Korach, Petunia and the Tyranny of Not Knowing

My cat Petunia is yellow where she should be pink.

I wish I could tell you that this week’s thoughts on Parashat Korach emerged from deep Torah study, careful analysis of classical commentators and a profound examination of leadership, authority and rebellion.

Instead, they emerged from staring at a cat’s gums.

Petunia is somewhere between ten and thirteen years old, depending on which version of her biography one accepts. Like many cats, she has always regarded objective facts as optional. What is not optional is that she has shared my home, my routines, my writing sessions and a significant portion of my life.

This week, I noticed that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Yesterday, we went to the vet. Blood tests were taken. On Monday morning we have an ultrasound appointment in Kfar Saba. Somewhere between now and then lies the answer to a question I am not particularly eager to hear.

And that, strangely enough, is where Korach enters the story.

Most people read Korach as a parashah about leadership. They are not wrong. Korach challenges Moses and Aaron, gathers supporters and launches what is arguably the Torah’s first organised political campaign. It ends badly. Extremely badly. The earth itself intervenes in a manner that would make modern opposition parties think twice before scheduling a press conference.

But this year I find myself reading Korach differently.

This year I am noticing something else.

Korach cannot tolerate uncertainty.

Neither can the Israelites.

Neither, if I am being honest, can I.

Human beings have a remarkable tendency to fill gaps in knowledge with stories. Give us half the facts and we will confidently invent the rest. Give us a symptom and we will diagnose the disease. Give us silence and we will populate it with our worst fears.

My blood test results are not back.

The ultrasound has not happened.

No diagnosis exists.

Yet my brain has already produced enough possible outcomes to fill an entire veterinary textbook.

Tumour.

Liver disease.

Kidney failure.

Something treatable.

Something untreatable.

Something catastrophic.

Something surprisingly mundane.

Every possibility is currently living rent-free in my head.

This is the tyranny of not knowing.

The spies in last week’s parashah suffered from it. Korach suffers from it in this week’s. Faced with uncertainty, people become desperate for conclusions. Not necessarily correct conclusions. Just conclusions.

Anything is preferable to waiting.

Waiting is unbearable.

Waiting requires faith.

Not necessarily faith that everything will be fine. Judaism has never promised that. Waiting requires faith that we do not need to know everything immediately. It requires faith that reality exists independently of our anxieties about it.

That is a much harder spiritual challenge.

Korach sees a situation he does not fully understand and supplies his own explanation. The nation repeatedly encounters uncertainty and supplies its own explanation. Again and again, the Torah presents people with incomplete information and watches what they do next.

Most of the time, they panic.

Which is unfortunate because panic has an extraordinary talent for disguising itself as certainty.

The frightening thing is that certainty often feels wise. It feels informed. It feels responsible. Sitting awake at two o’clock in the morning imagining seventeen possible disasters can feel suspiciously like preparation.

It is not preparation.

It is anxiety with a marketing department.

Petunia, meanwhile, remains entirely unimpressed by my emotional collapse.

She has not eaten.

She has slept.

She has not demanded attention.

She has conducted herself with the quiet dignity of a creature who has absolutely no interest in reading her own medical file.

There is probably a lesson in that.

The commentators spend a great deal of time discussing Korach’s motivations. Was he jealous? Ambitious? Principled? Self-deluded? The Torah leaves enough ambiguity to keep scholars occupied for centuries.

Petunia’s motives are refreshingly straightforward.

I thought she would like breakfast.

Preferably twice. Not once.

The contrast is humbling.

Human beings are forever trying to peer into the future. We demand certainty. We seek guarantees. We Google symptoms. We catastrophize. We negotiate with G-D. We write entire narratives before the evidence has arrived.

Cats simply occupy the day in front of them.

By the time you read this, I may know more than I do now. The blood tests may provide answers. The ultrasound may provide answers. Or perhaps there will be more waiting.

What Korach reminds me this year is that certainty is not the same thing as truth.

Sometimes the wisest response is not to invent an ending.

Sometimes the bravest response is to wait for one.

And so, like every anxious pet owner who has ever loved a furry little tyrant, I find myself doing something profoundly unfashionable.

I am trying not to know.

At least until Monday.