A Discriminating Intellect

I was told about a holy Yid who lived in America and was trying to raise his children to live a life of mitzvot. They loved learning torah. One day, late in the winter, his non-Jewish neighbors invited the children to come and see the tree they had decorated in their living room. The father warily agreed. The children went to their neighbors' house and stood looking at the tree for several minutes without comment. The neighbor asked the children, "Nu, what do you think?" The young boy responded. "It's very pretty but I was wondering, can you use any kind of tree? And how tall does it have to be before it's called a tree and not a bush? And can you use the one from last year? Are the decorations necessary, and what can they be made of?"
Korach was a smart guy (dare I say an intellectual?). His attempt to take the leadership away from Moshe and Aharon was based on some very tough questions based on deep learning. As Rashi said this week, Korach asked, "If a garment for tzitzit is made entirely of techelet (the blue dye which is required to be on one of the strings), does it still need techelet in the fringes? If there is an entire torah in the ark, why would a beit midrash need a mezuzah on the door?" Korach wanted everthing to be the same. Korach was like Amalek (asher karcha ba'derech) who also ridiculed the torah by saying "Why make distinctions?" Rav Yermiah was thrown out of the beit hamidrash for asking about a pigeon that was found one foot inside the border of the property and one foot outside. But he was brought back in because torah is all about making distinctions. Why? Could it be because connecting to God, who is everywhere and in everything, requires it? Korach started from the point of his own intellect. The torah starts in Bereishit, maybe to tell us that the starting point is to connect to our creator. The search begins there and ends there. The journey in between requires from us millions of questions that lead us to an awareness of the unique nature of everything in creation. We are one nation but each Yid is unique, a lesson in the greatness of the ultimate One's diversity. Until now, you might have thought, "Gee, Eliyahu sounds pretty cool and enlightened. Maybe even a little bit learned." You'd be wrong, but you might have thought that. I'm about to blow it. Parshat Korach scares me. We read it every year and think, "Wow! How stupid could Korach possibly be? I would never make that mistake." And yet, when faced with a culture that bases morality on equality, we accept that as truth. Men and women are equal. "Separate but equal" keeps us separate. Who wants to be alone? You can't discriminate against someone because of their religion. Please, discriminate, in the full sense of the word. I am not equal to a non-Jew. I can work on December 25 and I cannot work on Shabbos. My wife is not equal to me, thank G-d. She is far superior to me in some ways and needs me for things she can't do as well. Making everyone equal is the quality of S'dom. It says, "I don't need anyone. If I do, it's because I am a loser, I have failed in that area." It keeps us from joining together and perhaps discovering how special each of us is. If I need help, it's because I need to connect with someone. Thank G-d.