It should have been the most joyous day since G-d had given us the Torah some ten months earlier.
After months of preparing to build the Mishkan and its many accoutrements, after the euphoria of collecting the gold, silver, copper, wool, linen, goat-hair, ram-skins, acacia wood, olive oil, spices, and many precious stones, and dedicating them all to the service of G-d, after the excitement of actually constructing the Mishkan and seeing it and its appurtenances taking form -
- after all this, there was a seven-day dress rehearsal.
From the 23rd of Adar onwards, Aaron and his sons had stayed at the Ohel Mo’ed while every day for seven days, Moshe erected the Mishkan, performed the entire Mishkan service, and then took the Mishkan down again.
Parashat Shemini opens on the 1st of Nissan:
“It was on the eighth day that Moshe called Aaron and his sons and the Elders of Israel…" (Leviticus 9:1). This was the climax of the inauguration of the Mishkan, and the beginning of its regular functioning.
It should have been the most joyous day since G-d had given us the Torah…but tragedy struck in the midst of the ecstatic celebrations:
“Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, took each one his fire-pan, placed fire in them, and placed incense on it; and they offered before Hashem alien fire that He had not commanded them. And fire went forth from before Hashem and consumed them, and they died before Hashem" (Leviticus 10:1-2).
There are many different explanations as to what this “alien fire" was and why they died. Later, looking back on this sorry episode, the Torah recalls the time “when they came near before Hashem and they died" (Leviticus 16:1), which is why the general trend is that their enthusiasm for G-d’s Service and their burning desire to come closer to G-d and to achieve greater holiness was commendable, but they overstepped the boundaries of the acceptable.
Maybe they entered the Holy of Holies, which is forbidden to all except the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur (Vayikra Rabbah 20:8 and Sifra Sh’mini, Introduction part 34).
Maybe their intentions were improperly directed not towards the perfect Unity of Hashem (His attribute of Mercy), but instead towards His attribute of Justice, which was why they were judged harshly and punished (Ramban, commentary to Leviticus 10:2).
Maybe it was because they remembered the earlier charge, “The sons of Aaron the Kohen shall put fire on the Altar" (Leviticus 1:7), which they interpreted to mean: Even though fire comes down from Heaven, nevertheless it is a mitzvah to bring their own fire (Yoma 53a). And even though their interpretation was correct, they were punished for announcing this decision in front of their rabbi, Moshe, instead of deferring to him (Vayikra Rabbah 20:6).
Maybe it was “because they entered the Ohel Mo’ed drunk with wine" (Vayikra Rabbah 12:1 and 5, Esther Rabbah 5:1).
Maybe it was because they were boastful, bragging that “our father’s brother is a king, our mother’s brother is a prince, our father is Kohen Gadol, and we are both Deputy Kohen Gadol; which woman can be worthy of [marrying] us?!" And therefore they never married and many women who yearned to marry them therefore also remained unmarried. Centuries later, King David would allude to this lyrically by writing, “Fire consumed His young men, and His virgins had no marriage-song" (Psalms 78:63) (Vayikra Rabbah 20:10).
But this tragedy was not to interfere with the national celebration:
“Moshe called Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Aaron’s uncle Uziel, and said to them: Approach, lift your brethren from the midst of the Sanctuary to outside the camp" (Leviticus 10:4), “like a man who says to his friend, Remove this dead body from in front of the mourner! How long can this mourner continue grieving?!" (Vayikra Rabbah 20:4).
The Midrash implies that they removed the bodies so as to let Aaron and his family recover from their grief sooner.
Rashi (commentary to Leviticus 10:4), however, paraphrases and changes this Midrash: “Like a man who says to his friend, Remove this dead body from in front of the bride, so as not to disturb the celebration", implying that it was so as not to impinge on the nation’s celebration.
Maybe Rashi refers here to the Talmudic dictum that “if a dead body and a bride are both being escorted and the two processions approach each other, the funeral procession makes way for the bridal procession because honouring the living takes precedence over honouring the dead" (Semachot 11:6), which is the halakhah in practice (Rambam, Laws of Mourning 14:8 and Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 360:1).
In the event, Mishael and Elzaphan (who were Levites and not Kohanim, which was why they were allowed to carry dead bodies) were charged to remove their cousins’ bodies.
The Ba’al ha-Turim (Rabbi Ya’akov ben Asher, Germany and Spain, c.1275-1343) notes that the word קִ֠רְב֞וּ (approach) in the phrase “Approach, lift your brethren…" (Leviticus 10:4) has two cantillation marks over it, תְּ֠לִישָׁא-גְדוֹלָה and גֵּרְשַׁ֞יִם.
(Though the word is written קִ֠רְב֞וּ, with the תְּ֠לִישָׁא-גְדוֹלָה before the גֵּרְשַׁ֞יִם, there is a Masoretic note saying: הקורא יטעים הגרש קודם התלישה, the reader chants the geresh before the telishah.)
The Ba’al ha-Turim explains: “There are two cantillation marks, indicating that they did not approach them into the Heichal (Inner Sanctum); rather, they cast iron hooks in and pulled them out".
This is a reference to the Sifra (Sh’mini 1:35), which records two different opinions of where exactly they died:
“Rabbi Eliezer says, They died outside [of the Holy of Holies], in a place where Levites are permitted to enter… But in that case, why does it say ‘they died before Hashem’? - An angel smote them, and he pushed them out. Rabbi Akiva says, They died inside [the Holy of Holies], as it says ‘they died before Hashem’. But in that case, why does it say ‘they approached and lifted them by their Tunics’ (Leviticus 10:5)? - To indicate that they cast iron hooks in and pulled them out".
