Experience: The Basis Of Our Faith
Concluding Notes
Footnote 1:
 A miraculous opening up of the earth and swallowing up Korach and his followers punished the great rebellion of Korach against Moses in the desert. The Midrash Rabbah describes the encounter in which Korach, for personal reasons, challenged Moses, saying that G-d did not command him the mitzvohs, but that Moses had conceived them out of his own mind.
Korach was the first to challenge the authenticity of Moses and Torah from Sinai. But there were groups in succeeding generations that were the spiritual heirs of Korach, such as the Sadducees, Baisoosim, Karaites, Reform, Conservative, Reconstruction movements, etc. I have often wondered why it was necessary for G-d to create a miracle for the destruction of Korach, but not for the succeeding challengers of Moses and Torah from Sinai!
It seems to me that Korach's challenge was the real threat to the truth of Moses' authority and Torah from Sinai. Korach was one who lived and experienced everything every other Jew experienced during that momentous age. The entire 3 million body of Jews might have witnessed the revelation of G-d and Torah... and yet there is one witness, who having been a contemporary of these events cries... FOUL! LIE!
This man is a threat, notwithstanding the 'insanity' of his plea. Generations later will always find a reliable champion for their cause in him because he was there. The response demanded was to destroy his argument by destroying him in a supernatural way to demonstrate the falsity of his claim.
Later generations, down to the Reform and Conservative movements don't present that kind of a threat because no matter how loudly they proclaim their challenge to Torah from Sinai, they don't have a leg to stand on. The transmission of that event at Sinai, the Oral and Written Torah, was established, accepted and acknowledged by the contemporary generation of Jews at that time.
On what basis can these movements claim that it is a lie?
Footnote 2:
Our Rabbis pointed out that the first of the Ten Commandments that G-d Himself speaks, declares... I am the Lord your G-d who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. There is no mention of G-d as the Creator. Would it not have been more dramatic to command Jews: I am the Lord your G-d who created the Universe!?
Our Rabbis understood the nature of the man. No man is asked to believe with an unshakable faith things that he has not sensed, because by nature, he will not.
Who was there to witness the creation? No one! So, notwithstanding the great majesty of the Creator, there still may linger a scintilla of a doubt as to what, where, who. But who can doubt what the 5 senses of 3 million people experienced, each corroborating the other?
When G-d establishes his majesty over a nation he bases it on a solid foundation of a personal experience.
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