“Collective Effervescence Collective Ever Vengeance,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings
June 19, 2026 | 4 Tamuz 5786
It would be difficult to miss the kind of energy, joy, and communal jubilation exhibited by New Yorkers when the Knicks won this week or the raucous singing of the self-appointed Tartan army of Scotland’s fans as they boarded dozens of yellow school buses in Providence led by a bagpipe band to watch their soccer team triumph. I admit I had no eye witness experience and only heard of it on the news, yet even I could feel their elation. Team sports is certainly having its moment in America and we are all its beneficiaries.
The sociologist, Emile Durkheim, coined the phrase collective effervescence to describe the unbridled and united electrified force that has coursed through the population more than ever. It brings people who are strangers together joined by their combined desire—in this case—to have their teams triumph and to feel great pride. What happens next is what matters. People feel connected on a different level to one another.
We needed this, even if we (definitely I) did not watch any game. It is good to be brought together and to feel an interconnectivity with those we may never have encountered before. It is priceless, as the credit card commercial used to say.
Creating a community among disparate people has its own kind of power. In the book of Exodus 35:1, Moses gathered or sometimes translated as convoked the people to celebrate Shabbat and to offer “gifts to GOD; everyone whose hearts so moved them” to build the Mishkan, the traveling sanctuary they would help to construct. In Deuteronomy, as Moses offered his final words of instruction, he gathered the people, each one to hear and to learn and to revere God and to observe the Teaching. (Deut 31:12). I imagine these moments fostered the experience of collective effervescence.
In this week’s Torah portion, Korah, the same Hebrew word for gather קהל kahal used in the above two examples describe a more nefarious reason for gathering. I imagine this moment caused more of a collective “ever vengeance.”
Now Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, betook himself, along with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—descendants of Reuben— to rise up against Moses, together with certain other Israelites, two hundred and fifty of them: chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute.
וַיִּֽקָּהֲל֞וּ עַל־מֹשֶׁ֣ה וְעַֽל־אַהֲרֹ֗ן…
They combined/gathered against Moses and Aaron…
(Numbers 16:1-3)
Instead of bringing the community together, they divided it under the guise of gathering for rebellion and challenge. They had a grievance and chose to create opposition with their vengeful objection to Moses and Aaron’s leadership. The Torah used the same word as the other times, but changed the grammar of the verb to passive voice as an ironic twist. They may have wanted power but they lost it in the way they attempted to take it away from Moses and Aaron. They might have reconsidered their method. It did not end well for Korah and his men of repute who turned into men of dispute.
To the contrary, collective effervescence is a beautiful moment that elevates a group into an experiential high. And that method lifts us all.
Shabbat Shalom! שבת שלום
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Rabbi Elaine Zecher