How much can you say in just three verses? If I told you to tell me a story of mystery and intrigue, replete with two tragic deaths and a silent parental response, in just three sentences, could you do it? Well that is exactly what this morning’s parasha, Sh’mini does for us.
Verse One:
וַיִּקְחוּ בְנֵֽי-אַֽהֲרֹן, נָדָב וַֽאֲבִיהוּא אִישׁ מַחְתָּתוֹ, וַיִּתְּנוּ בָהֵן אֵשׁ, וַיָּשִׂימוּ עָלֶיהָ קְטֹרֶת וַיַּקְרִיבוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹה אֵשׁ זָרָה, אֲשֶׁר לֹא צִוָּה אֹתָֽם:
“Now Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the Lord strange fire, which God had not commanded them to bring.”
Verse Two:
וַתֵּצֵא אֵשׁ מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָֹה, וַתֹּאכַל אוֹתָם, וַיָּמֻתוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹֽה:
“And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the Lord.”
And Verse Three:
וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶֽל-אַֽהֲרֹן, הוּא אֲשֶׁר- דִּבֶּר יְהוָֹה ׀ לֵאמֹר, בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל-פְּנֵי כָל-הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד, וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן:
“Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me, I show Myself as holy, and gain glory before all the people.”
And Aaron was silent.”
That’s it. Three verses. Blink and you might miss it; but the result is plain to see: Nadav and Avihu somehow offended God, and they paid the ultimate price for their transgression. Moses brings an inscrutable explanation of the event to Aaron; and Aaron offers no verbal response.
The Rabbinic authors of the classical midrash as well as the medieval commentators are both puzzled by the terse nature of the text. What was it that offended the Lord so? Why were Nadav and Avihu, two of the kohanim, people who were enjoined with the task of making offerings before the Lord, punished so severely? And finally, why in the face of this tragedy was their father, Aaron, the Kohen Gadol, silent.
Our sages offer several possibilities as to the question of the sin of Aaron’s sons. The most popular response comes from Rabi Eliezer in the Talmud (Masechet Eruvin 63a) who explains, that the true sin of Nadav and Avihu was not in the act of sacrificing itself, it was a crime of assumption. They took it upon themselves to teach a bit of practical halacha, and in front of their teacher Moses no less! They assumed that Eish Zara, an alien-fire that came from outside the Tent of Meeting would be suitable to the Lord; and they were, unfortunately very wrong. The Midrash, I believe is presenting two value statements: 1) Don’t assume. After all, you know what they say about assuming. 2) Don’t interpret your own laws while there is a Judge standing in the room, the result is never pretty.
Ok, so they assumed what they shouldn’t have, and they embarrassed their teacher Moshe; bad moves no doubt, but deserving of a fiery death? I hardly think so.
Apparently, others of the great rabbinic sages, agreed that there must have been a more egregious crime lurking behind these three verses. Rabi Yishmael says in Vayikra Rabbah, that Nadav and Avihu were drunk when they entered the Mishkan! How does he come to this conclusion? Simple. He reads ahead in the text to verse nine when it says:
יַיִן וְשֵׁכָר אַל-תֵּשְׁתְּ ׀ אַתָּה ׀ וּבָנֶיךָ אִתָּךְ בְּבֹֽאֲכֶם אֶל-אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וְלֹא תָמֻתוּ
“Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die!”
A pretty convincing argument actually: a good rule of thumb in the historical analysis of a society’s laws is that if there is a law against it – it means that people were breaking that law!
So perhaps this is it, Nadav and Avihu were drunk and therefore not fit to offer a serious gift before the Lord; and they died for their transgression. Though it still seems kind of harsh, no?
Moses’ explanation of God’s justification of their deaths is equally vague:
“This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me, I show Myself as holy, and gain glory before all the people.”
Barcuh Levine, in his commentary to Leviticus explains that the Hebrew word בִּקְרֹבַי
“Those who are near to me,” is to be understood as an expression of vocation, not as a literal nearness. He points out that in the Book of Esther for example, the word kerovim is used to denote those who were permitted to come before the king, members of his official inner circle. Therefore, Levine understands this justification as saying, those who serve me dutifully will be rewarded in kind, but those who flout my will, shall be punished.
