Moses’s response is to state that he now understands something God had said in the past:

Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.” And Aaron was silent.()

What is Moses trying to convey to his brother in this moment of sudden tragic loss? Does he mean this to be comforting? Or is he simply musing to himself in the shock of the moment, much as Robert Oppenheimer did on July 16, 1945, in the aftermath of the Trinity nuclear test at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” (paraphrasing Bhagavad Gita 11:32). Is it not a moment so pregnant with power and potential, triumph and tragedy, that only such words will do?

But the mystery here is greater than at first glance. Even accepting Moses’s reverie as a natural human response, we are still left with the question: What was God’s original statement? There is no verse in the Torah that directly corresponds to Moses’s statement. So what did God say? And why had Moses been confused by it? How did the death of Aaron’s sons clarify it for him? The answer to these questions is the subject of a dispute in the  where two verses are proposed as candidates for Moses’s conundrum. By looking at the Talmud’s two suggestions as to what God’s confusing statement was, we can gain insight into Moses and Aaron, understanding their reactions to this moment better. 

The first possibility the Talmud presents is that Moses is referring to God’s commandment in :

The LORD said to Moses, “Go down, warn the people not to break through to the LORD to gaze, lest many of them perish. The priests also, who come near the LORD, must stay pure, lest the LORD break out against them.”

Here God warns Moses that the people should not ascend Mt. Sinai during God’s revelation upon the mountain. The power and presence of Divine glory is so great, and the human form so weak, that the bodies of those who approach will be overwhelmed and destroyed. It does not seem that there is any moral quality to this prohibition, but simply anxiety over uncontrollable danger. God seems unable to hold back the inherent radiating power that Divine presence evokes. Like getting too close to the sun, or perhaps to a source of ionizing radiation, those who get too close to God’s immediate presence will inevitably perish because of the tremendous force of the radiating Glory.

This is very much akin to the story of Uzza ben Abinadab recounted in  and :. Uzza and his brother were charged with driving the cart carrying the ark when David first tried to bring it up to Jerusalem. On the way, the animals driving the cart stumbled, leading the ark to slip, and Uzza reached out, catching the ark, and dying instantly on the spot. David was afraid to bring the ark any further and delayed bringing it into Jerusalem for three months. Uzza committed no moral transgression, only an instinctual error, and died from direct exposure to God’s power. If we accept this understanding, Moses means to tell Aaron something like: “Working this close to so much power is dangerous, and those closest (i.e., most physically proximate) to God will be the most exposed to the danger.” In other words, God’s power cuts both ways. It can grant great benefits, but it can overwhelm us and destroy us as well if we fail to take care.

The second possibility the Talmud presents is :

. . . a regular burnt offering throughout the generations, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the LORD. For there I will meet with you, and there I will speak with you, and there I will meet with the Israelites, and it shall be sanctified by My Presence (kevodi).

Here God alludes to the Divine glory (kevodi) as the “power source” of the desert sanctuary, namely God’s presence. What does Moses find mysterious or confusing about this? Well, even in the desert, God is represented by the kohanim; they make up at least a portion of God’s glory.  Can humans truly sanctify the Divine, when the Divine is already entirely holy? Here, the Talmud suggests that we read the word kevodi (lit. “My-glory”) as mekhubadai (“those who glorify me”). In other words, God’s presence is one and the same as the human beings who attempt to approach God. Those who reach out to God can come to represent God so completely that they are equivalent to God’s own presence.

With this interpretation, the Talmud links the act of Nadab and Abihu in bringing strange fire with more typical acts of martyrdom. The Talmud seems to be claiming that the two sons of Aaron chose to serve by dying for God in order to dedicate the sanctuary with their lives. This act of self-sacrifice would show the power contained in the sanctuary and make it a source of awe among the people. While this may be troubling to us, the Talmud’s interpretation attempts to fully demonstrate the strength of Moses’s words to Aaron: “Your sons did no wrong. They died doing a good thing, sanctifying the Divine name among the people.”

