I OPENED THE DOOR FOR MY BELOVED, BUT MY BELOVED HAD TURNED AND GONE; I WAS FAINT BECAUSE OF WHAT HE SAID. I SOUGHT, BUT FOUND HIM NOT; I CALLED, BUT HE DID NOT ANSWER.

 (Shir Hashirim 5:6)

 

On Love Which Distorts

...Already, in Moshe's time, there were parties in Israel eager for the love of God, but did not observe the limitations imposed by the Torah; as we shall explain in Parashat Korach, this was the primary sin of the 250 who were true tzaddikim, yet they morally sinned by surrendering themselves to death through this holy passion to achieve God's love by use of the incense, even though this was not acceptable according to the Torah decree that only Aharon and his sons burn incense... Moshe was aware of the enthusiasm in these groups, but the time had not yet come for it to burst forth... therefore Moshe told Israel that this is not the way, but that the yetser hara, the evil inclination, turned your hearts astray; even though this yearning is in order to achieve God's love through holiness, this is not the way which God wants, it is the way of the yetser hara to delude and mislead great Torah scholars with this longing.

 (Haamek Davar, Vayikra 9:6)

 

...This means that the intent to serve God may turn into an obstacle should man intend not to fulfill the obligations laid upon him, but seeks ways to satisfy his feelings and drives, even though his feelings and drives be ostensibly pure. These thoughts are actual for us today... they point to the transformation of human drives and inclinations into holy things, which may include such drives as: nationalism, statehood, policy, love of the Land, love of the people, etc., drives which come to provide satisfaction of needs and interests. All these, as has been said, comprise "Avodah zara" - idolatry.

 (Y. Leibowitz, Seven Years of Discussion on the Weekly Parasha, p. 472)

 

 

 

IN THE MIKDASH THERE IS NO PLACE FOR MAN

Menachem Klein

 

In this week's parasha an event occurs which challenges understanding - the death of Nadav and Avihu. What makes the death of Aharon's two sons so difficult to comprehend are the circumstances of their death. No less perplexing is the reaction of the bereaved father whose mouth is sealed.

Nadav and Avihu died in the midst of a great celebration as the Mishkan is being inaugurated. The Mishkan's construction took many months. For seven consecutive weeks, the parshiot of Terumo, Tetsaveh, Ki Tissa, Yayakhel and Pekudey deal with (and cause us to deal with) all the technical details of the structure, organization of the service, materials, workers and engineers, and sources of financing of the project. No less important is the fact that the project was not the work of a certain group within the people, but of the entire nation which was asked to raise contributions and to accompany the work.

Upon completion of the work, the entire nation is invited to eight days of inaugural celebration. For seven days Moshe rehearsed Aharon and his sons in the operation of the Mishkan. On the eighth day, the festivities reached their climax as the responsibility was passed from the project head - Moshe - to the hands of the person who was to direct and oversee the Mishkan ritual - Aharon, supported by his four sons. This was a zenith moment, not only for the people, but also for Aharon. He is closing a circle which began with the sin of the Golden Calf. Aharon was the producer and director of the ritual which substituted a figurine of a gold calf for an abstract God. Now he is to direct the opposite ritual, the service of the one invisible God. This is the moment when his sons are consumed by fire.

The Bible specifies that Aharon's two sons transgressed by offering eish zara - 'alien fire'. What is the nature of this transgression? What was so terrible about bringing the eish zara that led to the burning of Nadav and Avihu? What is the message which God wanted to deliver to the assembly?

Medieval commentary offers many explanations - some original, some based upon Chazal. The Ramban argues that Nadav and Avihu acted under the influence of alcohol. They drank wine and erred in the proper order of the incense offering. Rashbam thought that they erred in timing. The performed the right act, but not on the right day. On that particular day, they were to have waited for the fire to come down, not to offer the fire themselves, as they had previously done during the preceding days. Sforno and Ibn Ezra move in a different direction. Sforno emphasizes that they did not receive any order from Moshe to do what they did; they acted on their own volition. Ibn Ezra stresses the fact that there was individual initiative on the part of Nadav and Avihu.

Common to all these explanations is the position that the eish zara mentioned by the Bible is self-initiative, personal energy and human ardor in the place and at the time when total passivity and absolute obedience are in order. These latter features characterize Aharon in his new image. In contrast to the energy and activity which marked him during the calf incident, and in contrast to the energy and initiative of his sons, Aharon's reaction to the death of Nadav and Avihu is total passivity. Aharon's individual 'self' as father and person is as erased. He becomes a perfect servant. In this terrible fashion, the sons of the tribe of Levi and the people learned of the Mishkan's demands. Operation of the Mishkan demands passivity which stands in sharp contrast to the activism which characterized the stages of its construction

The Haftara of the weekly portion takes us one step beyond the Mishkan, to the erection of the Temple.

