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From:          "Yeshivat Har Etzion's Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash"
To:            yhe-intparsha@vbm-torah.org
Subject:       INTPARSHA -26: Parashat Shemini


                    YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
         ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH (VBM)
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               INTRODUCTION TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA

                       by Zvi Shimon


                     PARASHAT SHEMINI

                     Playing with Fire


In this week's sedra, parashat Shemini, we read about the
culmination of the consecration of the Mishkan, the
Tabernacle. It is the apex of a very lengthy section in the
Torah which commences in parashat Teruma (Exodus, chapter 25)
and spans over twenty chapters. The people of Israel have
given their generous contributions for the construction of the
Mishkan. The craftsmen have labored arduously applying their
skills and with utter devotion. The kohanim (priests) have
studied all the laws relating to the sacrifices and have
completed their ordination period remaining at the entrance of
the Tent of Meeting day and night for seven days. Our parasha
opens on the eighth day, the day which has been so eagerly
anticipated, the day that God will appear before the people
and dwell in the Mishkan:

Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed
them; and he stepped down after offering the sin
offering, the burnt offering, and the offering of well
being.  Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of
Meeting.  When they came out, they blessed the people;
and the Presence of the Lord appeared to all the people. 
Fire came forth from before the Lord and consumed the
burnt offering and the fat parts on the altar.  And all
the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces. 
(Leviticus 9:22-24)

God accepts the sacrifices of the people and an awesome
fire descends from the heavens consuming the offerings on the
altar. The people are ecstatic and shout with joy. However,
the joy and exhilaration are short-lived. Bliss turns to
sorrow as the event is marred by a horrible tragedy:

Now Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu each took his censer,
put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered
before the Lord alien fire, which He had not enjoined
upon them.  And fire came forth from the Lord and
consumed them; thus they died before the Lord.  (10:1,2)

According to the Rashbam (Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, France,
1080-1160), the same divine fire which consumes the offerings
on the altar, expressing God's satisfaction with his people
and arousing their delight, also consumes Aaron's sons, Nadav
and Avihu. What was the sin of Nadav and Avihu that brought
upon them such a horrible punishment? Why was God so angry at
them?

The Sin

The verse states that Nadav and Avihu offered before the
Lord an 'Eish Zara asher lo tziva otam,' an alien fire which
God had not instructed them to offer. The commentators
disagree as to the interpretation of this verse. The Bekhor
Shor (Rabbi Yoseph Ben Yitzchak Bekhor Shor, France, twelfth-
century) and the Chizkuni (Rabbi Chizkiya ben Manoach, France,
mid-thirteenth century) interpret the clause 'asher lo tziva
otam' as a prohibition. God explicitly forbade them to offer
this offering. The clause 'asher lo tziva otam' should not be
understood as stating that God had not instructed them to
offer but rather should be understood as 'asher tziva otam
lo,' stating that God explicitly forbade them from offering
their sacrifice. What is your opinion of this interpretation?
(take a few moments to reflect).

There are two advantages to this interpretation. The
first advantage is textual since the Torah describes the
offering as "alien fire," God obviously didn't command them to
offer it. This is the reason why it is referred to as an alien
fire. Rather, the Torah informs us that God also prohibited
the offering. The second advantage of this interpretation
relates to the content of the narrative. It is much easier to
understand the harsh punishment as retribution for the
disobeying of God than for the offering of a sacrifice which
was not commanded. However, there are certain obvious
difficulties with this interpretation. First, if this
interpretation is correct, than the phrasing of the clause is
odd. A clearer formulation would have been 'asher tziva otam
LO,' Which God commanded not [to offer]. A second difficulty
with the interpretation is that it portrays Nadav and Avihu as
people who are rebellious to the extent of disobeying an
explicit command of God. This is difficult especially in light
of their background and function as priests.

The majority of the commentators interpret the clause as
in our translation, "an alien fire which God had not
instructed them to offer." Their sin was not of disobeying God
but rather offering an "alien fire" which was not commanded of
them. What was this alien fire which ignited God's wrath?

