Radical Torah

The banners, signs, posters and bumper stickers scream “silence=death.” The flyers, handouts, posters and bulletins urge silence as a spiritual path and possibility. What is one to make of the silence that follows death? The silence that follows horrific and tragic death? When God is the author of the homicide?

Leviticus 10:1-3 Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before God alien fire, which God had not enjoined upon them. And fire came forth from God and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of [lifnei] God. Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what God meant when God said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.” And Aaron was silent.

The scene is the dedication of the tabernacle. Following a week of learning the details of the tabernacle and the service, on the eighth day, Aaron, the high priest, finally moves to dedicate the tabernacle. With the help of his sons, he performs the service—the slaughtering, the sprinkling of the blood, and finally the placing of the appropriate cuts of the sacrifices (one for himself, one for all Israel) on the altar. At the expected moment, fire comes forth from God and consumes the sacrifices from upon the altar. This is the moment of God’s appearance in the Tabernacle. All the people fall on their face and praise God. (A sure sign in TaNaKh that God is in the house is that people fall on their face.)

Immediately following this moment of exalted joy, Aaron’s sons brought fire into the Tabernacle. This was their job (Leviticus 1:7). This day however Moshe had not explicitly commanded that they bring the fire (Rashbam). Somehow this triggered God’s wrath or this just triggered the sacrifice machinery and they were “consumed” in the same way that the sacrifices were consumed.

We read of the exchange between Moshe and Aharon. Moshe opens with: “This is what God meant when God said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.” The commentators are, as usual, divided. Rashi, following a midrashic tradition, says that this alludes to a statement God made when initially commanding the building of the tabernacle. “and there I will meet with the Israelites, and it shall be sanctified by My Presence [bi-khvodi].” Read, rather, “it shall be sanctified with those who honor Me [bi-me-khubadai].” According to this tradition, Moshe tells Aharon that he was aware that the Tabernacle was to be sanctified with a death. He thought that it would be either his or Aharon’s death. It turns out that it was Aharon’s sons’ deaths. The point, however, is the same. Aharon’s silence, it would seem, is acquiescence.

Rashbam (Rashi’s grandson) objects. How could it be that God would command Moshe to build a sanctuary for God to dwell amongst Israel and notify Moshe that when the Sanctuary is finished someone dies. Someone close to Moshe. This would be just a bit too absurd.

Ramban also disagrees with Rashi. His objection is that if Rashi’s explanation was right, the most important part of this verse would be alluding to something that actually was not written in Torah. Ramban, therefore, interprets the phrase as “God said to Godself” (as the usage of diber in Kohelet 1:16). God decides to be honored with the deaths at this moment.

Rashbam’s own interpretation goes in a different direction. Rashbam suggests that God’s statement is not about Aharon’s sons at all. It refers rather to Aharon himself. Moshe tells Aharon that God commanded that the Tabernacle must be sanctified with those who serve there. This entails that the High Priest show no signs of mourning in the precincts of the Temple. (Leviticus 21:10-12) Therefore, Aharon is to continue with the service as if nothing happened while his remaining sons deal with the dead body. Silence is again acquiescence, duty.

As proof of his interpretation Rashbam sends us to Ezekiel 24. Rashbam sends us there to see that silence [dom] signals not-mourning when mourning is what one wants to do beyond all else. However, as is the nature of Torah, this intertext does not rest easy in its given task. The excess of meaning that defines all text bleeds into our story as grief translates grief.

The word of God came to me [Ezekiel]: O mortal, I am about to take away the delight of your eyes from you through pestilence; but you shall not lament or weep or let your tears flow. Moan softly [dom]; observe no mourning for the dead: Put on your turban and put your sandals on your feet; do not cover over your upper lip, and do not eat the bread of comforters.” In the evening my wife died, and in the morning I did as I had been commanded.