David, warrior and conqueror, desired to move the ark of God to his new capitol city, Yerushalayim. Basically, David wanted to possess the ark, to transfer it to his ownership, and to have it rest in his city. He decides upon implementation, and he declares, in the name of the people, to the nobles of the tribe of Yehuda, his intention to bring the ark in a great popular procession which he organized.

To his misfortune, David discovered that the ark is a hazardous possession. During the procession, Uzza died at the hand of God after he moved instinctively to support the ark as it began to fall from the wagon. The message imparted by Uzza's death is the same message delivered by the death of Nadav and Avihu, the message of passivity. This event frustrated and angered David, for he was denied realization of his desire. Therefore, he preserved his anger and frustration via the remonstrant name he gives the site of the accident, "Perets-uzzah" (the Breach of Uzza).

David is deterred, and changes his original plan. He decides to move the dangerous possession to a non-Jew, Oved-Edom of Gat, for safe-keeping. In contrast to David's earlier assumption, Oved-Edom prospers, and God blesses him. David sees that the ark is a profitable possession, for its guardian was rewarded, and he returns to his original plan.

Again David organizes a large popular festival in which he plays a key role. He makes every effort to please during the journey. All along the way he sings and dances, like the most insignificant of Jews. Every six steps, he offers up two animals, and when the mission is successfully completed, he give everyone in his family a gift. At this point, David brings personal initiative and human action to its pinnacle. He does not rest nor desist until he has completed his task.

But David has not yet decreed 'enough'. After the ark has been successfully moved into his custody, and after he has conquered his enemies, he wants to achieve one more goal, to build the Bet Hamikdash. David was an active and impulsive man, an initiator, one who strove incessantly to reach his goals. But God denied him achievement of this goal. Here we find an important lesson for all generations, one which began with the death of Nadav and Avihu and the reaction of their father Aharon.

The building of the Beth Hamikdash is not a step which is decided upon by man; it is for God to decide. He determines the timing and the appropriate circumstances. The building of the Bet Hamikdash is also not an objective to be conquered like a military objective. A military target is characterized by decision to undertake a mission, assignment of resources and determination of mode of action. In military and political processes, man is the driving force. But this is not so regarding the building of the Mikdash. This occurs in a different way and in circumstances in which man is totally passive.

This and more. The Mikdash is not property over which a king, kingdom, or government takes possession. In the Mikdash there is no human ownership and no place for personal ego. These latter features characterize - for better and for worse - the political plane. In all that regards the Mikdash man is a passive servant. There is no place for activistic motives and goals in the building of the Mikdash, nor for motives and forms of rule over it. In the Bible, The Mikdash is called "HaMakkom", "The Place" - which is also one of God's names. In this place there is no place for man but only for "The Place."

On the basis of this approach, mainstream Jewish tradition holds that "the Mikdash which we anticipate, constructed and perfect, will appear and come from heaven." (Rashi, Tractate Sukkah, 41a, and his commentary on Rosh Hashanah 30a. Similarly, the Tosfists, in the commentary on Shavuot, 15b, write that the third Bet Hamikdash "will be built on its own by the hands of heaven").

Dr. Menachem Klein, member of the "Shabbat Shalom" editorial board, lectures in Political Science in Bar-Ilan Univ.

 

 

Readers Write:

An answer to Prof. Danny Statman's article (Ki Tissa issue)

 

In his article "Moshe the Zealot and Moshe the Weeper", my friend Danny Statman deals with Moshe's order to the sons of Levi to embark upon a punitive operation and with their (in Danny's opinion) overly enthusiastic execution of the order. I wish to comment briefly on a number of points in this article.

From a comparison of Moshe's orders to the sons of Levi, as described by Moshe further on, and the passage from "V'zot HaBracha" which is interpreted by Chazal as referring to the event under discussion, Danny reaches the conclusion that "the Levite zealots go beyond Moshe's orders to the extent of killing their own sons" and further on, "This the nature of such punitive operations; what begins as an order to kill brothers, relatives and neighbors, ends with the indiscriminate slaughter of brothers, parents and sons. (It cannot be argued that parents and children are included in 'kin', for one's tie to his child is much stronger that his tie to his brother, and if Moshe's intent was that they also kill the sons, he would have said so expressly.) We are not surprised that those capable of such wholesale slaughter are descendants of Levi, who led the campaign of vengeance in Shechem, those whose "weapons are tools of lawlessness." The impression given, then, is that we are reading about men who, without cause, deviated from orders, and instead of killing those whom they were commanded to kill, carried out an operation of indiscriminate slaughter.

