof of Aaron’s legitimate priestly line.
The people are frightened and complain to Moses, “We are lost. Everyone who comes close to the Mishkan will die. Will we ever stop perishing? [when will these draconian regulations and the pandemic end?]” (Numbers 17:16-28).
As if to rub salt into an open wound (of the democrats), or maybe better put, God re-enforces the lesson of Aaron’s legitimate priesthood and divinely chosen aristocracy, and that He, God, is in charge, not the mob of democratic activists. God now talks to Aaron about him, and his descendants service in the Mishkan, and later at the Temples in Jerusalem. He then describes the gifts the people will need to bring to the Kohanim (priests), and the tithes given to the Levites. Then God tells Moses about the tithes that Levites will give the Kohanim (Numbers 18:1-32).
These gifts and tithes, are a tax, to provide a salary for the priests and Levites national service, at the Mishkan, and Temples, in lieu of not receiving any portion in the Land, like the other tribes will, when they enter Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel).
So, a “democratic” rebellion was forcefully put down, and the primacy of divine aristocracy, through the Kohanim and Levites was preserved, and Moses continued as leader. But was Korah really a democrat? Did he really worry about “all the Holy People,” or was he a demagogue out for self-interest and self-aggrandizement, parading as a democrat?
In, The Republic, (Book VIII), Plato discusses five types of regimes. These five regimes progressively decline from Plato’s Ideals. Starting from Aristocracy at the top, his ideal, which is lead by a philosopher-king, to the lowest form, Tyranny led by a demagogue-dictator.
For Plato, the ruling class in Aristocracy, is made up of the philosophers-kings, with the aid of the soldiers and others in the government administration, whose job it is to force onto the majority of the people, the order established by the philosophers. What Plato calls, the Good. They are forbidden from owning property, in order to preclude, that the policies they undertake be tainted by personal interests.
The majority of the people are allowed to own property and produce goods for themselves, but are also obliged to sustain their rulers through contributions, i.e. taxes.
According to Plato, the aristocratic mindset of a just ruler, can be achieved through an intensive educational training, designed to produce intellectuals that are selfless and upright, aware of the absolute Good, by learning the Truth, based on the Platonic Ideas. Wealth, fame, and power are just shadows of the Good, not the True Good, therefore, the philosopher, who learns metaphysical contemplation, is not tempted to abuse his power in his pursuit of material goods, and his state policies are dedicated to establishing only the Good in the state, not his personal interests.
This sounds very similar to what we’ve just read in the Torah. The Torah promotes the idea that the Kohanim (also a teaching class), Levites, and later in Israel, a king and his administration, are to guide, and if necessary even force, the Jewish people into observing the Mitzvot (Commandments) of the Torah, to achieve God’s ideals. This was the system God was setting up, through Moses and Aaron’s leadership.
Maimonides, the Rambam, writes in his Mishneh Torah, Book of Kings And Their Wars 11:4, about the future Messiah (ideal Jewish leader), “If a king will arise from the House of David, who diligently contemplates the Torah and observes its Mitzvot, as prescribed by the Written Law and Oral Law, as David his ancestor did, will compel all of Israel to walk in the ways of the Torah, rectify the breaches to its observance, and fight the wars of God, we consider him possibly the Mashiach.”
About Democracy, Plato says, it is where freedom is now the highest value (not the Good), and the lowest classes grow bigger. The poor become the winners. People are free to do what they want and live how they want. The democratic man, in Plato’s scheme, takes great interest in all the things he can buy with his money. Modern international consumer culture.
Plato believes that democratic leaders are more concerned with money and power, than how one can help the people. We certainly see that today, among politicians. Democratic man does whatever he wants, whenever he wants to do it. His life has no order or priority.
Then finally at the bottom, Plato descibes Tyranny, where no one has discipline and society exists in chaos. Democracy is taken over by the longing for freedom, to the extent that people break the law regularly if they so choose. This appears to be very similar to anarchy, and what we’ve been seeing in America and around the world recently, with the Black Lives Matter-led “George Floyd” protests and riots.
We’ve all seen this recently in the US, where radical leftists have promoted the idea to “Defund the Police.” They’ve created police-free “democratically led” autonomous zones, like the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), later renamed Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) in Seattle. Threats of setting up these autonomous zones, have occurred in several cities.
According to Plato, power ultimately must be seized by a strong man, to maintain order, which will cause them to become tyrants. We’ve seen this happen in CHAZ/CHOP, with un-elected gun-toting leaders roaming around.
They have also been running around, tearing down statues and wiping out American history.
Interestingly, the Torah reading starts off, “And Korah took...” (Numbers 16:1).
What did he take? He took himself and his “democratic activists” aside, to separate themselves from the community (shades of CHAZ/CHOP), to fight against the system, the Divine Aristocracy, and against Moses and Aaron. Korah took advantage of the chaotic moment after the spying affair, to attempt to seize power.
Plato explains, the tyrannical mindset creates the worst form of man, due to his being the most unjust and thus the furthest removed from any joy of the true kind, the Good. He is consumed by desires, which cause him to do terrible things such as murder and plunder, there is complete lawlessness. The tyrant becomes a law unto himself.
At least four people have been shot and one killed in dystopian CHAZ/CHOP. There have been shakedowns on local businesses, extorting money from shopkeepers in CHAZ/CHOP and the abuse of its own “citizens.” And, during the Black Lives Matter-led “George Floyd” protests and riots (although protesting supposedly for equality, democracy, and against police abuse); there have been many reports of specifically anti-Semitic epithets, graffiti, violence, and destruction being done. See my last article, “BLM and Black Nazis are Evil Like White Nazis.”
Korah too, like BLM, wants mob rule in the name of “democracy.” He was a demagogue, willing to sacrifice everyone else to achieve his power grab, as BLM and the far Left are doing in America today.
As democracy degenerates, you either get a Chinese model of authoritarian governance, or the whimsical chaos, violence and tyranny of the far left. What did Korah really have in mind?
Yet, the God of Israel said, “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests [teachers of spirituality and morality-leaders to bring the world to God] and a holy [separated and elevated] nation [because of their special mission]...” (Exodus 19:6).
God wants to create a Holy Society in Israel, led by a Divine Aristocracy, not a democracy, with the Kohanim and Levites teaching and serving in the Temple. And, the Jewish king, who eschews all self-aggrandizement, writes for himself two Torah scrolls, one of which, he keeps with himself at all times to, “...read all the days of his life, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees, and not consider himself better than his brothers, and turn away from Mitzvah observance…” (Deuteronomy 17:16-20). A model society, to influence mankind, and bring them to a meaningful relationship with God.
The Rambam continues, about the future Messiah (ideal Jewish leader), “If he succeeds in all the above, builds the Temple in its place, and gathers the dispersed of Israel, he is definitely the Mashiach. He will then improve the entire world, motivating all the nations to serve God together, as Zephaniah 3:9 states: ‘I will transform the peoples to a purer language that they all will call upon the name of God and serve Him with one purpose.’”
In a sense to achieve Plato’s idea of the True Good, which Plato must have gotten from the Torah.
God wants a Divine Aristocracy for Israel, not a Democracy.
Ariel Natan Pasko, an independent analyst and consultant, has a Master's Degree specializing in International Relations, Political Economy & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites and in newspapers. His latest articles can also be read on his archive: The Think Tank by Ariel Natan Pasko.
(c) 2020/5780 Pasko
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