And so, Ezekiel’s wife was killed by God and Ezekiel was dom/silent as was Aharon. What was the meaning of this death? God does demand enormous sacrifices of the prophets, their lives performance pieces of divine portents, they do usually claim meaning. This act was no different:

And when I spoke to the people that morning, the people asked me, “Will you not tell us what these things portend for us, that you are acting so?” I answered them, “The word of God has come to me: Tell the House of Israel: Thus said the Lord GOD: ‘I am going to desecrate My Sanctuary, your pride and glory, the delight of your eyes and the desire of your heart; and the sons and daughters you have left behind shall fall by the sword. Accordingly, you shall do as I have done: you shall not cover over your upper lips or eat the bread of comforters; and your turbans shall remain on your heads, and your sandals upon your feet. You shall not lament or weep, but you shall be heartsick because of your iniquities and shall moan to one another.” And Ezekiel shall become a portent for you: you shall do just as he has done, when it happens; and you shall know that I am the Lord GOD.’

The silence here is not a sign of acquiescence to God’s choreography of sanctification but, rather, an acknowledgment of profanation. “ ‘I am going to desecrate My Sanctuary, your pride and glory, the delight of your eyes and the desire of your heart; and the sons and daughters you have left behind shall fall by the sword.’ ” This Divine pronouncement is far too close to the heart of the story of Aharon’s sons. Perhaps Aharon’s silence partakes of Ezekiel’s vision of profanation and not sanctification… Yet, how could this be?

There is another reaction to this story. It is the Rabbinic juxtaposition of our parshah with its haftarah in 2Samuel 6. King David gathers thirty thousand of Israel’s young men to bring the Ark of God back to Jerusalem. The Ark is placed upon a carriage, and Uzza and Ahio are charged with leading the carriage. As the whole people lead the Ark amidst singing and the playing of instruments, the animals pulling the Ark stumble. The Ark looks as if it is about to fall. Uzza, fearing for the Ark, reaches out to steady it.

The LORD was incensed [va-yichar] at Uzzah. And God struck him down on the spot for his indiscretion, and he died there beside the Ark of God.

David’s reaction is not as Aharon’s was.

David was incensed [va-yichar] that God had inflicted a breach upon Uzza.

David, not known for his stoic personality, blazed with anger. He named the place peretz uzzah to commemorate God’s violence. David refused to move the Ark to Jerusalem for three months. God finally appeased David (2Samuel 11-12) and David agreed to bring the Ark to Jerusalem.

Was David channeling Aharon’s anger? Was Aharon’s silence unspeakable rage?

There is one more text which comments on our story. It is Leviticus 16, the commandment of the purging of the Tabernacle which the Holiness School transformed into the annual ritual which the Rabbis transformed into our Yom Kippur. The chapter is framed by our story:

God spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of God.

There is no hint of any sin here. There is no foreign fire. There is only “drew too close.” The commanded choreography of the purging begins with the following warning:

Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover.

Lest he die. If the service is not performed exactly as commanded, if the choreography is not followed to the letter, to the inch, he will die. By extension, if any of the priests attempt the temple service in any way which is not exactly as revealed by God, they will die.

This then is the secret hiding beneath the surface of the service. There is an inherent instability in the fact of a location of God. There is a tension between God’s being everywhere and God living between the cherubs atop the Ark in the sanctum. This tension parallels that other tension which animates the Israelites’ spiritual path. Is the people a “nation of priests” or is there only one clan of priests and one high priest? Who gets access to the Holy?

These tensions are unresolved in Torah. The pole of indwelling however is left with a residue of instability. The access that is granted to the one high priest is inscrutable, unintelligible, incomprehensible and therefore unstable. This pole is radioactive. When one ventures off the path just a bit, BOOM. This is not a path of interpretation, of exegesis, of midrash. I would suggest that this pole of the dichotomy deconstructs itself. It is available only to those whose immediacy with the Divine oracle allows for uninterpreted actions. It allows, perhaps, only for silence.

Rabbinic Judaism is born in the space inhabited by Moshe between God and Israel which allows for speech.

After the destruction of the Temple, there was no longer the possibility of the local God whose inscrutable worship could lead to death. The Judaism of the Diaspora, that is Judaism as we know it, is the Judaism of the space between God and Israel where speech proliferates and silence is filled with words. Pushing back to a Judaism of geography and sanctum moves us back to silence and human sacrifice. As Ezekiel’s vision ends with a picture of the end of days:

On that day a fugitive will come to you, to let you hear it with your own ears. On that day your mouth shall be opened to the fugitive, and you shall speak and no longer be dumb. So you shall be a portent for them, and they shall know that I am God.

You shall speak…

Aryeh Cohen is Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the University of Judaism.