Parshat Korah centers on an attack against legitimate authority, and its essence is captured in the unusual choice of its opening word:

And Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, and Datan and Aviram, sons of Eliav, and On son of Pelet, sons of Reuven, took up (vayikah), and they rose up against Moshe… (Numbers 16:1–2)

Robert Alter rightly notes that the verb vayikah is oddly in the singular and focuses attention on the actions of the story’s principal agent, Korah, who becomes the archetype of the rebel against legitimate authority. The use of this word in this context has long stymied interpreters, generating numerous explanations of both its meaning and the political and psychological dimensions of the rebellion.

One of the Aramaic translations, Targum Yonatan ben Uziel, takes the word vayikah literally and, although the verse makes no mention of what Korah took, fills in the blank from a midrash on the parashat tzitzit found at the end of the previous parashah:

He took his cloak, which was entirely of........

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