Rabbi Hirsch (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Germany, 1808-
1888)  offers the following explanation:

"The offering itself appears in every way illegal. The
censers as well as the fire and the incense were all
against the law. All the utensils must belong to the
congregation and be holy. By giving his offering over
into a national vessel of the Sanctuary, the bringer,
together with his offering, enters within the framework
of the national sanctuary of the Torah, and thereby gives
himself up to all its demands, to the exclusion of any
decisions made according to his own ideas.  But the
censers of Nadav and Avihu were each his own; they
approach God, not with the vessels of the Sanctuary, but
with their own, without self-renunciation.  They put a
fire in the censer, more precisely an alien fire, from
their own hearths, as Rabbi Akiva explains - not fire
from the altar.  And finally, the incense itself. 
Incense was the one sacrificial substance, which neither
from the community nor from the individual was allowed to
be brought.  The bringing of incense was to remain
restricted exclusively to that which was prescribed for
the community daily and for the high priest on Yom
Kippur.

     Nadav and Avihu desecrated the Mishkan by using their own
private utensils and by bringing an alien fire, not fire from
the altar but from a normal fireplace. Their sin was in
performing tasks of a holy nature with the improper tools. The
Rashbam takes a different approach:

"Even before the heavenly fire had descended they [Nadav
and Avihu] had already taken their censers to burn
incense on the altar of gold since the incense offered in
the morning precedes the offering of animal sacrifices
(see Exodus 30:7); and they put in [the censers] an alien
fire which Moses had not commanded on THIS DAY. Though
                   on other days it is written "And the sons of Aaron the
priest shall put fire upon the altar" (1:7), on this day
Moses did not desire that they bring a man-made fire
since they were anticipating the descent of a heavenly
fire; therefore the bringing of a different fire was not
desired in order that God's name should be sanctified and
that all would know that the fire came from the heavens"

      In contrast to Rabbi Hirsch who interprets an alien fire
as an unholy fire originating not from the altar but from an
unholy source, the Rashbam posits that the fire was indeed
taken from the altar. It was foreign not because of its source
but rather because of its timing. On the day that God was to
appear through a heavenly fire before the whole congregation,
man-made fire was undesirable. It would only limit the extent
of the miracle. Nadav and Avihu's sin was not the desecration
of the Mishkan but rather the detrimental interference in the
miraculous events of the day.

[The assumption of the Rashbam is that Nadav and Avihu
acted before the descent of the heavenly fire and were burned
by it. The Rashbam does not explain why the Torah recounts the
narrative of Nadav and Avihu only after the heavenly fire. The
apparent reason is to separate the awesome and glorious
appearance of God in the Mishkan and the tragic death of Nadav
and Avihu. Although they occurred simultaneously, the Torah
separates them so as not to detract from God's momentous
appearance.]

Our sages in Vayikra Rabba (A compilation of homiletical
interpretations of our sages) offer several explanations of
the sin of Nadav and Avihu. We will cite two of them:

Bar Kappara in the name of Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazar
said: Aaron's sons died... for drawing near [to the holy
place] since they entered into the innermost precincts of
the sanctuary, [and] for offering since they offered a
sacrifice which they had not been commanded to offer.

It is not only as intimated by our verse that Nadav and
Avihu sinned in offering an "alien fire." They also sinned by
trespassing into sections of the Mishkan which they should
have not entered. What is the textual source for this
explanation? In the continuation of the book of Leviticus the
deaths of Nadav and Avihu are mentioned: "The Lord spoke to
Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when
they drew too close to the presence of the Lord" (16:1). Here
there is no mention of the sinful offering, only of a
prohibited "closeness" to God's presence, to the holy of
holies in the Mishkan. Even without the forbidden offering,
Nadav and Avihu would still have received the punishment of
death simply for entering sections of the Mishkan which were
forbidden.

The Cause

So far we have dealt with the essence of the sin of Nadav
and Avihu. We will now turn our attention to their motive, the
cause which led them to perpetrate the sin. Where did they go
wrong? What caused men of such stature to fall to their doom?

