He Ran Into the Crowd

The phrase the Board of Deputies of British Jews chose for Jewish Culture Month was "Less Oy, More Joy." Which, seems to me should be one of the slogans for this Kosher Duck Revolution project. I can certainly get behind more joy. Four weeks, 150 events across the United Kingdom — exhibitions, concerts, talks at the British Museum, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, theaters in Bath, the National Holocaust Museum in Nottinghamshire. The Board said it plainly: they did not want the British public to know Jewish life only through Jewish death and Jewish pain.

One of the events was a talk at the British Museum titled "Ancient Israel and Judah in the British Museum." Before the talk happened, the museum discovered that up to half the registered attendees were anti-Israel activists who had signed up intending to disrupt it. The event was canceled. Then rescheduled. The rescheduled talk, which took place June 11, became the best-attended of the entire series — roughly four thousand people joined in person and online.

Something in that reversal stuck with me all week. The people who showed up to disrupt the event wanted it gone. It came back with four thousand people.

The parasha for this Shabbat is Korach, and it is a parasha about a community cracking apart.

Korach — a Levite, a man of standing — gathers 250 respected leaders and challenges Moses and Aaron directly. All the community is holy, he says. Who gave you the right to lead? What follows is catastrophic: the earth opens, fire descends. The community absorbs the shock, then begins to grumble again, and a plague breaks out, moving through the camp.

Most readings of Korach land on the rebellion and, a few chapters later, on Aaron's staff — which blooms overnight in the Tent of Meeting, a dead stick producing almonds in the dark. There's an earlier moment, in the middle of the plague, that I keep coming back to.

Moses turns to Aaron and gives him a short set of instructions.

Take fire. Put on incense. Go.

And then Aaron does something the Torah records in a single breath:

וַיִּקַּ֨ח אַהֲרֹ֜ן כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר דִּבֶּ֣ר מֹשֶׁ֗ה וַיָּ֙רׇץ֙ אֶל־תּ֣וֹךְ הַקָּהָ֔ל וְהִנֵּ֛ה הֵחֵ֥ל הַנֶּ֖גֶף בָּעָ֑ם וַיִּתֵּ֥ן אֶת־הַקְּטֹ֖רֶת וַיְכַפֵּ֥ר עַל־הָעָֽם׃ וַיַּעֲמֹ֥ד בֵּין־הַמֵּתִ֖ים וּבֵ֣ין הַחַיִּ֑ים וַתֵּעָצַ֖ר הַמַּגֵּפָֽה׃

Aaron took it, as Moses had ordered, and ran to the midst of the congregation, where the plague had begun among the people. He put on the incense and made expiation for the people; he stood between the dead and the living until the plague was checked.

— Bamidbar 17:12–13

He ran into the congregation. Where the plague had already started.

Aaron doesn't calculate the odds or wait for conditions to improve. Moses says go, and he goes — into the middle of a dying crowd, with a censer of burning incense. He plants himself in the gap between the dead and the living, and the plague stops.

The rabbis describe Aaron throughout the Torah as ohev shalom v'rodef shalom — a lover of peace and pursuer of peace. That phrase usually refers to his role as a mediator, settling disputes before they become rifts. This moment is something more physical than that. Aaron goes into a crowd where people are dying, on either side of him, with the one tool in his hands — a metal bowl of sacred fire and ground spice — and stands.

My husband and I have been talking about the British Museum story all week. The instinct, when someone tries to disrupt your event, is to shrink. To hold the thing in a smaller room, with less exposure, with more protection and lower expectations. To wait for a better moment.

The Board of Deputies didn't do that. They rescheduled. Four thousand people showed up.

"Less Oy, More Joy" is not a claim that there's nothing to be upset about. There is. A talk about ancient Israel and Judah at a major museum shouldn't require advance intelligence work about which registered attendees are planning to cause trouble. That's the oy, and it's real.

But the joy has to keep running too.

What Aaron picks up is a fire pan. Sacred fire and ground spice — the instruments of his work, the things he knows how to use. He goes with what he has. The British Museum event that got disrupted, rescheduled, and came back stronger was a talk about what ancient Israel built. About what it left behind. Come and look.

The parasha ends many chapters later with Aaron's staff preserved as a permanent sign. I keep coming back to the earlier moment.

He took the fire pan. He ran.

The plague was already moving through the camp, and he went into the middle of it with a censer of incense, and he stood there, and eventually the dying stopped. The death count when it was over was 14,700 — on top of those who died with Korach. The toll is real. He stood inside it, and the dying stopped.

What the moment asks — to keep going into the hard place, with what you have, without waiting for a better moment — shows up in smaller ways than plague. In Atlanta, it looks like keeping your Hebrew school carpool even in weeks when you're exhausted, because the alternative is a smaller room. It looks like showing up at shul on the Shabbat when the news is hard. It looks like a talk at the British Museum getting rescheduled instead of canceled.

That gap — between the dead and the living — is always somewhere. Aaron ran toward it.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham