Did Korach Die?

So, did he, or did he not?

Enigmatically, the Torah doesn't really say. It says that "all of his men" were killed when the ground opened up to devour the rabble rousers, and that the 250 men who had brought sacred incense were engulged by flames. Initially, Moshe had instructed to appear with the 250 men but it could be that he had cold feet or that God pre-empted him, because he appears in neither of the above contingents!

In shul this past Shabbat I asked this question of someone and he tried to use an analogy that at first seemed very flawed. He said, "What would happen if Sinwar wasn't killed? All of his men were destroyed, annihilated, but nothing ever happened with him. Would it really matter?!" 

Maybe, alternatively, imagine a situation where Eichmann had never been captured, but left to die peaceably in his old age, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, who had come to receive their final blessings. 

Ironically, the Medrash teaches that Pharaoh similarly wasn't killed. It could indeed be that both Korach and Pharaoh before him represented ideas that had become defunct and thus whether they were alive didn't really matter as long as they didn't have followers, or people who would continue their way. 

I once knew someone well who fascinatingly was one of the liberators of the Kotel in '67, only to go on to become a sworn anti-Zionist, an interesting story in his own right (He does, though, through it all keep a framed picture of himself and Goren and the iconic shofar, taken on the day of the Old City's liberation, on the chestnut armoire next to his cherished, vintage piano.) This man, gentle-hearted and rabid at the same time, once avowed that any hater of God will be left without any remembrance, his case in point being Herzl whose three offspring died in the most tragic of ways (heroine, suicide, Theresienstadt), and whose only grandchild also commited suicide after learning his family had been entirely destroyed in the war. 

To the extent to which this person's thesis is true, there is something that speaks volume about the message we can or cannot bring to the world when we have or do not have living offspring. An adopted child is considered as one's own, and Torah students are certainly on par with that. 

It would seem in fact that when an idea no longer carries any sway, on the evil-side, whether its initiator is alive or not perhaps has little import as long as society succeeds in moving beyond it to create a better vision for the world. Korach's sons famously did not die in their father's sins, perhaps showing that when one has even an ember of holiness or positive thought, that can indeed be carried on through one's sons, children, and students.