Leviticus Cycle 6 Acharei Moth and Shabbat HaGadol

 I'm posting this early since I'm leaving soon to lead Pesach on a cruise ship. Have a beautiful and happy Passover filled with love and light!

Shabbat HaGadol

It's Closer Than We Think

The Shabbat before Pesach is a time to gaze at ourselves. It’s a marking time, a flag point for the marathon run of our lives, a port of call on the Big Cruise.  We all can remember Pesach year after year. We know where we were, what we were dreaming, hoping for, striving for, needing. We know the work we were doing, and those we were loving.

Pre-Pesach year in and out marks a moment stopped in memory, the wine glass raised but not yet sipped, the catch of the breath, an expectation almost realized,  an evaluation of the path traveled. We suddenly notice we are moving through tighter circumstances and situations. Life is pushing us forward. We age. Our bodies have less natural flexibility.  Our bones feel hard. And ironically our minds and souls are in full flow. I’m not a scientist but it’s clear to me that when the channels tighten the propulsion is empowered. What does this mean for us?  Let’s look at the earth.  It’s solid and hard from winter and yet the tiny shoots are pushing up somehow.  We (like these tiny shoots) have new growth, new need yet the boundaries of the earth are hard and seemingly impossible.

Soon, the boundaries will open wide. The earth will soften.  We will have crossed the Reed Sea. But that hasn’t happened. Yet.

  

We’re having a great time. I’m sure of it.  The art of living is here on this cruise ship.  But no matter how our time is being spent as we stare out at the ocean we ask the same question. Am I free? What have I not yet revealed to myself? What is it in my personal psyche that is preventing me from being me? What don’t I really understand? Am I an observer in my own life or living it?  What can I say or do to free myself and those I love? We can see it. We are headed to a new knowledge. We may have been through great beauty or pain but now we are moving forward with exponential force and desire.

 There are levels of freedom though, like levels on this boat and they don’t always let you on the top forward deck. There are stops along the way, places where people die (like when Rachel dies on the road) and places where we are born and places where we are both visited and do the visiting.  There are huge tolls we pay on the same old highways. There are limitations of self we don’t realize until we have the courage to place an old self in the past and push forward into this new journey, this new vision.

This is what Aaron must do in Acharei Moth. Lets do a small review. A while back, Aaron’s sons (Nadav and Abihu) are both killed when they offer incense on the animal altar. These altars might sound strange. How we feel about sacrifice though is not the issue this moment. The important fact is that the sons get zapped. Aaron is just coming out of the tent with Moses and this death is what they see.

The first sentence of the parsha comes at us from seemingly nowhere. A story is clearly continuing but we’ve been off-story for two weeks, getting the how-to of spiritual illness whether it be lashon harah or leprosy. So, now we’re back on story-time .  Here’s a problem though. After the word acharei in Hebrew there’s supposed to be some kind of article. Like the or a. Of course modern translations simplify the problem and act like the article is there but…it isn’t. This first sentence is often translated: God spoke to Moses after the death of Aaron’s two sons who brought an offering before God and died.  That one phrase really reads though after death two sons of Aaron. In Hebrew (therefore) it doesn’t make sense. Given the amount of Talmudic commentary on it, we know it’s a problem. So let’s move through.

Not to bore you with grammar, but there is one construct that we could experiment with that might enlighten (or bemuse) us.  Let’s try it.  Sometimes, as we learn from Rashi and the Rashbam certain words (left out) are inferred.  In this different construct we would read:

First..or kedem… (there was) the death of Aarons two sons in that they approached God and died and after that…achar cach… God spoke to Moses.

The lack of the definite article (referred to above) causes me to think of this construct. But there’s something else. It works.  It shows the movement that Aaron must experience to become closer to God. 

Not to forget… this is the parasha we read on Yom Kippur and now here we are faced with it pre-Pesach. Moving through our own tight spaces does mean pushing through the words of death or beauty or prophecy until we can move into the Holy of Holies. It means letting go of some worn out painful and archaic identity (like Aaron has to do) and reaching that personal vision of the essence that is Freedom for all mankind.

 To take this one step farther, we read in a midrash that God mourns for Nadav and Abihu.   God after all says (Leviticus 10-3) that through them who are near to me I will be sanctified.  In the first line of Acharei Moth therefore, God himself is showing how He as well is moving through His own tight spaces. He has mourned the sons of Aaron and now is giving instructions to Moses on how Aaron is to move on.   He is dropping the old Self and taking on a new Freedom for His people. It can’t happen though without decision and direction. It takes great strength to satisfy the most ephemeral and exquisite of dream-realities. It takes great strength to leave a past of self-imposed slavery whether we are a God or a human, whether we are a slave to human thought or to divine tragedy. It takes strength to become free, to be free in a place of becoming, to speak our minds, to be our souls, to take that path less traveled, to be really who we know we are.

May we all therefore move through the tight spaces with peace and intention, with strength and  discipline,  with courage, focus, vision, compassion, kindness  love and an eternal solid gaze at the ocean’s amazing blue.