Picture the scene. Five sisters. No brothers. A dead father, and a system about to quietly erase them from the map. They could have seethed. They could have whispered in the back of the tent, built a little following, waited for the whole thing to rot. Instead they walked straight up to the most powerful people in the nation and, out loud, in front of everybody, said the scariest sentence there is: this isn’t fair, and here is what we are asking for.

And it worked. It changed the Torah.

A few parshiyot ago we watched Korach feel almost the exact same thing and get swallowed by the ground for it. Same wound. Opposite ending. This week’s parsha is basically a masterclass in the difference between the two, and it is a difference most of us are still getting wrong on a random Thursday afternoon.

Same wound, two completely different people

You have felt what Korach felt and what these sisters felt. That hot, tight, why them and not me feeling. The promotion that went to someone else. The sibling who got the house. The friend whose life looks effortless while yours feels like wading through mud. That feeling is not the problem. Everybody gets it. What you do in the ninety seconds after it hits, that is the whole ballgame.

Korach grabbed the feeling and turned it into a weapon. He aimed it at people. He wanted someone to lose.

The daughters of Tzelophchad, Machlah, Noah, Choglah, Milkah, and Tirtzah, grabbed the same feeling and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)