{Originally posted to Rabbi Weinberg’s website, The Foundation Stone}
The story resonates with the long history that produces the individual profiles, and the sensation of the present, experienced on the skin and in the emotions, scratching raw the surface. In the present, the Children of Israel were doubting themselves. Eight days earlier they witnessed, “The cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of God filled the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:34).” Yet, day after day, they waited for the Fire of God to burst forth on the Altar, but no fire appeared. In the present, Aaron, the High Priest, is hesitant as Moses instructs him to bring a calf as a Sin Offering. Could he, who forged the Golden Calf, succeed with a calf, in bringing that final demonstration of forgiveness, God’s Fire consuming the offering?
“A fire went forth from before God and consumed upon the Altar; the people saw and sang glad song and fell upon their faces (Leviticus 9:24).” But then, “The sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, each took his fire pan, and they put fire in them, and they brought an alien fire that He had not commanded. A fire came forth from before God and consumed them, and they died before God (10:1-2).” Aaron saw two sons consumed before God, and emulating Abraham, the one who survived a fiery furnace, and who remained silent when instructed to offer his son, “and Aaron was deathly silent (Verse 3).” He wondered whether his sons did not survive the fire because of his part in the Golden Calf (Rashi, 10:12). Moses watched two students, precious as sons, consumed by God’s Fire, the same fire he witnessed at the Burning Bush, the fire that did not consume. He wondered whether Nadab and Abihu believed the fire to be safe because of their teacher’s experience.
The long arms of history are tangled around each character. Abraham at the Binding of Isaac. Moses at the Burning Bush. The Golden Calf. Even Nadab and Abihu were caressed by those arms as they recalled their scene at Sinai, “They saw the Lord of Israel, and under His feet was the likeness of sapphire brickwork, and it was like the essence of heaven in purity (Exodus 24:10).” They recalled how just after their vision, “they gazed at the Lord,” they were still human beings, “they ate and they drank (Exodus 24:11).” Nadab and Abihu, exhilarated by the present, wanted to reach back with those long arms of history and repair, as their father was repairing his mistake at the Golden Calf.
Both the history and the present were wounded, as they were in the Holocaust when more than a thousand years of history were almost erased, and the present was ripped from millions, and damaged for millions more. In our story of Nadab and Abihu, Moses offered an explanation, “Of this did God speak, saying, ‘I will be sanctified through those nearest Me’ (Leviticus 10:3).” “Aaron remained deathly silent.” We honor Aaron’s silence.
I shudder when I hear “explanations” of the Holocaust. They are usually offered by those who live within the arms of the long history, threatened by the present, terrified of using the present to heal the wounds and mistakes of the past. I prefer Aaron’s deathly silence, and God’s message at the end of the portion:
“Speak to the Children of Israel saying, ‘These are the creatures that you may eat’ (11:1).” Nadab and Abihu wanted to heal, “they ate and they drank,” their lives as human beings even after their great vision at Sinai, with a passionate fire connected through the long arms of history to Abraham’s fiery furnace and the fire he brought to the Binding of Isaac, the fire of the Burning Bush, the fire of Sinai. God does not want a fire fueled by the great flames of our history. He simply asks that we care about how and what we eat in the present, to discover holiness in our lives as human beings who must eat. We are connected to our past, not by feeble attempts to recreate history, but by the awareness with which we live in the present.