The Sifra ('Tannaitic halakhic midrash on Leviticus)
offers the following explanation:

"And Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu each took his censer"-
"They, in their joy, since they saw a new fire [the
heavenly fire], they came to add love to love"

Nadav and Avihu were so overjoyed by God's acceptance of
the sacrifices that they decided to add another offering.
Their enthusiasm and excitement led them to instinctively
perform deeds without contemplating their desirability and
taking the proper precautions. The awesome love of God  that
Nadav and Avihu possessed overshadowed their fear of God. This
imbalance, the overflowing of love unchecked by the
restraining influence of the fear of God, led to the sin of
Nadav and Avihu. In contrast to the ecstatic frenzied states
characteristic of modes of worship in Eastern religions, the
worship of God, as prescribed by the Torah, warns against a
loss of control. Love must always be accompanied by the fear
of God. It is the combination of the two which creates the
desirable state of mind necessary for a close relationship
with God.

Rabbi Hirsch offers an alternative explanation:

More than anything else the Word of God stresses that God
had not commanded them.  Even if the various phases of
the offering had not themselves been wrong, as we have
seen that they were, the fact that it was not a "bidden"
one would have sufficed to make it a forbidden one.  No
place is allowed in the whole service of the offerings of
the Sanctuary of the Torah for subjectively doing just
what you think right. Even the free-will offerings have
to be kept meticulously within the limits of the forms
and kinds prescribed for them.  For the proximity of and
getting near to God, which is the purpose of every
offering, is only to be found by the way of obedience, by
compliance with God's Will and subordination to it.  This
is one of the points in which Judaism and Paganism go in
diametrically opposite directions.  The Pagan brings his
offering in an attempt to make the god subservient to his
wishes.  The Jew, with his offering, wishes to place
himself in the service of God; by his offering he wishes
to make himself subservient to the wishes of his God.  So
that all offerings are formulae of the demands of God,
which the bringer, by his offering, undertakes to make
the normal routine for his future life.  So that self-
devised offerings would be a killing of just those very
truths which our offerings are meant to impress upon the
bringers, would be placing a pedestal on which to glorify
one's own ideas, where a throne was meant to be built for
obedience, and obedience only.  We can understand that
the death of the priestly youths, and their death in the
first moment of the consecration of the Sanctuary of God,
is the most solemn warning for all future priests of this
Sanctuary; it excludes from the precincts of the
Sanctuary of God - which was to be nothing else but the
Sanctuary of His Torah - every expression of caprice, and
every subjective idea of what is right and becoming!  Not
by fresh inventions even of God-serving novices, but by
carrying out that which is ordained by God has the Jewish
priest to establish the authenticity of his activities.

Nadav and Avihu had misunderstood their task as kohanim.
They were searching for self-expression and an outlet for
their creativity. As a result Nadav and Avihu became absorbed
in their own ideas, as they attempted to create novel forms of
worship. They did not understand that the Mishkan was not a
place for individual creative expression. It is God, and only
God, who determines the framework for His worship. The Torah
describes in great detail all the laws of the sacrificial
worship. Any straying from these laws is a desecration of the
Mishkan, and an undesirable and alien form of worship.

Our sages offer another explanation for Nadav and Avihu's
downfall:

"And Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu each took his
censer"(10:1)- "Aaron's sons"-[teaches us that] they did
not seek advice from Aaron, "Nadav and Avihu"- [teaches
us that] they did not seek advice from Moses, "each took
his censer" [teaches us that] they did not seek advice
from one another" (Sifra, Acharei Mot 1)

Our sages infer from scripture that Nadav and Avihu acted
independently without asking anyone with regard to the
desirability of their actions. The last two textual inferences
are clear. Moses' name does not appear in the verse since he
was not approached by Nadav and Avihu. Likewise, scripture
emphasizes that Nadav and Avihu each acted independent of the
other, each taking his own censer. However the first inference
is obscure. How do our sages infer from the clause "And
Aaron's sons" that Aaron was not consulted? The fact that
Aaron's name appears in the verse would seem to imply the
opposite, that he was involved in their deed! The Netziv
(Rabbi Naphtali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, Lithuania, 1817-1893)
explains that the source for the inference is the order of the
verse. When the Torah states people's parentage it usually
does so after giving the name of the individual. Here the
order is the opposite. The Torah does not state 'Nadav and
Avihu, Aaron's sons' but rather "And Aaron's sons Nadav and
Avihu." The change in order teaches us that although Aaron was
their father he did not influence them and was not involved in
their misdeed. The appearance of Aaron at the beginning of the
verse teaches that his influence was only in the past but not
in the present behavior of his sons.

