On June 1, erev Shavuot, my community in Boulder, CO, was attacked. Around 15 people were injured, some very badly. About half of those injured are members of Bonai Shalom, the shul where I serve as assistant clergy.
Entering the holiday, my community was reeling. Thank God it was Shavuot that night — thank God we had a community-wide Tikkun Leil Shavuot to gather, light candles, make kiddush, talk and connect, daven together, and learn Torah until the early hours. Thank God for Torah and her many teachers, who helped us feel our feelings, helped ground us, and helped us move forward together. Without the holiday to mark and sanctify the moment, to prepare us to receive the Torah of that moment together, I don’t know what we would have done. Thank God for giving us the Torah and for making life holy through mitzvot.
Find more resources on Korach
Throughout the book of Bamidbar, the people voice their needs, and Moses consistently seems to react with frustration and without due empathy. In Parshat Korach, Moses faces a fundamental challenge to his leadership. In just 13 words, Korach presents the question that many leaders carry quietly within: “Too much is on you: The entire people, each of them, is holy; God is inside them. So explain why you are above God’s community!?” (Numbers 16:3) Korach’s challenge resonates because while he may be acting from ulterior motives, he isn’t wrong. Korach asks two questions: What makes Moses a voice of moral authority? And as Moses maintains the big-picture vision for the community, is he missing something about the holiness of each person?
This tension around who gets to speak — and with what authority — already shows up twice in the chapters leading up to our parshah. First, when Eldad and Medad begin “prophesying in the camp,” Joshua sees it as a threat to Moses’ leadership. “My lord Moses — shut them up!” he cries. But Moses welcomes it: “Are you all worked up on my behalf? If only all of God’s people were prophets, and God would put that spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:28-29) Every person has a message to deliver, and God and the people ought to listen to them.
Later, Aaron and Miriam raise a similar question: Has God spoken only with Moses? This time, Moses says nothing at all.
Korach’s perspective seems so similar to Moses’ “everyone could be a prophet” response to Joshua, but here Moses responds defensively. What motivates the different responses? When the people seek to be at the center of divine and human attention, why does Moses sometimes endorse the people’s claim, sometimes say nothing, and sometimes challenge it? I think it points to one of the central challenges that leaders face.
When we see something wrong, we want to speak out. But if it won’t help, then we are doing it to serve our own moral ego. Sometimes the right thing is to be fully with people, even as their focus narrows onto their own pain.
We have to think sensitively and strategically, even when we feel it is a matter of gravest moral concern. How will our words land, and what are we trying to achieve by saying them? I have to consider how deeply I know people and how well they know me — if I haven’t yet shown up at a hospital bedside for them, do we have the foundation of trust and love for me to serve as an effective moral voice? Or would my “speaking out” only serve to erode that trust, such that I never actually become an effective moral guide in my community?
Many of us wrestle with this: when to speak from conviction and when to hold back out of care. When does silence serve, and when does it become complicity? For those of us in roles of leadership or moral responsibility — whether formal or informal — this tension can feel especially sharp. We know we’re not meant to say everything we think, but we also know that guidance sometimes means saying hard things. It requires both perspective and proximity: to stand with our communities and also, at times, just outside them, in order to see clearly. The challenge is not just to speak with integrity and urgency, but to speak without losing compassion, relationship, or trust. The challenge is also to sense when not to speak, how to hold back with integrity.
Find more commentaries on social justice, leadership, and philosophy.
In the days following the attack, I felt the depth of our grief, anger, and fear echoing through private conversations, public statements, vigils, and the news. Amid very real concern for the welfare of our loved ones in Boulder, Israel, and Gaza, our focus narrowed. We were deep in our pain, and like so many communities in grief, that pain became our lens. In moments like these, many of us find ourselves navigating roles we didn’t choose, our presence signaling assent to messages we didn’t craft. We show up out of solidarity, out of love, out of obligation — and still, we wonder what our silence implies. I heard sentiments that troubled me: calls to restrict speech, declarations of unwavering support for continued war. And I also heard calls for unity and compassion.
I felt a moral duty to push my community toward feeling the pain of Palestinians, even or perhaps especially amid their own pain, and to motivate a shift in our understanding of the use and abuse of power. This has been true since October 7, but even more so in that moment. But I held myself back from speaking, from challenging them. It was and is painful, but I think it was the right decision. The entire people is holy, each of them. God is with their pain and their needs. As narrow as our focus can be when we are in acute moments of pain, if we as leaders fail to hold the sanctity of that pain, we hurt people and we undermine trust. In that moment, they deserved my full attention. I still believe that we fall short of our moral duty until our focus can expand, seeing the larger context and our place in it. But in struggling with what to say and when to say it, I see that there are times to push, times to be silent, and times to support.
In a community of people dedicated to justice and to the ongoing process of honestly reckoning with our power, our culpability, and our responsibility, I believe that this is a radical message. It is not always right to “speak out” or to expand people’s focus. It hurts to see them in pain, and it hurts to see their pain draw their focus inward. But being fully with them in their time of pain — that is also holy.
Rabbi Jacob Chatinover currently serves as the director of congregational learning at Bonai Shalom in Boulder, CO. His personal mission is to foster a culture of peer-to-peer torah learning as a spiritual practice. He is also a freelance translator of Jewish texts from all eras and genres, and specializes in Hasidic texts and early-medieval liturgical poetry. He has studied at Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah, the Northwoods Kollel, Hadar, Brandeis University, and the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. He previously served as research assistant to Rabbi Or N. Rose, and his writing will (God willing) be published in Rabbi Rose’s next two books.