The raw, visceral potency of this understanding is undeniable, and I find its call a primal one. Though I know there will be many who find this second interpretation deeply disturbing, its demand that connection with God is worth giving up one’s life raises the stakes in religious life. When we fail to see that this power, majesty, and glory is one of the things that consistently attracts people to religion, we put ourselves in a very dangerous position. At some level, the tremendous mystery which awakens within us fear and trembling can be properly taken as the Divine voice calling out to us. On the other hand (and this is the thing that disturbs us so deeply), what we think to be a great mystery can simply be a moment of self-delusion, leading us into acts of nihilistic self-destruction.  One of our most central tasks as religious people is to sort out magical thinking and wish-fulfilling fantasy from God’s true demands, demands that lead to authentic holy deeds and actual moral imperatives.

I think this last thought is more aligned with the Talmud’s first interpretation, that all power, especially religious power, can be overwhelming and dangerous, and it needs to be contained in order to be safely employed for the betterment of the world. This is what happened at Mount Sinai when God told the people they should not ascend the mountain lest they die. Can we understand the purpose of the desert sanctuary similarly? Must we not keep Divine power contained in the midst of the people? If we are able to do so, becoming a community both containing and embodying holiness, we can approach God without fear. My blessing for us all is that we have access to God’s power, but safely and beneficially, not as a mighty storm, but as a gentle rain.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

And Moses said unto Aaron: “Draw near unto the altar, and perform the service of your sin-offering and your burnt-offering, and make atonement for yourself, and for the people; and present the offering of the people, and make atonement for them; as the LORD commanded.”

Identifying the textual problem: commentators have noticed that the phrase “draw near unto the altar” seems superfluous. If Aaron is being commanded to “perform the service of the sin offering,” is it not obvious that he will need to approach the altar? This textual issue will serve as the basis for our consideration of the attributes of a leader based on our examination of the comments of the traditional Jewish commentaries.

Examining the Commentators’ Solutions to the Problem:

�鲹������(Rabbi Shelomo Yitzhaki, France, 1040–1105) states that Aaron was instructed to approach the altar (in addition to being told to perform the service of the sin offering) because he “was ashamed and afraid to approach. Moses [therefore] said to him: Why are you ashamed? [It was] for this that you were chosen!”

The commentators attempt to explain what Rashi means by “It was for this you were chosen” for a leadership position. What exactly is the valued attribute Aaron possessed deeming him worthy of such an exalted position?

Degel Mahaneh Efraim,in the name of his grandfather the Baal Shem Tov (Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Efraim of Sudilkov, Poland, 1742–1800), states that Moshe told Aaron: the very fact that you are bashful/reticent and humble, that you possess fear and reticence before God, and consider yourself unworthy—for this reason, you were chosen. He highlights the quality of humility for a leader.

Minhah Belulah (Rabbi Avraham Rappaport, Italy, 1520–1596) however, cites the midrash that “the altar appeared to him in the image of a [golden] calf; therefore he was frightened. As is known, one’s imagination concretizes that which troubles the mind and resides there constantly. Aaron couldn’t remove his thoughts from his [enabling role] in the matter of the [golden] calf, always remembering that sin . . . he, therefore, perceived the altar in the image of a calf. And Moses’s saying that “that’s why you were chosen” means that you were chosen because you constantly remember the sin and are embarrassed on account of it—and were therefore chosen to serve in the role of high priest.

Aaron is chosen not because he is perfect but rather because of his contrition and his embarrassment concerning the one sin of his. He does not forget his lapse in judgment. His almost obsessive preoccupation perhaps indicates that he is willing to take responsibility for his deeds—both past and present—a worthy trait for a leader.

Ramban (Nahmanides, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, Spain, 1194–1270), on the other hand, quotes the same midrash but concludes that Moses is telling Aaron to embrace an element of haughtiness or overconfidence and not to be so “low-spirited” because God has forgiven him. In other words, Aaron was chosen for the position, indicating that God has forgiven him, and therefore being overly modest or hesitant is inappropriate. An obsessive preoccupation with the past can be paralyzing; the leader must move on and act at times with an almost overly confident determination and assertiveness. When chosen for a position, one needs to rise to the occasion.

The Ketav Sofer (Avraham Binyamin Sofer, the son of the Hatam Sofer, Hungary, 1815–1871), like the Minhah Belulah above, notes that a leader is not chosen because he is perfect. He, however, takes it one step further suggesting that a leader should actually be “one who has a box of reptiles hanging from his back,” meaning that he comes with baggage. And this is what Moshe meant when he exhorted Aaron saying—why are you so concerned/reticent; Aaron was concerned lest he become haughty having been elevated to such an exalted position (in contradistinction to Ramban’s interpretation that Aaron was worried that he wasn’t worthy). So Moses tells him not to worry—because he was actually chosen on account of his having sinned and thereby would not become haughty.

