Weekly Parsha

Shoshana Samuels

This week’s parsha forces us to encounter an extremely difficult reality.

Just after the actualization of about six months’ work of building the mishkan the Torah reports the events of the eighth day: Moshe commands Aharon to bring a korban chatat and an olah, and the Jewish people as a whole to also offer a korban chatat and to bring olot as well, because today Hashem will appear to you, as recorded in perek 8:4, כִּי הַיּוֹם יְהוָה נִרְאָה אֲלֵיכֶם. This imminent revelation is the focus of our perek and is therefore stated and restated in multiple ways: In pasuk ה we are told that the whole eidah came and stood before G-d; in ו, if you do these korbanot, then G-d’s glory will appear before you. This spotlight is wholly justified as we have finally arrived at the fulfillment of Hashem’s plan set out in Shemot 25:8 וְעָשׂוּ לִי, מִקְדָּשׁ; וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, בְּתוֹכָם, and let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. G-d, as it were, nestles into this sanctuary and a fire consumes the korbanot detailed above to signify His acceptance of the offerings and really the entire enterprise of the mishkan:

Religious triumph! Connection! Yet, immediately we are faced with tragedy:

Why did this happen? How could the fire that received the festive korbanot consume the sons of Aharon?! According to the Rashbam, the Torah is referring to that same fire!

Chazal offer many answers. Each attributes a sin or ineptitude to Nadav and Avihu based on literary clues in this short vignette and the subsequent commands. If this was an unwelcome voluntary offering, as one approach posits, how can we swallow immediate death as a punishment? In our community we usually celebrate unsolicited engagement with G-d and our tradition. For this reason, this episode has prompted a discussion of how to walk that tight rope: to support people’s interest in connecting spiritually on the one hand, but also to discourage too much creativity perhaps, especially if it in any way does not jive with and solidify commitment to Halacha and its rulings. Like many, I find this very challenging. It is challenging in my daily life and also in teaching the balance between these two religious and spiritual needs. And it is challenging to study this week’s parsha and be faced with the most drastic of depictions of this balance when it is unmet: the fire first consumed the wanted sacrifices, but then consumed the sons of Aharon who brought an unwanted one.

This difficulty plagues us and feels like a mystery. Much like the recent hotplate malfunction that caused the death of so many young children in one family in Brooklyn, this scene holds our attention and does not settle away. There is no answer to this life-challenge.

I hope and pray that somehow we too can be comforted by G-d’s words to Aharon through Moshe: