by Rabbi Richard Hirsh,
executive director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Wyncote, Pa.

This week’s portion, Shemini, continues the narrative of the inauguration of the cultic system of sacrifice under Aaron’s direction. Although the figure of Moses towers over the Torah, throughout much of Leviticus, it is his brother Aaron, the first high priest, who dominates the story. The portion opens with the concluding rites of consecration, which legitimate and activate Aaron and his sons as God’s hereditary designees for service in the Sanctuary. Following the dedication of the altar, a divine fire incinerates the initial offerings. Once kindled, the light on the altar is intended to remain aflame.

One can only imagine the joy of the Israelites as their new religious system went “on-line”;

It is in this context of celebration and consecration that disaster strikes. “Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his fire-pan and placed fire upon it, over which they spread incense, and brought the alien fire as an offering before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. Fire blazed forth from the Lord and incinerated them, so that they perished at the hand of the Lord.” (Leviticus 10:1-2) The horror of the moment can only be imagined: the terrified reaction of the people, the grief of Aaron, the uncertainty about the future. What should have been a supreme moment of religious experience and personal accomplishment is literally turned to ashes.

One would expect that Moses would console his brother in his grief, but the Torah relates that “Moses then said to Aaron, ‘This is what the Lord meant when He said: I am sanctified through those near to me, in the presence of the entire community I am manifest.’ And Aaron was silent.” (Leviticus 10:3) This silence is deafening. Aaron’s sons have been killed, his distinction diminished, and his brother remonstrates rather than consoles. How can he endure the tragedy and how can he keep silent? We long for him to cry out to God, to cry out to Moses…or just to cry.

The ancient authorities who crafted our story lived in a universe they believed to be under divine direction and conscious causality. Nothing “just happened” — everything was a consequence of action or omission, faithfulness or sin. Whatever befell the Jewish people, collectively or individually, demanded an explanation, however inadequate it may have been.

We do not know if at the core of the story is some accurately preserved kernel of a historic event. Perhaps the improper handling of flammable substances in proximity to fire caused an explosion that resulted in the death of Nadav and Avihu. In a universe of causality, some explanation would have been required: “They must have sinned.” Whatever the “alien fire” may have been, the key issue is that it was fire that “the Lord had not commanded them.”

Rabbinic tradition fills in the details. The ancient rabbis assert that Aaron’s sons entered the Sanctuary under the influence of alcohol, displaying disrespect for the sanctity of the situation. From this we are to assume that the “punishment” fit the “crime.”

The haftara for this week contains a similar story. As King David supervises the transporting of the Holy Ark to Jerusalem, it begins to slip off the cart. “Uzzah reached out for the Ark of God and grasped it…and God struck him down on the spot for his indiscretion, and he died there....” (II Samuel 6:6-7)

Uzzah’s “crime” seems unclear: If one saw a Torah scroll about to topple to the floor in a synagogue, one would instinctively reach out to catch it. Yet Uzzah, like Nadav and Avihu, is executed.

One can distance oneself from the disturbing nature of these narratives by understanding that for the writers of the Torah, the awesome, numinous, and powerful presence of God was almost unmanageable. To enter into God’s presence was to be offered the opportunity to become electrified — and run the risk of being electrocuted. From the perspective of the biblical writers, Nadav, Avihu, and Uzzah each mishandled the sacred energy that was manifest in the Sanctuary and in the Ark and, as a consequence, each lost his life.

This anthropological exegesis allows us to understand why our ancestors told the stories they told, but it does not help us resolve our sense of injustice. We yearn for Nadav and Avihu to receive a reprimand and for Uzzah to be warned not to approach the Ark again. Perhaps more importantly, we may find ourselves at odds with the theological causality of the Torah. Randomness exists — “bad things happen to good people” for no particular reason, and, as at least one talmudic rabbi (Yannai, Pirkei Avot) asserted, we explain neither the prosperity of the perverse nor the suffering of the sincere and the saintly.

Rabbi Harold Kushner has suggested that when it comes to issues of evil and suffering, there are two kinds of people: those for whom any answer is better than no answer and those for whom no answer is better that a bad answer. Our ancestors were often found in the first group; we perhaps find ourselves more often in the second. One traditional Jewish response to evil has been just that: a response, not an explanation.

There were those who needed an explanation for the deaths of Nadav and Avihu and Uzzah, and there are those who are tempted to search for analogous analyses of the root causes of our contemporary crises. Some argue that any answer, however distasteful, is better than no answer, for it at least preserves our faith in a moral and meaningful universe. Others, equally committed to a moral and meaningful universe, believe it is our job to resist evil, not explain it, to comfort those who suffer, not account for their suffering, and to remain faithful to the imperative of healing of the world despite its proclivity for breaking down.

In the face of tragedy some of us seek comfort not in explanation but in meaning: in the audacious human attempt to impose structure, narrative, poetry, art, esthetics, language, and values on what is so often the raw data of human experience. For some of us, the awareness that whatever meaning there is is the meaning we impose on reality does not diminish the value of the meaning we create. If anything, it may make it more precious. We too believe in a moral and meaningful universe, but that universe is what we are challenged to create, not what we are simply to assume or lightly to affirm.

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