Perhaps a leader who comes with, and/or is aware of, his challenges will be less likely to become haughty and will be able to empathize with others. The Ketav Sofer then is not extolling the attribute of humility like the Minhah Belulah, but rather cautioning against cultivating an outsized and even unwarranted sense of humility.

An unexpected interpretation is offered by Sheraga Hameir (Rabbi Sheraga Feivish Schneebalg, 20th century, London / Benei Berak, in a footnote to Be’er Mayim Hayyim, the 16th-century supercommentary on Rashi) who suggests that “why are you embarrassed?” should really be understood as “why are you tarrying?” (based on his understanding the Hebrew ב.ו.ש.). Accordingly, Moses cautions Aaron not to tarry in his offering of the sacrifice since he was chosen on account of his willingness to accede to the call to duty, as demonstrated in  where according to Rashi, “Aaron did not delay [fulfilling] God’s mission to go to Egypt and thereby merited the priesthood instead of Moses [who delayed accepting the mission].” Therefore Aaron is reminded by Moses why he was chosen and why “he must immediately offer the sacrifice and not delay.”

The quality of embracing one’s obligation as a leader and fulfilling it in a timely and highly professional manner seems to be the point of Sheraga Hameir’s comment.

Let’s look at one last comment and switch the perspective from Aaron’s leadership qualities to Moses’s.Be’er Yitzhak (Rabbi Yitzhak Horowitz, Galicia, 19th century, one of Rashi’s most important though less well-known supercommentaries) notes that Aaron did not “consider himself worthy for the position . . . so he walked slowly” becoming immobilized. “And when Moses realized this via Aaron’s movements and facial expression,” he encouraged Aaron by speaking the words “approach the altar” in a manner that would inspire and embolden him to continue. As my student Jeremy Fineberg (RS ’19) astutely suggested, Moses was able to motivate Aaron precisely because he chose his words carefully. Moses is displaying a developedintuitive senseallowing him to motivate others and facilitate their successful completion of a task or acceptance of an obligation.

According to Be’er Yitzhak, Moses is aware of the tension a leader may encounter when the attribute of humility (which Aaron possessed) comes into conflict with the need to assert oneself in order to complete the task required of one’s position.  

Having reviewed six commentaries offering various paradigms of leadership, we should reflect on the different attributes that were highlighted:

Being humble. Contrite/remorseful. Confident/determined. Accepting of responsibility. Tried by personal challenges, past and present. Dependable/professional. Intuitive. Empathic. Inspiring/capable of facilitating the success of others. Choosing words carefully.

Which of these resonate most strongly with us? Which are the most and least important in our leaders?

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Aaron and his four sons were the community’s intermediaries in the service of the Tabernacle. They dutifully followed each instruction commanded by God through Moses. All were filled with joy and trepidation.

The parashah begins on the eighth and final day of inauguration week. The ceremony narrated in Leviticus 9 culminates in a felicitous and ecstatic moment of response from God to their carefully orchestrated sacrificial rites: “Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of the Lord appeared to all the people. Fire came forth from before the Lord and consumed the burnt-offering . . . on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted and fell on their faces” (Lev. 9:23-24).

But in this moment of awe and ecstasy, something goes terribly wrong. In the verse that immediately follows, Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu offer a “strange fire” to God. And suddenly there is a horrific and tragic reversal. With the exact same words that described the joyous revelation of God’s presence in community, things take an unspeakable turn: “And fire came forth from before the Lord and consumed them; thus they died.” (Lev. 10:2).

There is both a communal and a personal dimension to this tragedy. The community’s loss is twofold: With a shocking suddenness, their moment of celebration has turned to a moment of grief; and they have lost two cherished leaders. For Aaron, the grief is deeply personal. His beloved sons have died in their prime, in the line of duty—a duty he raised and trained them to fulfill. And yet, he is in the midst of performing a sacred rite in which he is the star of the show and the central actor. There is no quiet place to which to retreat to wail, to mourn, and to wallow in the pain. He could not be in a more public setting, or more needed by his community, than he was in that moment.

