I will be sanctified through those near to Me

 

...One may, perhaps, go even further and say: The pious believer who was not there but meekly submits, not to his own destruction, but to that of six million of his brethren, insults with his faith the faith of the concentration camps. The k'doshim, who affirmed their faith in the God of Israel in the light of the doom that surrounded them may well say to such an eager believer: "What do you know about believing, about having faith? How dare you submit into suffering that is not yours. Calm yourselves and be silent." But they, too, who were not there and yet declare from the housetops their disbelief in the God of Israel, insult the holy disbelief of the concentration camps. They who lost their faith there may well turn to our radical theologians, saying: "How dare you speak about loss of faith, what do you know about losing faith, you who have never known what we have known, who never experienced what we have experienced?" In the presence of the holy faith of the crematoria, the ready faith of those who were not there, is vulgarity. But the disbelief of the sophisticated intellectual in the midst of an affluent society - in the light of the disbelief of the crematoria - is obscenity.

(R. Eliezer Berkovitz: Faith After the Holocaust, pg. 5)

 

 

Would it have pleased the Lord?

Uri Granat

Parashat Shmini opens with a description of the acts performed by Moses, Aaron, and his sons on the eighth day of the Tabernacle's dedication. Those acts reached their climax with Moses and Aaron blessing the people, after which the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. And fire went forth from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fats upon the altar, and all the people saw, sang praises, and fell upon their faces (9:23-24). Here God's revelation is depicted as a communal experience of joy and great excitement. The description's focus and context are public and religious, and the human characters in the story (Moses, Aaron, and Aaron's sons) serve only as representatives who mediate between God and His people and between Heaven and earth. They are not personalized figures whose thoughts, feelings, and autonomous individual deeds are a matter of interest.

They fulfill their mission by painstakingly carrying out God's commands. Scripture describes the command concerning the seven days of dedication received by Aaron and his sons in these words: And you shall stay day and night for seven days at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. You shall observe the Lord's vigil, so that you will not die, for thus I was commanded (8:35). The priests were obliged to observe God's vigil and to perform the sacrificial rite, even at the expense of sacrificing their own personal desires when conflicts between the two realms arise. Aaron and his sons took their mission upon themselves and performed all the things the Lord commanded them through Moses (8:36). Rashi's comment on this verse and so Aaron did (Bamidbar 8:3) is well known: "[These words come] to praise Aaron for he did not deviate [from the divine commands]."

It is exactly at the climactic moment mentioned above, when the people achieves the lofty religious experience of divine revelation, that the threat of death against priests who deviate from the precise execution of God's word is transformed from a warning into a tragic reality: And Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, each took his pan, put fire in them, and placed incense upon it, and they brought before the Lord foreign fire, which He had not commanded them. And fire went forth from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord (10:1-2). Scripture emphasizes that Nadab and Abihu acted of their own initiative, thus clearly overstepping their authority (they brought... foreign fire, which He had not commanded them). Their deed's terrible consequences further emphasize that the priestly service is performed on behalf of the public, and that this public aspect must vanquish the priests' own egos; the personal must be nullified by the communal. Be that as it may, I would now like to claim that Scripture's account of the reactions to Nadab and Abihu's deaths during the remaining hours of the eighth day presents us with a more complicated picture of the correct balance between the personal and public realms.

Moses' own reaction to these events ignores their personal aspect and is markedly communally-oriented. Even before we have managed to digest the brothers' deaths, Moses pronounces before Aaron: "This is what the Lord spoke, [when He said], 'I will be sanctified through those near to Me, and before all the people I will be glorified'" (10:3). After Scripture explains the reason for their deaths, Moses assigns them a function as well: the destruction of those close to God relays a message to the entire people, inspiring in them feelings of awe and respect. The deaths are not "normal," "individual," or "insignificant" - they bear a communal meaning and serve a communal purpose. Just as the lives of Aaron's sons were not private and were devoted to a mission, so too their deaths bore a communal significance - they died as people who were near to God, thus magnifying His eminence before the entire people. Moses ignores the personal, emotional, and human aspects of the tragedy and sees it as a public affair, something between the community and God.

Moses continues this approach when speaking to Aaron and his surviving sons: Do not leave your heads unshorn, and do not rend your garments, so that you shall not die, and lest He be angry with the entire community, but your brothers, the entire house of Israel, shall bewail the conflagration that the Lord has burned (10:6). The bereaved family must avoid any acts of mourning - and, perhaps, any feelings associated with the tragedy - because these might endanger the entire community. According to Moses, in this case tears and mourning are not a matter for the limited family circle, rather the entire nation must engage in them. All members of the nation have become brothers to the victims' family.

Alongside Moses' words we find Aaron's thundering silence: and Aaron kept silent (10:3). Aaron's reaction reflects a different mode of coping than that found in Moses' rhetoric. Having just lost two sons, he is not comforted by Moses' justifications. The assignment of a communal function to the deaths does not mitigate his personal pain and sorrow - certainly not on the very day of the catastrophe. Aaron does choose to continue fulfilling his practical obligations but he is unable to disregard his own humanity. At this stage the gulf between the two approaches is expressed by a mute disagreement that is only verbal and emotional and without practical consequences; the commitment to the communal mission remains categorical and uncompromising - even for Aaron.

Now there is a surprising transformation. The story reaches a surprising turning point when Elazar and Itamar burn the sin offering instead of eating it, as they had been commanded (10:16-18). Their action seems to deviate from God's command in a manner similar to that of offering foreign fire, but it does not result in a similarly punitive divine reaction. Even Moses, who is angry at first and tells them, you should have surely eaten it within holy [precincts], as I commanded you (10:18), changes his mind after Aaron speaks.

Consider Aaron's words: But today, did they offer up their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord? But [if tragic events] like these had befallen me, and if I had eaten a sin offering today, would it have pleased the Lord? (10:19). Aaron is now saying in words that which he had expressed earlier with his silence, i.e., that he and his sons find themselves in an emotional state that does not allow them to perform deeds bespeaking great joy and celebration. There is no alternative to making some change in the execution of the divine command in the face of these human concerns; it would be unreasonable to think that God Himself would want those concerns to be neglected. It is important to take note of the personal tone of Aaron's speech - he is talking about himself in the first person, and he even points out the emotional inappropriateness of performing the joyous act on the very day his sons died and his family is deep in mourning. Aaron emphasizes the personal and human problem of eating the sin offering at that particular point in time. Moses, the most humble of men, recognizes the truth of Aaron's words: Moses heard [this], and it pleased him (10:20).

What brought Moses to recognize the necessity of taking human concerns into account? Why was God's reaction to the act of Elazar and Itamar so different from that suffered by their brothers? Had there been some kind of change to the previous approach which had demanded that personal difficulties must give way to the obligations and responsibilities of public roles?

Perhaps Moses remembered a similar crossroads in his own earlier life - the story of Jethro's advice. In that incident, Jethro saw Moses devoting all his energies to the people, who stood before him from morning until evening (Shemot 18:13), not leaving him a moment for himself. Moses' humility and devotion to his role led him to believe that by leaving some room for his own private existence he would be sinning against his communal mission to make known the statutes of God and His teachings (Shemot 18:16). In reaction to this, Jethro tells him that The thing you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out both you and these people who are with you (18:17-18). He tells him that sooner or later absolute and categorical devotion to communal needs will bring destructive self-harm in its wake, which will eventually harm the nation itself. If so, it is vital that public servants leave room for their own private lives if they are to carry out their missions properly. Returning to our story, we find that by burning the sin offering Aaron's sons did not adversely affect the execution of their public roles; in fact, they acted in a way that was necessary from a long-term perspective. Nadab and Abihu had to overcome their private volitions, sacrificing them upon the altar; Elazar and Itamar, however, acted correctly when they did not execute a command that was completely at odds with their private pain over their brothers' deaths.

It is instructive that the story which makes so much of personal sacrifice and the dangers of deviation in the execution of divine commands ends by granting legitimacy to individuals and their feelings. This may be seen as a warning sign against immoderate incursions upon the private realm and upon personal feelings and sensitivities in the name of the common good.

Uri Granet is a graduate of Yeshivat Kibbutz HaDati in Maale HaGilboa

 

Then Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the Lord spoke, [when He said], 'I will be sanctified through those near to Me, and before all the people I will be glorified.' " And Aaron was silent.

