Shabbat Shmini 22 Adar II 5768,Mar 29, 2008

Efrat, Israel –“And there came forth fire from before G-d and devoured them [Nadav and Avihu] and they died before G-d” (Lev. 10:2).

This week’s Torah portion of Shmini raises one of the most crucial questions directed at any religion, not just Judaism. How do we deal with the tragedy of an unfathom¬able death, the good, the best, and the brightest plucked from life like a weed in the wind? We are never more humbled than when we stand before the coffin of a loved one taken away in the bloom of youth, and all we can do is grope for words, struck dumb, dazed, utterly baffled.

After the inauguration of Aaron and his sons into the priestly service of the sanctuary, a luminous summit in early Jewish history, the text speaks of G-d’s glory revealed as the fire of the Lord descends to consume the whole burnt offering, and we can only imagine the communal ecstasy the Jewish people feel upon witnessing this fire, the signature of G-d magnified to a mass that all can behold.

Nadav and Avihu, Aaron’s sons, newly anointed, then take the fire pan and offer incense before God. The text calls theirs a ‘strange fire,’ and in the midst of the personal triumph of Aaron, he is suddenly struck with two simultaneous deaths, his sons consumed by fire. From the heights of ecstasy, in a flash, the high priest is cast into a pit of potential despair. Is this not the most tragic moment of Aaron’s life?

Rabbi Mecklenberg, the author of the Ktav v-haKabbala, seizes this incident as a way to fathom death. When the scorching fire consumes the sons of Aaron like a ram and a bull, it’s an allusion to their deaths as a holy sacrifice. The Torah, he wants us to understand, implies that all death contains within it elements of sacrifice and atonement. And what appears unjust in our eyes is not necessarily unjust in the eyes of G-d.

But why now, at the moment of Aaron’s greatest glory? Because during these first hours after the 7 initiatory days, the Jewish people must learn that just as within the Holy Sanctuary there are animal sacrifices, outside the Sanctuary there are also human sacrifices. It’s a brutal lesson, painful and tragic, but it’s a way to explain why the ones who are most pure and whole are sometimes taken from us. Of course, if we don’t believe in an invisible reality, a world beyond ours, indeed, an internal world, then this perception of sacrifice is cruel. But if one accepts the statement in our Ethics of the Fathers, that this world is merely a corridor to the world to come, the notion that there are holy souls whose entry into the higher world may serve as an atonement, can be a great source of comfort to families who lose young children in acts of terror or mindless accidents. As the text in our Biblical reading clearly states, “through those who are close to Me shall I be sanctified” (Leviticus 10:3).

The midrash takes a very different approach, based upon the Biblical verse, “And (Nadav and Avihu) brought before the Lord a strange fire which He had not commanded them”. (Lev. 10:1) For many of our Rabbinic Sages this indicates a transgression, with the false fire referring either to the fire of jealousy (Nadav and Avihu could hardly wait to take the places of Moses and Aaron), the fire of the Moloch idolatry, or the false and perverted passion which can often come from becoming inebriated (and the very next commandment of the Torah forbids an intoxicated Cohen from entering the Temple precincts (Lev 10: 9).

There is however a third way of seeing this entire tragic incidence. The issue is not at all the justice or lack thereof in the tragic deaths of two young people; death is the most profound mystery of life. Death itself, almost whenever and however it comes, is always filled with frustrated goals and desires, unspoken words and feelings, and is always unfair and unjust. The important point of the story as recorded in the Bible is the manner in which Aaron responded to the deaths of his sons: “And Aaron was silent” Vayidom Aharon (Lev. 10:3). And then the Bible goes on to tell us how Aaron and the remaining sons continued to perform the Temple service. (10:12-20)

I was privileged to be present at the very first Sabbath circumcision of the Klauzemberger – Tzanz hassidim in the Bet Midrash which they established in Brooklyn New York, their first stop in America after the holocaust (They were soon to leave Brooklyn and set up new and final residence in Netanya, Israel) The Rebbe rose to speak: “My dear brothers and sisters, at every circumcision ceremony we recite the verse from Prophet Yezekiel, ‘I see you are rooted in your blood (damayich), and I say unto you that by your blood you shall live , by your blood you shall live’. I would like to suggest another interpretation. The Hebrew damayich does not come from blood, dam, but rather from silence, dom, as in vayidom Aharon. There were many reasons for us to scream out in protest during and after the Holocaust. Had we done so we may very well have severed our entire relationship with our G-d and our history. We chose to remain silent and to continue planting, building and preserving. Indeed, by our silence do we live.”

Shabbat Shalom
Shlomo Riskin
Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone
Chief Rabbi - Efrat Israel