In the unspeakable void created by these sudden deaths, before Aaron speaks a word, Moses breaks the silence, stating: “This is it that the Lord spoke, saying: Through them that are nigh unto Me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Lev.10:3). And as for Aaron, the same verse reports, “And Aaron was silent” (vayidom) The medieval biblical commentator Nahmanides suggests that Aaron had been wailing out loud, and after Moses spoke, he became silent.

Did Moses silence Aaron’s expression of pain? It is hard to know if Moses hoped these words would bring comfort or if he was trying to repress raw expressions of grief. From the continuation of the chapter, it is clear that Moses felt it was a top priority to ensure that the day’s rites be properly completed. Mourning would have to be deferred for the sake of the religious needs of the community.

Leviticus 10 is a highly generative chapter for rabbinic discussions of Hilkhot Aveilut (the laws of mourning). Ironically, most of the Jewish mourning practices derived from this chapter come from behaviors that were forbidden to Aaron and his surviving sons. They were told not to mourn, and from this we learn exactly how Jews should mourn. They were told not to rend their clothes (Lev. 10:6), and so we learn to rend our garments upon losing a relative (B. Moed Katan 15a). They were told they must continue to trim their hair, and so we learn to avoid shaving for a period of time after the death of a loved one.

We see a similar dynamic in Ezekiel 24. The prophet is told not to mourn the death of his wife, “the delight of his eyes” (Ezek. 24:16). Ezekiel, a priest and a prophet – a community leader – is told to grieve “in silence” (dom) (Ezek. 24:17). The rabbis derive further universal mourning practices from what Ezekiel could not do (B. Moed Katan 15a). Ezekiel was told to leave on his shoes (Ezek. 24:17), and so we remove our shoes when we mourn our dead.

This is tragic, but also powerful. Community leaders often are forced to sacrifice their own emotional needs—especially private experiences of grief—for the sake of maintaining stability, structure, and continuity—and even joy and celebration—for communities that rely on them to remain present and resilient.

I want to suggest that the rabbinic laws of mourning honor Aaron’s sacrifice by deriving mourning rites from the sacrifice he made by not engaging in those very rites. In mourning our loved ones, we recall and pay homage to Aaron’s inability to mourn his sons. Rashi states that Aaron was rewarded for his silence. Perhaps the eternal monument to Aaron’s pain that constitutes the laws of mourning can be seen as another facet of Aaron’s “reward.”

But Aaron was not completely silent. If we read until the end of Chapter 10, we see that Aaron remained silent as Moses guided the retrieval of the bodies from the sanctuary; silent as Moses told him not to mourn; silent as God shares rules for priestly conduct; silent as Moses told him to continue observing the public sacrificial rites that were to be performed that day. Only in the penultimate verse in the chapter does Aaron speak, for the first time, since the deaths of his sons. According to Maimonides (Laws of Mourning 1:1), those first and only words that Aaron speaks in the aftermath of losing two children (Lev. 10:19) are the source for the biblical commandment to mourn, in general.

What did Aaron say? What words could he speak, in this unspeakable time, that could form the eternal basis of all Jewish mourning?

Aaron’s words are a response to a rebuke from Moses. Aaron had spent the day on which his sons died not mourning, fulfilling every single public ritual rite with impeccable precision – every rite, with one exception. He could not bring himself to eat the sin-offering, as he was supposed to do. This angered Moses, who rebuked his brother.

Aaron responded, “See this day they brought their sin-offering and their burnt-offering before the Lord, and such things have befallen me! Had I eaten sin offering today, would that have been good in the eyes of the Lord?” Aaron’s sons had died in the immediate aftermath of bringing these offerings. How could he bear to eat from the sin-offering? Aaron finally breaks his silence by resisting one act of not mourning. Through this one small act of resistance, Aaron, the community leader who sacrificed all of his private grief for the sake of the community’s stability, finally mourned.

