29 march 2003

SHEMINI - 2^ND PART

Vayikra Leviticus 10:12 - 11:32

Plaut 802 - 821; Etz Hayim 635 – 640

By David Brooks

 

This is one of those uncommon Parashiot in the triennial cycle when the reading for this year overlaps with that for next.  The division of each annual Parashah into three parts, which was fixed by the Conservative movement some years back, follows a number of rules designed to provide readings of roughly equal length each year but at the same time to keep logical material together and to follow traditional rules, such as ending each Parashah on an upbeat note.  In some cases, the only way to satisfy these prescriptions simultaneously is to overlap one year’s reading with that for the next.  Our Parashah includes the second half of Chapter 10 and all of Chapter 11.   My D’var will focus on the former, which is unique to the second year of the triennial cycle.

 

The context for the events here is the sudden death of Nadab and Abihu, two of Aaron’s four sons, who had “offered before the Lord alien fire (שׁ זרהÀ ), which God had not enjoined upon them.” (Lev 10:1)  There is lots of commentary on what exactly it was that Nadab and Abihu did wrong, but that was part of last year’s reading.  Suffice it to say that they were not officiating at just any service but at the dedication of the Tabernacle – the “Initiation of Formal Worship,” as stated in Eitz Hayim, so protocol was critical.

 

It is now a few hours to a few days after their deaths.  (The rule is that Torah does not follow any standard time sequence – in Rabbinic terms, there is no before and after in Torah -- but here it is clear that events follow one another.)  Aaron has accepted the loss of his two older sons with no public sign of mourning, evidently to recognize that God’s rules must be meticulously observed in the sanctuary.  In fact, Moses had specifically ordered Aaron and his younger two sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, to remain within the sanctuary and not to exhibit signs of mourning.  He goes on, in the first four verses of our Parashah, to repeat the laws already given (6:7 - 11) about the sanctity of the cereal offering, or minchah, presumably for the benefit of Eleazar and Ithamar since Aaron had already heard them.  Now, let us focus on the following verses, 16 to 20.

 

In 16, Moses asks about one particular sacrifice.  He wants to ensure that this part of the dedication offering has been eaten by the priests, as he had instructed them.  When he learns that instead it had been burned on the alter, he gets angry.  The root of the word for angry,  ___, also refers to foam or froth so I think we can infer that Moses got really angry.  Perhaps he was upset that his orders had not been followed to the letter.  Perhaps he himself was uncertain as to what would happen if those orders, which he had received from God, were not followed.  Possibly he worried that he did not really understand what God wanted.  This is what some commentators infer from his words in 10:3, and one might go on to speculate that Moses felt guilty for the deaths of Nadab and Abihu.  We do not know.  What we do know is that he got very angry, and not for the first or the last time.  My dvar will therefore focus on anger, and on how it is treated in Judaism.

 

First of all, anger is far from uncommon in Torah.  In fact, in one of those anthropomorphic leaps, God is reported to get angry.  God may have “a long nose” ('erekh apayim), which is to say that God does not get angry easily, as stated when describing attributes (Shm 34:6), and may not stay angry long, as stated in Prophets (Mic 3) and Psalms (eg 30:6), but these verses certainly imply that God does get angry sometimes.  Indeed, according to Psalm 74:1, very angry: “Why, O God, has Thous cast us off forever?  Why doth Thine anger smoke against the flock of Thy pasture?”

 

Second, however, anger is very clearly regarded as a weakness.  I have found no traditional source that criticizes God for getting angry, but the sources are full of admonitions applicable to human beings..  Here is just a sampling:

• Proverbs 16:32: A person slow to anger is better than one who captures a city.

•  Job (29:1): Anger will kill someone who does not control it.

•  Ecclesiastes (7:9): Anger is characteristic of fools.

•  Pirke Avot (2:11): Someone who fails to control anger will be put out of the world, whatever that means.

•  Other midrashim make an analogy between anger and worshipping idols and state that an angry person is not fit to pray.

• Perhaps the best single description of anger is in Talmud Sotah (3b) which reads: “Anger in a household is like a worm among sesame seeds.”  One worm can breed, and eventually the whole bag must be discarded.

• Finally, but most important for what follows, is the statement in the Talmud (Pesachim 66b) that anger causes the wise person to lose wisdom. 

 

Third, with anger being considered bad, yet recognized as common among human beings, apology and recompense become critical.  Here God does seem to be involved.  As we know, at several points, God relents at Moses’ pleading from an intention to destroy the Hebrew people.  More poetically, the Talmud (Ber 7a) tells us that God prays that His mercy will overcome His anger.  (The phrase is usually translated as God praying to overcome His sense of justice, but the word used is anger.^[1])  Whatever the case with God, when we come to human beings, it is beyond doubt that we are enjoined not only to admit errors committed in anger, but to apologize to those whom we have wronged.  The Talmud (Taanit 20b) notes approvingly that Adda ben Ahaba never “took anger to bed with him.”  In other words, he went out and made peace with whomever (perhaps at whatever) he had become angry.

 

Return now to Moses, Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar.  They are standing facing one another in something of a confrontation.  To be fair to Moses, he has reason to be disturbed.  When priests eat sacrificial meat in the sanctuary, it is more than just getting their share of produce that they would have had but for the fact that the tribe of Levi got the priesthood in place of land.  The act of eating was an inherent part of process of gaining atonement for the people Israel.  In the case under discussion, the process has been left incomplete, which might jeopardize the relationship between the people and God.  Remember: All this was new, and it would seem from the experience of Nadab and Abihu that each step had to be observed scrupulously.  Only later would allowable leniencies become known.

 

Moses poses his questions about the sacrifice to Eleazar and Ithamar, perhaps as a further affront to Aaron.  However, the sons remain respectfully quiet, and it is Aaron who answers, and very calmly as it seems.  He points out first that it was he, not his sons, who had offered the sacrifice; and second that the three of them were in a state of formal mourning, even if not public mourning.  Aaron then reminds Moses that, as mourners, they are not permitted to consume consecrated meat.  At least not certain forms of consecrated meat.  The details gets very technical with distinctions between sacrifices offered for dedication of the Tabernacle and those offered because the ceremony was taking place on Rosh Hodesh, and that which the High Priest could do but other priests could not.  Happily, for the purpose of learning about anger, we can ignore the distinctions.

 

·     The important point is that Aaron, responds to Moses with what Plaut calls “dignity and gentleness” and provides “a firm but forthright reply.”  Reasoning from minor to major, Aaron suggests that, if the regular tithe was forbidden to priests prior to the burial of close relatives, how much more should this special purification or sin offering be forbidden to them.  (Vyk. R. 13:1.)

 

·     And the even more important point is that Moses recognized the truth of what Aaron had said, and – the commentators in Sifra add – publicly proclaimed that he had been wrong and Aaron right.  Rashi emphasizes that Moses was not too proud to admit his error.