So according to the Ba’al ha-Turim, the double cantillation suggests that Mishael and Elzaphan kept a certain distance from their task, only fulfilling it with a tool.
Both the תְּ֠לִישָׁא-גְדוֹלָה and the גֵּרְשַׁ֞יִם are “separative notes" (they indicate a slight pause in the sentence, approximately similar to a comma in English). They both indicate a form of removal: telisha connotes tearing off, and gershayyim connotes expulsion. Maybe the Ba’al ha-Turim relies on the names and functions of these two cantillation marks: קִרְבוּ - approach, tear them away and expel them from where they are now, but nevertheless keep a certain distance from the bodies.
This double-cantillation of תְּ֠לִישָׁא-גְדוֹלָה and גֵּרְשַׁ֞יִם on a single word is extremely rare: it occurs only one other time in the Torah - the word זֶ֠֞ה (this one): “זֶ֠֞ה - This one [Noah] will bring us respite from our work and from the travail of our hands" (Genesis 5:29).
Maybe the Ba’al ha-Turim is also making an oblique reference to Noah: he, too, kept a certain distance from his task, fulfilling it only half-heartedly. Ideally he should have saved all of humanity by warning them of impending destruction and inspiring them to repent of their evil; instead he saved only himself and his immediate family, but failed to save the rest of humanity.
Both Noah performing the task G-d had given him, and Mishael and Elzaphan performing the task G-d had given them, had to tear themselves apart from their environments - Noah in order to maintain his righteousness among the evil that was prevalent in his generations, and Mishael and Elzaphan in order to bury their cousins in the midst of the national celebration without dampening the general joy.
The tragic deaths of Nadav and Avihu in Parashat Shemini warn of the terrible danger of humans following their own decrees instead of G-d’s, even when they have the holiest and most exalted of intentions.
The Haftarah, abstracted from 2 Samuel 6:1-7:17, recounts a similar time of national rejoicing marred by the death of someone who, with the best of intentions, erred.
The recently-crowned King David, having defeated the Philistines, decided to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, the City of David.
The Philistines had captured the Ark towards the end of the era of the Judges, even before King Saul had been anointed and crowned King of Israel (1 Samuel 4). Swiftly realising that the Ark was wreaking havoc on them, the Philistines returned it to the Jews, who kept it in Ba’aleh Yehudah (also called Kiryat Ye’arim), in the house of Avinadav on a hill-top (1 Samuel 8).
King David had the Ark transported on a new cart from Avinadav’s house in an ecstatic procession, celebrating with music, giving his sons Uzzah and Ahio the honour of driving the cart.
But when the oxen drawing the cart stumbled, Uzzah stretched out his hand to steady the Ark; “and Hashem’s anger flared up against Uzzah and G-d smote him there for his impetuousness, and there he died with the Ark of G-d" (2 Samuel 6:7).
Why did Uzzah deserve to die?
According to Rabbi Dr Joseph Hertz (Chief Rabbi of the British Empire 1913-1946), Uzzah was guilty of irreverence to G-d’s Majesty, so He smote him for this act of undue familiarity.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook ztz"l explained that Uzzah’s mistake was to ignore the cause of the problem. The oxen slipped and stumbled - so why not try to steady them? The problem was with the oxen, not with the Ark, so why lay his hands on the Ark?!
This Shabbat, we begin reading Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the Fathers, sometimes rendered Ethics of the Fathers), one chapter every Shabbat until Shavuot (and many congregations continue until Rosh Hashanah, reading this entire Tractate four times over).
The second Mishnah of the first chapter of Pirkei Avot records the aphorism of Shimon the Righteous: “The world stands on three things: on the Torah, on worship of G-d, and on acts of lovingkindness".
In 1964, Rabbi Irving Bunim [1] wrote a three-volume commentary to Pirkei Avot under the title Ethics from Sinai. Commenting on this second Mishnah, Rabbi Bunim cited Uzzah’s death and Rabbi Kook’s explanation, and commented:
“This turn of thought is most suggestive. Indeed, too many of our leaders have attempted to solve the problems of Judaism by thoughtlessly laying hands on the sacred in Israel without first realistically ascertaining the true causes of the problems. Some groups have sanctioned driving to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, mixed pews, and a shortened service, in an attempt to bring the people to the Synagogue. Has it helped? Have our people turned out en masse to services now that these conveniences have been instituted? There was nothing wrong with the Ark; the trouble was with the oxen. The issue is not one of more or less convenience, but rather that for so many of our people genuine prayer has become a lost art. The need to commune with G-d is buried under layers of trivial distracting activities subsumed under the constitutional right of ‘the pursuit of happiness’. Uzzah laid hands on the Ark when the trouble all along was with the bearers and carriers of the Ark. This is the tragic though sometimes good-intentioned fallacy of our times".
For sure, enthusiasm and spontaneity, individualism and creativity, have their place in Judaism, in worship of G-d. But both Parashat Shemini and the Haftarah teach us how tragic the results can be when individuals - even the greatest of individuals - invent their own new paths ignoring G-d’s decrees.
Endnote
[1] Irving Bunim was born in Volozhyn (today in Minsk, then in the Russian Empire) in 1901, and emigrated to the USA with his family when he was 9. Recognised as one of the greatest lay leaders of American Jewry, he never received Semicha (Rabbinic ordination). I nevertheless call him Rabbi because I have been studying Ethics from Sinai and absorbing his lessons for as long as I have been able to read, and I am mindful of the dictum, “Anyone who learns so much as a single chapter, or a single halakhah, or a single verse, or a single saying, or even a single letter from his fellow, must accord him respect; and we indeed find that David, King of Israel, learned only two things from Ahitophel, and called him his Rabbi" (Pirkei Avot 6:3).