Moses accepted Aaron’s explanation. And Maimonides derived from it the basis of the entire biblical commandment to mourn. This is a profound way to honor what Aaron did. As tragic as the position of community leaders can be, as painful as it is that our tradition asked this of Aaron, there is something redeeming about the way in which Aaron’s sacrifice did not go unrecognized. In all of our mourning, we honor Aaron’s silent pain over the loss of his sons. Indeed, as the additional example from Ezekiel 24 demonstrates, we honor the pain of all who have been called to make similar sacrifices. 

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

Commentaries through the ages have focused on the actions of Aaron’s eldest sons, asking whether being slain by God’s holy fire was, in fact, a punishment—and if so, what exactly it was that they being punished for. Most commentators conclude that the deaths of Nadav and Avihu were indeed punishment, but disagree as to the nature of their transgression: they were drunk when they entered the sanctuary; they were improperly clothed; they had not washed their hands and feet; they were unmarried; they had entered the holy place without authorization; or they had expounded the law before Moses, their teacher. What we can conclude from this plethora of possible explanations is that no one knows for sure why they were killed. Commentators are equally intrigued and perplexed by Moses’s statement to Aaron, and Aaron’s subsequent silence, in the face of this horrific tragedy.

If, however, we look at the unfolding narrative in its entirety, a case can be made that the protagonists are not Nadav and Avihu, but Aaron. This story is about Aaron. It is a story about a parent-child relationship in the same tradition as the accounts of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, Jacob and Joseph. Two elements of the story stand out: When Nadav and Avihu are killed, Aaron is silent. But the language the Torah uses, vayidom Aharon, is strong language. This is not mere silence, the absence of speech. It is a profound silence. Aaron is dumbstruck! We can picture him as virtually catatonic. Then, after his brother Moses tells him he must not show outward signs of mourning or leave the Mishkan, God speaks to him. It is one of only two times in the entire Torah that God speaks directly to Aaron, the other being after the death by fire of his cousins, Korah and his followers, in the desert insurrection. It is at this point in the narrative, when God speaks to Aaron, that Aaron undergoes a transformation.

William F. May, a Christian theologian, describes two kinds of parental love, accepting love and transforming love, that necessarily exist in tension with each other. Accepting love is unconditional. It is a love that accepts the child as she is. Transforming love promotes the well-being of the child. It is a love that wants the child to flourish, to be the best he can possibly be. As May , however, “accepting love, without transforming love, slides into indulgence and finally neglect. Transforming love, without accepting love, badgers and finally rejects.” It is the need to find the balance between these two kinds of love that we find at the heart of this narrative.

Aaron has been busy, preoccupied with the preparation for and consecration of the Mishkan. Immediately after the week of consecration, Nadav and Avihu  make a tragic error, perhaps with sincere and praiseworthy motivation. They make the offering of incense not as prescribed, but on their own initiative and in their own way. Does Aaron bear some responsibility? Has he been an enabler of his sons as he was in the incident of the golden calf? Is that perhaps why he is in a state of shock and cannot speak? The Torah never answers these questions explicitly, but leaves them for us to ponder.

Then God, for the very first time, speaks directly to Aaron. Is that act in and of itself meant as a kind of comfort? And what words does God speak? They are words of instruction, rules of behavior, and a charge to teach the Israelites God’s laws as transmitted by Moses. Here, God is modeling what May called transforming parental love, the love that seeks the betterment of children, even as Aaron is charged with becoming the teacher-in-chief of the people. And then, when Moses learns of the transgression of Elazar and Itamar, Aaron comes to their defense, takes responsibility on himself, and mollifies his brother.

Aaron, it seems, finally comprehends the tension between accepting love and transforming love and the necessity of finding a balance between them. In doing so, he becomes our teacher and exemplar, showing us how we may instruct, exhort, and criticize our children, even at times saying “no,” and still assure them of our accepting and unconditional love. It is a lesson all of us—parents, teachers, and community leaders—should take to heart.

This commentary was originally published in 2017.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Moses’s response is to state that he now understands something God had said in the past:

Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.” And Aaron was silent.

(Lev. 10:3)

What is Moses trying to convey to his brother in this moment of sudden tragic loss? Does he mean this to be comforting? Or is he simply musing to himself in the shock of the moment, much as Robert Oppenheimer did on July 16, 1945, in the aftermath of the Trinity nuclear test at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” (paraphrasing Bhagavad Gita 11:32). Is it not a moment so pregnant with power and potential, triumph and tragedy, that only such words will do?