There is much to be said about the moral puzzle which Danny's words arouse - is killing strangers more moral than killing relatives? Is the proper distinction to be drawn between killing of relatives and non-relatives, or is the correct distinction between those who are deserving of death and those who are innocent?

But this is not the subject I wish to deal with, but with the explication of the text: Does the text imply that the sons of Levi killed parents and children innocent of transgression? On the contrary. The materials from which Danny builds his case refute his argument. Whereas the punitive expedition into Shechem resulted in the sons of Levi receiving a curse, their action in this case merit blessings; the "deviation" which Danny finds in the actions of the sons of Levi is mentioned by Moshe in laudatory terms: "Dedicate yourselves to the Lord this day - for each of you has been against son and brother - that He may bestow a blessing upon you today." Similarly the passages which Danny quoted from "V'zot HaBracha": "Let your Urim and Thummim be with Your faithful... Who said of his father and mother "I consider them not" ... Your precepts alone they observed and kept you covenant." Danny's contention that there was "indiscriminate slaughter" paralleling the punitive expedition into Shechem, is concealed from the Bible, which praises the sons of Levi. The Bible even implies that it was as a result of this action that the tribe of Levi merited their special position as Levites.

An additional remark: Danny compares the behavior of Moshe at the sin of the calf to his behavior at the sin of Baal-peor. He suggests that Moshe's weeping and silence in the Baal-peor incident derive from his traumatic experience with the calf, which led to "civil war which is no longer an option which Moshe is willing to weigh." This is a nice idea, very befitting Danny's stand, but what can we do? The text on Baal-peor is very specific: "Moshe said to Israel's officials, "Each of you slay those of his men who attached themselves to the Baal-peor" (Bemidbar 25:5). If so, Danny is correct, the two situations are very similar, but, in contradiction to his words, Moshe acts there just as he did here, and he commands to kill those attached to Baal-peor. There is no need to expand on Moshe's weeping; suffice that from the Bible it is clear that it is not the result of paralysis based on reluctance to repeat the calf incident.

   In these two points Danny deviates sharply from the text, and brings us to the question of the legitimacy of explication of that which is hidden in the text. We often complain about tendential interpretation, which derives from blind adoration of the text, in the sense of "Love disregards the rules". Do we have before us a variation on the same theme, but from the converse side?

Rabbi Dr. Hayyim Burgansky is rabbi of "Mitzpeh Hoshaaya" and teaches Talmud in Bar-Ilan Univ.

 

Danny Statman, author of the article, replies:

My thanks to Rav Hayyim for his remarks. Following the editor's orders, I will write as briefly as possible.

1.      If I understand correctly, at the end of his letter, Rav Hayyim hints that my words are a case of "Hate disregards the rule" - implying a negative attitude to Bible, which leads to distorted interpretation. I disagree. Explication of Bible or Chazal which places the text in a more moral light flows from love for these sources, not, forbid, from a negative approach. In this respect I am in very fine company, and much more remains to be said.

2.      In the explanation of rich, complex, and multi-contradicting sources, we have no choice but to assign (on the basis of different considerations) greater import to certain texts over other texts. This is what I did. So does also Rav Hayyim. For me, the definitive text regarding the sons of Levi is the despicable slaughter in Shechem and Yaakov's harsh words "Let not my person be included in their council... I will divide them in Yaakov, Scatter them in Israel." (See Rabbi S. R. Hirsch's commentary, loc. cit.). For Rav Hayyim, the deciding text is "They shall offer you incense to savor..." and "That he may bestow a blessing upon you this day." Let the readers judge for themselves.

Regarding the incident of those who attached themselves to Baal-peor, I confess that my presentation of Moshe's reaction was deficient. At this stage, I can offer two remarks: One, Moshe did indeed command "Each of you slay those of his men", but the command is directed at the judges, there is no call for indiscriminate killing. Secondly, we do not read about execution of the order! According to the Ramban, it was not the judges who scourged the sinners, but The Holy One, Blessed Be He (Devarim 3:3-4).

 

 

 

Editorial Board: Pinchas Leiser (Editor), Miriam Fine (Coordinator), Itzhak Frankenthal and Dr. Menachem Klein

Translation: Kadish Goldberg

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