Leviticus Cycle Six Acharei Mot and Kedushim

Acharei Mot and Kedushim

Merging the Altars

by Chava Lion

The question in Aharei Mot and Kedoshim is how do we seek prayer, connect it human to human, human to God?  How do we become walking prayers?  How so given the challenges… illness, the death of a mate, a child? Tragedy?  How do we sit with those who pray hard, pray soft, yearn so it hurts, fear the prayer, with-hold it, conceal it  or look around askance?  How…through prayer… do we merge the quotidian with the ethereal? The earth with God?

This is important to figure out.

Looking at Aharei Mot we want to remember that sacrifice (as described by Rabbi Jonathon Sacks) is a metaphor for prayer. If that is true, then we can infer that the altars, the tools for sacrifice, are tools for prayer. Instructions concerning the altars can therefore help us to approach the above questions.

First though we need to remember this: We are all gifted with the same prayer-potential.  While intimacy with God has levels not one person has greater holiness.

As we read in Kedoshim:  Speak to the entire Israelite community and say to them you will be holy, since I am God and I am holy.  The term used is kol adat Yisrael.

As the poet/prophet Alan Ginsburg writes…Holy! Holy! Holy! The world is holy! The soul is holy! The head is holy! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!

 With this holiness we create intimacy. We create the action of prayer. And (as I’ve said) the tool of this action is logically symbolized by the two altars in Torah.

In Torah, the copper altar is for animals. Symbolically, it’s where we transform our animal selves into our spiritual selves. The incense altar is seen as the prayer of prayer, the way high path.  Since it obviously takes both altars to lead us to God, it’s pretty clear that we can’t remain in a continual state of dichotomy. We need to join the altars therefore in some metaphoric way.

 Joining the two altars is hard work. But it’s a necessary rite of passage. If God didn’t want us to do this work one would think He would have given us one altar and that would have been that!  The link from altar to altar therefore becomes the toll booth to go over the bridge. It becomes that which connects our feet on the ground to our head in the sky…it’s the heart. For prayer to rise beyond-animal altar to incense-altar to God (therefore) there must be heart-work.

Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aharon, understand this.  They try to merge the two altars with their hearts. This is what happens.

During the consecration of the mishkan they try to offer incense on the animal altar and get zapped. Of course, Nadav and Avihu had seen the Shekhinah earlier. In Exodus they climb to the top of Mt Sinai and have this ultimate experience with the prophet Moses. 

So it’s not surprising that they want to tap-into the whole. They want to clinch God, create a community prayer that will catapult everyone straight to the Shekhinah.

 As it says in Midrash (Sifra, Shemini, Melchilta 32-38), they want to place love on top of love.

 

There’s a problem though.  They don’t realize it but the people are only capable of animal altar experiences. This Shekhinah and all the incense-in-the-world…this is not yet accessible.

So the schism is too great, the attempt is too abrupt…as it also says  they are righteous like Noah but dark like the snake (Midrash Rabbah Vayikra)… and they get burned alive. They also rise-up. But the Zohar  says that since their action is not at the right time …the force of their singularity is not strong enough to take the community with them.  That’s really tragic. They become the envious symbol of souls beyond bodies.  But they also go down in Torah as the almost-perfect-offering.  Almost because the extended community (in other words us) can have a vicarious experience but that’s all.  We do after all want to stay alive as long as humanely possible. 

What happens next?  God shows Aharon how to do it right. Think about it.  Torah time is not real time…so says Rashi…and even though two parashot have passed it’s as if Aharon just watched his sons die. How painful.  He must continue where his sons left off.

 This is what he must do: He must place the mixed blood of the animal sacrifices on the horns of the incense altar. A strange action if there ever was one. But think about it. He’s bringing our life-sparks…our blood sacrifice….to the God-catapult….the incense altar… and in so doing he is creating one community heart that is open to the God-flow.  And he does it carefully with discernment.  The atonement is done.

Great…so how can we all do this today?  We have prayer. Prayer is the animal sacrifice. But we need to move beyond even that. We need symbolic blood and a symbolic incense altar. We need the symbolic action of spreading the symbolic blood on the symbolic incense altar.  

I don’t have any answers here. I don’t have the magic how.

 Amos though says it will happen:

A time is coming when the plowman shall meet the reaper

And the treader of grapes, he who holds the bag of seed

When the mountains shall drip wine

And all the hills shall wave with grain. (9:13-14)