But the mystery here is greater than at first glance. Even accepting Moses’s reverie as a natural human response, we are still left with the question: What was God’s original statement? There is no verse in the Torah that directly corresponds to Moses’s statement. So what did God say? And why had Moses been confused by it? How did the death of Aaron’s sons clarify it for him? The answer to these questions is the subject of a dispute in the Talmud (B. Zevahim 115b) where two verses are proposed as candidates for Moses’s conundrum. By looking at the Talmud’s two suggestions as to what God’s confusing statement was, we can gain insight into Moses and Aaron, understanding their reactions to this moment better. 

The first possibility the Talmud presents is that Moses is referring to God’s commandment in Exodus 19:21–22:

The LORD said to Moses, “Go down, warn the people not to break through to the LORD to gaze, lest many of them perish. The priests also, who come near the LORD, must stay pure, lest the LORD break out against them.”

Here God warns Moses that the people should not ascend Mt. Sinai during God’s revelation upon the mountain. The power and presence of Divine glory is so great, and the human form so weak, that the bodies of those who approach will be overwhelmed and destroyed. It does not seem that there is any moral quality to this prohibition, but simply anxiety over uncontrollable danger. God seems unable to hold back the inherent radiating power that Divine presence evokes. Like getting too close to the sun, or perhaps to a source of ionizing radiation, those who get too close to God’s immediate presence will inevitably perish because of the tremendous force of the radiating Glory.

This is very much akin to the story of Uzza ben Abinadab recounted in II Samuel 6:3–8 and :. Uzza and his brother were charged with driving the cart carrying the ark when David first tried to bring it up to Jerusalem. On the way, the animals driving the cart stumbled, leading the ark to slip, and Uzza reached out, catching the ark, and dying instantly on the spot. David was afraid to bring the ark any further and delayed bringing it into Jerusalem for three months. Uzza committed no moral transgression, only an instinctual error, and died from direct exposure to God’s power. If we accept this understanding, Moses means to tell Aaron something like: “Working this close to so much power is dangerous, and those closest (i.e., most physically proximate) to God will be the most exposed to the danger.” In other words, God’s power cuts both ways. It can grant great benefits, but it can overwhelm us and destroy us as well if we fail to take care.

The second possibility the Talmud presents is Exodus 29:42–43:

. . . a regular burnt offering throughout the generations, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the LORD. For there I will meet with you, and there I will speak with you, and there I will meet with the Israelites, and it shall be sanctified by My Presence (kevodi).

Here God alludes to the Divine glory (kevodi) as the “power source” of the desert sanctuary, namely God’s presence. What does Moses find mysterious or confusing about this? Well, even in the desert, God is represented by the kohanim; they make up at least a portion of God’s glory.  Can humans truly sanctify the Divine, when the Divine is already entirely holy? Here, the Talmud suggests that we read the word kevodi (lit. “My-glory”) as mekhubadai (“those who glorify me”). In other words, God’s presence is one and the same as the human beings who attempt to approach God. Those who reach out to God can come to represent God so completely that they are equivalent to God’s own presence.

With this interpretation, the Talmud links the act of Nadab and Abihu in bringing strange fire with more typical acts of martyrdom. The Talmud seems to be claiming that the two sons of Aaron chose to serve by dying for God in order to dedicate the sanctuary with their lives. This act of self-sacrifice would show the power contained in the sanctuary and make it a source of awe among the people. While this may be troubling to us, the Talmud’s interpretation attempts to fully demonstrate the strength of Moses’s words to Aaron: “Your sons did no wrong. They died doing a good thing, sanctifying the Divine name among the people.”

The raw, visceral potency of this understanding is undeniable, and I find its call a primal one. Though I know there will be many who find this second interpretation deeply disturbing, its demand that connection with God is worth giving up one’s life raises the stakes in religious life. When we fail to see that this power, majesty, and glory is one of the things that consistently attracts people to religion, we put ourselves in a very dangerous position. At some level, the tremendous mystery which awakens within us fear and trembling can be properly taken as the Divine voice calling out to us. On the other hand (and this is the thing that disturbs us so deeply), what we think to be a great mystery can simply be a moment of self-delusion, leading us into acts of nihilistic self-destruction.  One of our most central tasks as religious people is to sort out magical thinking and wish-fulfilling fantasy from God’s true demands, demands that lead to authentic holy deeds and actual moral imperatives.

