Tremendous Reward for Even the Slightest Good

by Rabbi Michael Berg

In this week’s portion, we read about the uprising led by Korach and his follwers against Moshe. They were, as the Torah makes extremely clear, committing a grievous mistake. One of their contentions was against the priests headed by Aharon. Korach, who was a member of the Levite family just as Aharon, questioned why it was Aharon, Moshe’s brother, and Aharon’s family who were chosen to be the priests.

Moshe decides on a way to show the entire nation that Korach and his 250 followers are mistaken: All that Moshe had done was only by Hashem’s command.

“Moshe said to Korach, ‘You and your entire assembly come before Hashem, you and them and Aharon, tomorrow. Each one of you should take a fire-pan, and place on it incense, and you should bring it before Hashem, each person his fire-pan and you and Aharon should each bring a fire-pan. They each took their fire-pan, placed incense on it, and they stood at the opening of the Tent of Meeting (the Tabernacle), with Moshe and Aharon. Korach.”

The earth opens up and swallows the leaders of the uprising. The 250 incense-offerers receive a different punishment: A miraculous fire sent by Hashem burns them.

Through this terrible and miraculous turn of events, Hashem makes it perfectly clear that Moshe is his true servant. It is also clear that Korach and all of his followers were completely wrong and walking in the negative path.

After all of this though, Hashem tells Moshe to do something very strange,

“Hashem spoke to Moshe saying: ‘Say to Elazar the son of Aharon the Kohen and that he should lift the fir-pans from the fire…for they became holy. The fire-pans of these sinners…they should make them hammered-out sheets as a covering for the altar, for they had brought them before Hashem therefore they became holy…’”

This is astounding; negative people who were rising up against Moshe and the Torah brought these fire-pans. The entire purpose of these fire-pans was to undermine Moshe as the true servant and messenger of the Creator; to undermine the truth of the Torah as Moshe revealed it. How then can Hashem say that they are holy, and command that they be made as a covering for the altar, a very great honor? Logically, one would think that these fire-pans should be burnt or buried. Anything that would make this memory disappear of these bad people and their negative actions. Why then would the Creator command just the opposite that they are holy and should be made for a covering for one of the holiest sites?

The answer to this question is a simple one, but also one that has tremendous implications for all of us. The reality is that the Creator never lets even the slightest good go unrewarded. More amazing though is that this is true even when the good is covered up by much negativity. Here, although the entire basis for the actions of Korach’s followers was negative, nevertheless, the Creator perceived that deep down when they were bringing the incense there was a positive desire to bring it before the Creator. This miniscule positivity was enough to make the pans holy, and enough to make these people merit that their fire-pans become a covering for the holy altar.

We should take time to focus on this: to realize how much Light can be revealed even by the smallest thought. More importantly though, this story is a great tool in our fight against the negative side. One of the negative side’s greatest tools in battling us is to belittle the power of our spiritual actions. The negative energy-intelligence tells us, “How much can your tiny positive actions do? How much Light do you really think you can reveal through your actions? Of course prayer, study and sharing have the power to reveal Light, but how much can you accomplish?” Although most of us do not actually hear the voice of the negative side, he has implanted this thought so deeply in our brain that even unconsciously, this thought influences our spiritual work. If we had a true understanding of the power of even the slightest of our spiritual actions, we would be so excited and energized to do even the slightest spiritual actions, but the negative side has convinced us of our lack of power.

We have to counter this deceptive thought with this story. We should tell ourselves and the negative side,

“If those negative people through their negative action merited such a great reward (because there was some semblance of a positive thought involved in their negative action), how much more so can I surely accomplish and reveal Light if I do a positive action with positive intent?”

This is a very important idea for us to ingrain within our mind, especially because, as the Zohar teaches, a person’s action reveals Light based on the amount that he believes his action can reveal. We must remind ourselves always that we are powerful spiritual beings and that we cannot even begin to imagine the tremendous amount of Light that we can reveal.


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