Finally, a few thoughts on the surprising phrase which ends this incredible three-verse story:
וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן “And Aaron was silent.” As we know from our own lives, sometimes silence speaks louder than words. So what is meant by Aaron’s silent reaction to this tragic news? One thought which comes from the Rashbam, is that Aaron was speechless because of the depths of his aveilut, his mourning. Something today we might refer to as shock. There was no verbal response because Aaron was incapable of making a sound due to the unspeakable horror of this tragedy.
Another explanation, the one favored by Rashi, is that Aaron silently and wholeheartedly accepted God’s judgment upon his sons, and thus did not utter a single cry or complaint to the Lord.
Or perhaps Aaron’s response is not one of mourning, nor of superhuman acceptance; but rather one which recognizes the ineffable mystery that is God. Why does God do what God does? Our silence is sometimes the only answer to the unanswerable question of God.
Three verses! This is the Torah at its best. It has the ability to move us, to make us think, to open doors for midrash and commentary in each and every generation. And somehow, it always manages to be timely as well.
I am not sure whether you took notice or not, but during Pesach our world of science embarked upon a fascinating journey towards discovering the seemingly invisible parts of our universe. This journey, the result of 16 years of work and nearly 10 billion dollars, officially began on the Second Night of Passover when the Large Hadron Particle Collider was turned on under the meadows of Switzerland.
“After two false starts due to electrical failures, protons that were whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light … raced around a 17-mile underground magnetic track outside Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building-size detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe.”
What might all this proton smashing do? Well, by accelerating these protons to speeds which stretch towards the speed of light and smashing them together scientists are looking to discover the answers to some long held questions.
For instance, one of the things scientists hope to discover is how it is possible that the power of gravity can be so strong in some instances: for example we all know that gravity is so powerful it is what keeps the Earth, and all the other planets endlessly rotating around the sun, instead of flying off to the ends of the universe. On the other hand, if gravity is such an incredibly strong force, how is it possible that your tiny refrigerator magnet has the ability to overcome its cosmic will?
But most importantly, scientists are after discovering the long-sought existence of dark matter, “which, astronomers tell us, produces the gravity that holds galaxies and other cosmic structures together.” As well as the unveiling of the “missing link of physics, the Higgs Boson particle, also called ‘The God Particle” which is believed to be the particle that imbues our world with mass. In other words, the particle that produces that incredibly important phenomenon we call ‘existence.’
Perhaps I can chalk it up to being somewhat of a closeted ‘science geek,’ or perhaps it is my way of making amends for a life spent within the confines of the liberal arts, but I am into this stuff. Not so much for what it can tell me about a world of science that I can barely understand, but more for what it can tell me about God!
My God is the God of the Big Bang, the Ein Sof Creator, without-end, who set this ever-expanding universe into motion so very long ago. So you better believe I am curious to see what happened in the infinitesimal moments after the singularity of the Big Bang.
But you must also believe that I am worried. Not because, as some detractors have claimed, that the Particle Colider might actually create a black hole, which of course would be the end of all life on Earth. No, my worries are of a theological nature.
I wonder if the sin of Nadav and Avihu was that they committed the simple mistake of underestimating the mystery of God. They thought they knew the answers, they moved without sufficient forethought, they assumed they understood what God wanted from them. In other words, they sought to answer the unanswerable, to uncover all mystery and to explain the inexplicable.
Don’t get me wrong, I am an unabashed fan of science, and I hope that this new experiment will yield an even-deeper understanding of God’s and our universe. I hope we name new particles, begin to truly comprehend the myriad of microscopic forces around us, leading us on the path towards knowledge of the universe and our roles in it. But I am also interested in maintaining a modicum of mystery –
I want us as human beings to recognize that there remain worlds of knowledge yet to be discovered, questions that have yet to be asked, mysteries that may never be solved. For if indeed we are living in an age when all questions are to be answered, then I ask you my friends, “whatever will be left for God?”
Dennis Overbye: “European Collider Begins its Subatomic Exploration” New York Times, March 30, 2010
Ibid.
Daniel Harris Ain: “Faith, Technology and the Afterlife: The Death of Death in the 21st Century”. Conservative Judaism
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