I think this last thought is more aligned with the Talmud’s first interpretation, that all power, especially religious power, can be overwhelming and dangerous, and it needs to be contained in order to be safely employed for the betterment of the world. This is what happened at Mount Sinai when God told the people they should not ascend the mountain lest they die. Can we understand the purpose of the desert sanctuary similarly? Must we not keep Divine power contained in the midst of the people? If we are able to do so, becoming a community both containing and embodying holiness, we can approach God without fear. My blessing for us all is that we have access to God’s power, but safely and beneficially, not as a mighty storm, but as a gentle rain.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

Indeed, the Torah itself focuses on questions of intent when distinguishing between levels of culpability in violations of the law. For example, sacrifices can be offered for accidental violations of the law while more severe penalties are reserved for intentional transgressions. The Rabbis, however, explore the question of intent in numerous situations that are not explicitly stated in the Torah. In a recent article entitled “The Mishnaic Mental Revolution: A Reassessment,” Ishai Rosen Zvi of Tel Aviv University demonstrates this innovation with various examples including the performance of commandments, validity of sacrifice, and the application of purity laws (The Journal of Jewish Studies, 66:1 [2015], 36–58). It is this final category that is of particular interest for our parashah.

The lengthy description of the Israelite dietary laws, found in chapter 11 of Leviticus, includes a section about the purity of items that come into contact with “impure” creatures: if an article of clothing, an earthenware vessel, a stove, or other item touches the carcass of one of the eight creatures enumerated in Lev. 11:29–30, it becomes impure. The passage explains further that these creatures even have the ability to defile seeds that will be planted: “If such a carcass falls upon seed grain that is to be sown, it is clean; but if water is put on the seed and any part of a carcass falls upon it, it shall be unclean for you” (Lev. 11:37–38). Paradoxically, the very substance—water—which is used to purify allows for the dry seed to become susceptible to the impurity of the carcass.

These two brief verses unlock a myriad of questions in the rabbinic mind such as: Does this apply only to water or do all liquids make an object susceptible to impurity?; Does this law apply only to seeds or are all types of produce included?; and Is there anything that can be done to prevent susceptibility to impurity? As a matter of fact, an entire tractate of the Mishnah (Makshirin) is dedicated to exploring these and other issues.

The rabbinic interpretive revolution at the core of this issue is the stipulation that an object can only become susceptible to impurity when it comes into contact with a liquid through an event that is acceptable to the owner. In other words, if the owner of the produce, clothing, or vessel did not want them to get wet then they cannot become impure. The Rabbis derive this principle from the unusual passive form of the verb “if water is put” found in Lev. 11: 38: יֻתַּן. The word is pronounced yuttan but appears in the Torah without the vav that would have definitively determined this pronunciation (יותן), and thus it could be read in the active form yitten, “if one places water.” Therefore, the Rabbis compare these two terms and conclude “just as the term places [yitten] indicates that it was beneficial [to the owner for the item to become wet], so too, the term is placed [yuttan] means that it must be beneficial [to the owner for the item to become wet]” in order for it to become susceptible to impurity (BT Kiddushin 59b).

The implications of this teaching are quite profound. The rabbinic interpretation restores a person’s control over her property. For example, if there was a rainstorm and a pile of freshly picked produce got wet, according to the simple meaning of the Torah, it would now all be under threat of becoming impure. Although it might not seem like a big deal to us, in a world that places great emphasis on purity laws this scenario could be cause for a significant financial loss. The rabbinic interpretation, however, allows for the owner to declare that she had no desire for her produce to get wet and therefore contact with an impure object is of no significance. Incredibly, the rabbinic law allows for a state of mind, the dissatisfaction with the moisture, to override the empirical fact that the produce is wet and should indeed be susceptible to impurity.

This shift described above, from a focus on objective reality to subjective states of mind when determining law, is a hallmark of the legacy of rabbinic thought. In stark contrast to the rigid Second Temple era interpreters of the Torah, like the Sadducees and the Dead Sea sect, who constantly strive to engage with empirical truth, the Rabbis champion a more flexible interpretation of the law. The Rabbis demand engagement with the mental state of the individual and a sensitivity to the circumstances surrounding each case before determining the outcome of the law.