According to this explanation of our sages, Nadav and
Avihu downfall stemmed from over-confidence. They did not deem
it necessary to seek advice from their elders and teachers.
Furthermore, they acted without hearing a second opinion, and
they did not even discuss their plan amongst themselves! This
hyper-individualism and rashness brought about their tragic
end.

Shadal's (Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzatto, Italy, 1800-1865)
understanding of the cause of Nadav and Avihu's sin is even
more critical:

"They sinned due to haughtiness. They were not satisfied
with being helpers of their father as is written:
"Aaron's sons passed the blood to him" (9:12). They
wanted to show that they too were the priests of God like
their father, and since Moses had not assigned them any
independent function, they chose a lucrative one and
presented an alien offering." (compare to the explanation
in the Midrash Hagadol.)

It was their hunger for prominence and prestige which led
them to sin. They held very important positions but were
unhappy so long as they didn't enjoy a dominant role.
Therefore, they independently tried to take on more central
functions and they used the Mishkan as a locus for their
growth in power and political advancement. This desecration of
their spiritual position and its usage for self-aggrandizement
was what led to their ultimate failure and consequently a
harsh punishment was incurred.

Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak, France, 1040-1105),
citing our sages, offers a completely different explanation of
the cause of Nadav and Avihu's sin:

"Rabbi Yishmael said: They died because they entered the
Sanctuary intoxicated by wine. You may know that this is
so, because after their death he admonished those who
survived that they should not enter when intoxicated by
wine"

Nadav and Avihu sinned because they were drunk and
consequently, they were not careful in the performance of
their duties. Entrance into the sanctuary demands utmost
seriousness and reverence. It is no place for flippancy and
frivolity. Nadav and Avihu entered the sanctuary in an
improper state of mind which led to an improper form of
worship. Rabbi Yishmael learns this from the fact that
immediately after the death of Nadav and Avihu God speaks to
Aaron saying:

"And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: Drink no wine or
other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the
Tent of Meeting, that you may not die.  This is a law for
all time throughout the ages, for you must distinguish
between the sacred and the profane, and between the
unclean and the clean." (Leviticus 10:8-10)

Whichever explanation of the cause of Nadav and Avihu's
sinning we adopt, the punishment appears extremely harsh. The
severity of God's reaction is undoubtedly a consequence of the
location of the sin and the identity of the sinners. The
Netziv comments on the clause: "and they died BEFORE GOD"
(10:2), that it comes to explain why Nadav and Avihu were
punished so severely. Since they were before God, in his
sanctuary, he dealt with them in the most stringent manner and
without mercy. Proximity to holiness demands utmost care. Sin
in the sanctuary is magnified and becomes all the more severe.
However it is not only the location but also the identity of
the sinners which incurred such a harsh reaction. This is
perhaps the meaning behind Moses' words to Aaron following his
sons' death: "This is what the Lord meant when He said,
Through THOSE NEAR TO ME I show myself holy..." (10:3). Rabbi
Hirsch comments on this verse:

The more anybody stands in front of the people as a
leader and teacher in their relation to God, the less
does God overlook his mistakes....  Had Aaron's sons not
been so close to God, pardon might have perhaps been
granted to them, and the tragic fate which God so
immediately dealt them would not have been such a weighty
warning to the people.  In sharpest contrast to the
modern point of view which regards spiritual and
intellectual greatness as a free pass for moral laxness,
and grants men of intellect a greater consideration in
lapses against God's laws of morality, the Jewish point
of view raises the strictness of the demands for morality
with each higher degree of intellectuality.

God is most exacting with those who are closest to him.
The assumption of leadership positions, especially in the
religious domain, demands exemplary moral behavior. The
potential and the responsibility for sanctifying God's name
when in a position of leadership is all the greater. Likewise
the punishment incurred for, God forbid, desecrating His name
is much more severe. No Biblical narrative illustrates this
idea more powerfully than the tragic deaths of Nadav and
Avihu.


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ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH
ALON SHEVUT, GUSH ETZION 90433

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