And Aaron was silent - Silence of Pain or of Acquiescence

His heart turned silent as a stone; he did not lift his voice in weeping and eulogy as a father usually does over a son. He also refused to be comforted by Moses, for he had no more strength and he was unable to speak.

(Abarbanel, Vayikra 10:3)

 

The text does not read va-yishtok (va-yishtok and va-yidom - are both translated as was silent.) because the Holy tongue recognizes a difference between the synonyms demama and sh'tika; the latter connotes only refraining from speech or from weeping and moaning, and cessation of other external movement, as is written (Psalms 107:27), They reeled and staggered like a drunken man and further on They rejoiced when all was quiet (yishtoku). But demama also indicates inner calm, serenity of the soul... therefore the Torah testifies that Aaron, holy man of God, was not only silent, but va-yidom - his heart was quiet and his soul was tranquil, for he did not question God's nature at all, but fully accepted His decrees.

(Rabbi Eliezer Lipman Lichtenstein - Shem Olam, quoted in Leibowitz: New Studies in the Book of Vayikra)

 

Reality follows its Usual Course - a Person's Fate is not Indicative of his Moral Worth

After the death of Aaron's two sons - Rabbi Shimon opened his discourse: For the same fate is in store for all: for the righteous and for the wicked [; for the good and for the pure, and for the impure; for him who sacrifices and for him who does not; for the good and for the sinner...] (Kohelet 9:2). For the righteous - that is Noah, who is called a righteous man (Bereishit 6). R. Yohanan said in the name of R. Eliezer, the son of R. Yossi HaGalili: When Noah exited the ark, the lion bit him and maimed him, and he was no longer fit to offer sacrifices, so his son Shem sacrificed in his stead.

For the wicked - That is Pharaoh Nekho, when he tried to sit on Solomon's throne he did not know its ways, and a lion bit him and broke him - they both died with limps, as it is written: For the same fate is in store for all: for the righteous and for the wicked; for the good and for the pure, and for the impure.

For the good: That is Moses, for it is said and she saw that he was good (Shemot 2); R. Meir says that he was born circumcised.

And for the pure - That is Aaron, who was occupied with the purification of Israel, for it is said: He walked with Me in peace and integrity, returning many from sin (Malachi 2)

And for the impure - Those are the spies; these praised the Land of Israel and those degraded it, neither group entered the Land, as it is written, for the good and for the pure, and for the impure...

For the good and for the sinner - the good - that is David, for it is said, and he sent and brought him, and he was good to look at (I Samuel 16). R. Yitzhak said: Good to look at for halakhah, anyone who looked at him would recall the material he had studied.

For the sinner - That is Nebuchadnezzar, for it is said, redeem your sins (Daniel 4:24), this one built the Temple and reigned forty years, that one destroyed the Temple and reigned for forty years - that is one fate... Another opinion: One fate - That is Aaron's sons, for regarding them it is written, in peace and integrity (Malachi 2).

For the wicked - That is Korah's congregation, of whom it is written move away. These entered to sacrifice in controversy and ended up being burned, while those entered to sacrifice without controversy and also ended up being burned.

(Vayikra Rabbah 20)

 

The Death of the Righteous is Troubling for the Holy One blessed be He and Effects Atonement

R. Abba bar Avina said: Why is the story of Miriam's death placed next to [the passage regarding] the [red] heifer's ashes? To teach that just as the heifer's ashes atone, so too the death of the righteous atones.

R. Yudin said: Why does [the story of] Aaron's death appear next to [the story of] the breaking of the Tablets? To teach that Aaron's death was as troubling for the Holy One blessed be He as was the breaking of the Tablets.

R. Hiya bar Abba said: Aaron's sons died on the first day of Nisan, so why are their deaths mentioned in connection with Yom Kippur? This is in order to teach that just as Yom Kippur atones, so too the deaths of the righteous atone. From whence do we know that Yom Kippur atones? Because it is said, For on that day [He] will atone you to purify you (Vayikra 16). And from whence do we know that the death of the righteous atones? Because it is written, And they buried Saul's bones and it is written, After that, God responded to the plea of the land (II Samuel 21).

(Vayikra Rabbah 20)

 

 

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