This legacy of legal creativity and flexibility has been the backbone of rabbinic Judaism and its interpretation of the Torah since its inception. The tradition of interpretative flexibility has allowed rabbinic leaders to realize the timelessness—and timeliness—of Torah as it evolves in every generation.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Death’s power is palpable and any encounter with death must be mediated through communal traditions. While these rituals demonstrate that those who have encountered the dead must exist on the margins, that status is temporary, and the path to returning to the community is clear. In a sense, the ritual normalizes the experience of death and provides clear guidance to all about how to navigate it. If death is a tearing apart, the ritual binds us up and offers hope of restoration.

By pairing the special Torah reading with the haftarah from Ezekiel 36, the Rabbis are moving away from physical defilement to spiritual defilement. Within the haftarah we hear echoes of the Red Heifer ritual. “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean” (Ezek. 36:25). But then the text moves into new territory: “And I will give you a new heart, (לֵב חָדָשׂ) and put a new spirit (וְרוּחַ חֲדָשָׁה) into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh; and I will put My spirit into you. Thus I will cause you to follow My laws and faithfully to observe My rules” (vv. 26–27). The implication of these verses is that the purification is needed not because of the taint of death, but because of a moral taint. We need a new heart and a new spirit. The old is being rejected and something new must take its place. The imagery here conveys that God is in charge of these actions. God does the removing and God does the putting in. We might wonder about the role human beings play in the process.

The medieval commentator Rashi says that lev hadash, a new heart, is “the inclination that was renewed for good.” This inclination, yetzer, can be an inclination for evil or an inclination for good. Human beings are created with the capacity for both, which is why life involves endless choice. Rashi uses a reflexive verb form (נתחדש)  to shift the meaning of the words from “a new heart” to “a renewed heart.” The process of renewal is not the same as putting in something new. When we renew, we actually take something old and make it new again, we restore it. In a sense, it echoes the process of taking something that was made impure and purifying it. We don’t begin at the very beginning; we salvage what we have by finding the new in the old. The very imagery that was at work in the verse has been turned upside down. It’s not as clean as swapping out the damaged one for perfect new one. The renewal depends on probing the good in what was deemed bad, which I believe is a hopeful stance about the capacity for redemption.

Psalm 51 builds on the same theme when it says: “Fashion a pure heart for me, O God; create in me a steadfast spirit” (Ps. 51:12–13). While the translation uses the verb “create,” the Hebrew is “h��������”, more literally translated “renew.” Although God is the speaker in the Ezekiel passage, here the Psalmist is the speaker. The Psalmist is not passive, even daring to make a demand. the conjugation of the verbs conveys that the Psalmist is instructing, even ordering, God. While this could be seen as impudent, I choose to understand the Psalmist as being desperate. Somehow the speaker is depending on this pure heart, on this steadfast spirit. As we move to the next verse in the psalm we arrive at the final plea: “Do not cast me out of Your Presence, or take Your holy spirit away from me.” Without that renewed heart, the Psalmist will be cast out, will die. The greatest threat that torments the Psalmist is the threat of exile, an absence of Presence, which is the same as death.

Each of us possesses the ability to know when our heart is in need of renewal. It’s not just God who makes the determination that the old must be refashioned. We must follow the Psalmist’s lead and recognize when we need help from the Divine to reset our course. The fact that we need to be renewed is not the problem; that is an expected part of the human journey. The challenge is whether we will be emboldened enough to insist on help from the Divine. The stakes are high.

This week’s liturgy gives us another boost. This Shabbat is also Shabbat Mevarekhim Hahodesh, the Shabbat on which we say the blessing for the coming month (now the month of Nisan) which begins in the next week. Every month, this amazing blessing echoes the prayers that are associated with Rosh Hashanah. We pray that our lives will be renewed. In a sense, the new month reminds us all to focus on the possibility of the new heart and the new spirit. The liminal space of the new moon helps us to recognize the liminal spaces that we live in, wakes us out of any complacency that might have attached itself to us, and helps awaken our yearning for a new heart. The prayer reminds us to ask for that renewal, to know that it is always possible.

May this month be full of unexpected blessings of renewal in each of our lives.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).