SHEMINI - 2ND PART
Vayikra 10:12 - 11:32
Plaut 802 - 821; EH 635 - 640; Hertz 447 - 454

Shemini is one of those Parashiot in the triennial cycle when the reading for this year overlaps with that for next. Our Parashah includes the second half of Chapter 10 and all of Chapter 11 in Vayikra aka Leviticus.   My D’var will focus on Chapter 10, which is not read next year and is thus the only reading unique to the second year of the triennial cycle.

The context for the events in our reading is the sudden death of Nadab and Abihu, two of Aaron’s four sons, who had “offered before the Lord alien fire, which God had not enjoined upon them.”  There is lots of commentary on what exactly Nadab and Abihu had done wrong, but I will just note 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 days later.  Aaron has accepted the loss of his two older sons with no public sign of mourning, presumably to recognize that God’s rules must be meticulously observed in the sanctuary.  Further, Moses had specifically ordered Aaron and his two younger sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, not to exhibit signs of mourning in public.  Now, please look at verses 10:16 to 20 (pages 635-36 in Eitz Hayim).

In 10:16, 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.  When he learns that instead it had been burned on the altar, he gets angry.  The root of the word for angry, ףצק, 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 was worried that he did not really understand what God wanted.  Perhaps Moses felt guilty for the deaths of Aaron’s sons. We do not know.  What we do know is that he got angry, and not for the first or the last time. Yet he is the leader of the Jewish people, unique in Jewish history. 

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.  Indeed, with an anthropomorphic leap, God is reported to get angry.  He may have “a long nose,” 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). However, the words certainly indicate that God can get angry, and, sometimes, as in Psalm 74:1, very angry.  (“Why, O God, has Thou cast us off forever?  Why doth Thine anger smoke against the flock of Thy pasture?”) 

Second, despite the foregoing, 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 to human beings.  Here is 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.
•	Kitzur Shukhan Arukh (29:4): “Anger is also an extremely wicked characteristic, . . We must learn to control it and . . . not to become angry even when a rightful cause exists.”  The text goes on to elaborate how one may effectively pretend to be angry when dealing with children but simultaneously retaining composure.
•	Perhaps the most descriptive view 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, and most important for what follows, is the another Talmudic statement (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 once again God does seem to be involved.  As we know, at several points, God relents at Moses’ plea not to destroy the Jewish 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)  And, happily for us Jews, though anger may be sinful, the notion of Seven Deadly Sins is Christian, not Jewish.

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), which of course appeared a millennium before the Shukhan Arukh, notes approvingly that Adda ben Ahaba never “took anger to bed with him.”  Instead, he went out and made peace with anyone with whom he had become angry, regardless of the justification.

Now, let’s return to Moses, Aaron, Eleazar, and Ithamar.  They are 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 because Levites have no land of their own.  The act of eating was part of process of gaining atonement for the people Israel.  In Moses’ eyes, 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, to whom he should have been talking.  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.  Then Aaron reminds Moses that, as mourners, they are not permitted to consume certain forms of consecrated meat.  The details get very technical with distinctions between sacrifices offered because it was the dedication of the Tabernacle and those offered because the ceremony was taking place on Rosh Hodesh, and between that which the High Priest could do but other priests could not.  Happily, for the purpose of learning about anger, we can ignore those distinctions.

The important point is that Aaron responds to Moses with what Rabbi Plaut calls “dignity and gentleness” and provides “a firm but forthright reply” (p. 803, fn to 10:20).  Reasoning from minor to major, Aaron suggests that, if the regular tithe was forbidden to ordinary 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.)  What happened next is even more important:  Moses recognized the truth of what Aaron had said, and – the commentators in Sifra add – publically proclaimed that he had been wrong and Aaron right.  Rashi emphasizes that Moses was not too proud to admit his error.

The lessons are, I think, obvious.  There could be no better example of anger causing the wise to lose their wisdom.  Alas, it was not the only such occasion.  Two other times, according to classical Midrash (Vyk R:  13:1), Moses forgot the correct Halachah because of his anger, once before this incident and once after.  The importance of controlling one’s anger is a lesson that Moses had to learn and re-learn.

In conclusion, though I do not in any way compare myself with Moses, it is a lesson that I too must keep re-learning.

Shabbat Shalom.
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