Leviticus Cycle Five Shemini

Shemini

In Shemini, there’s a story of death. Let’s look at it in context. While there are many death-stories in Torah, four make the headlines. 

Let’s look at Sarah. How she is treated! Mourned for! Loved! Avraham eulogizes and weeps for her (Genesis 23:2). He works hard to procure a burial place. This takes time, determination. We relate. We feel the sadness. This death takes twenty lines (from 23:1 to 23:20). It feels well balanced, not over-expressed (or over-emotional). 

 Let’s look at Yakov. If you include the blessings he bestows upon all twelve of his children (and Yosef’s two children as well) we have seventy lines. This is kingly. Blessings, instructions, a procession of mourners, the kisses, the embalming, the pomp and circumstance. And in the middle of all of this…the sign of true honor…humility…. when Yakov curls his feet into his bed (Genesis 49:33).

Let’s look at Yosef and Moshe. The former receives two lines (Genesis 50:24-26). This doesn’t mean that he isn’t important. It means, especially since it is in immediate transition/comparison to the death of Yakov, that Yosef is concealed. There’s an intimacy with Hashem here that is beyond our understanding. As Rabbi Nahman says, there are those of us who understand that Hashem is concealed. And there are those of us who don’t experience that concealment…because the concealment is concealed. Yosef, as well as Moshe, has moved beyond the veil of the veil. In the case of Moshe, we don’t know even where he’s buried.

Now let’s look at Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aharon.  Here, death is in our face. It’s as blunt as you can get. They take some incense meant for the incense altar and place it in the fire-pans and offer it on the animal altar. Then they both go up in flames in front of the whole congregation. It’s tragic.  Whether (according to the sages) they are zapped or punished they die mid-sacrifice mid-line. In Zevachim 115b we read that through them the mishkan is sanctified. In a Talmudic turn of the Hebrew in line 10:3 of Leviticus, the mishkan is sanctified not through My glory. But through My honored ones.

So, this is much like life. Whether we are zapped or punished death almost always seems to happen mid-something mid-story. The prophet involved tries to smooth the situation: Moshe says…well this is to prove that we can really see God.  The father Aharon stares. Someone has to find some kind of reason for it and the rest of us just stare if we have that humility. Or cry. Or scream. And the great sages centuries later try to account for it as an instance of God’s loving kindness.

 Next, in the Nadav and Avihu tragedy, Moshe instructs their brothers to carry them outside the camp. They are just there, burnt bodies of two men given five lines during mid-mishkan consecration. Again, like life. Someone dies. It’s going to be the closest kin who deal with it. It isn’t pretty or really that spiritual or even emotional mid death-scene. You’re in shock and taking care of the details. Whether we like it or not, on this earth-plane this is often the way it is.

The schism is huge between the death of Moshe and that of Nadav and Avihu. This is not to say it’s best to be a prophet. What it does say is this: Within the holy…within the consecration of a home for God to dwell in…our mishkan…there lays the primitive rude shocking horrifying blatant fact of our base humanity. And in order to get beyond this fact we have to see the raging dichotomy between it and the very beauty of our spirituality. A tough order. But I don’t read anywhere in Torah that it’s easy to be an Israelite. And once we do achieve this insight…if we ever do… part of what we get is the beauty also of the shock, of the horror, of our humanity, of our very physical death, of our humility in the face of it all. But if we don’t work to make the discernment, we don’t have the vision. We don’t therefore remember and protect our spiritual life.

And when we don’t protect our spiritual life we end up eating our fear and doubt for breakfast lunch and dinner. As it says (10:10) you will thus be able to discern between the holy and the common and between the ritually unclean and the clean. And as the Sfat Emet says …only the lowest creatures could bring this possibility (repentance) to fruition….therefore we know we are all capable of achieving this state of vision and unity with the Holy One.

So we may we be thankful for our bodies, for our lives and our deaths. May we be in both our human element and our sacred soul. May we watch what we eat, feel our prayers and take care of our dead. May we practice the art of discernment every moment. May we do what we can to embody the discernment and in that way be the honored ones. May we be nourished with the one radiance of the beloved Hashem.