God spoke to Moshe after the death of Aharon’s two sons, when they got close to the Presence of God and died. (Lev. 16:1)
You may know the narrative context of this sentence from the book of Leviticus:
Aharon’s sons die on opening day of the mishkan (tabernacle) while they are making an offering on the altar.
Even without any context, this sentence is stunning.
A father loses two sons. Heartbreaking.
As they die, the young men move into God’s Presence. Exquisite.
The sentence describes an important event in the life of their Uncle Moshe, in the life of the community and in the life of God. The event is important enough that the Torah’s narrator uses it to mark time.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say that the Torah’s narrator uses it to stop time. You could dwell for a long time in this sentence: in its pain, wonder, spirituality, expectant hopefulness about the Presence of God even in the journey towards death.
But if you read this magnificent sentence in Mikraot Gedolot, the rabbinic Commentator’s Bible, you see that our commentators cannot bear to dwell in this exquisite sentence.
Immediately, they begin to search for the reasons behind the young men’s deaths.
Sforno says, “They shouldn’t have tried to do anything beyond Moshe’s specific instructions,” implying that they didn’t have enough experience with sacrificial fire.
Ramban says, “They shouldn’t have had wine or liquor before making an offering,” implying that their judgment and reflexes might have been impaired.
Ibn Ezra says, “They put incense on the inner side of the curtain covering the Holy of Holies,” implying that Divine energy emanating from the Holy of Holies physically overwhelmed them.
Ba’al Haturim says, “They tried to teach halacha in the presence of their much greater teacher,” implying that the death was a warning to all about proper moral boundaries.
All of these explanations are perfectly rational by scholarly standards, based on the language of the Torah and the midrashim of chazal, our sages of blessed memory.
They are also deep expressions of our human tendency to respond to grief by finding reasons.
But why would we think that we can reason our way to a true explanation when we are most stressed?
When I am tired and stressed, I rant in my mind.
I have learned: these rants are fantasies. They are not positive fantasies — enjoyable images of what I would like to see and feel and do — but negative fantasies, about why my endeavors will end badly. They are not paranoid fantasies about anyone setting out to deliberately destroy me. I simply imagine that as people are doing their own things for their own reasons, they will intersect disastrously with my life.
More and more I know: these rants say nothing whatsoever about objective reality. When I say, “I have a bad feeling about this,” I’m saying a lot about my feelings, and very little about “this.” I am describing “this” through veils of fear, worry, sadness, or anxiety. The more certain the bad feeling, the more likely I am seeing only the veils.
Sometimes I call this bad feeling an “intuition,” but I’m not sure I should. That name gives the feeling too much status as a source of objective knowledge.
Sometimes I receive “intuitions” that are more trustworthy. While planning a project, I may predict people’s behavior with great accuracy, or see the outcome of a group process with clarity. While speaking with someone, I may receive an image or a feeling that helps me understand my companion. But these experiences differ from the rants. These intuitions present themselves as possibilities, not as certainties.
Perhaps I live in a rationally governed universe, where terrible events have specific causes, and the lesson plans related to the events are set out in advance for me to discover. But when I am stressed, I will not find the reason or discover the lesson. I need to practice some self-acceptance: at times of stress, notice my swirling thoughts, but don’t insist they bring answers.
A few pages after this time-stopping sentence, Torah teaches: “Do not hate your brother in your heart…Love your neighbor as yourself.” One of my favourite restatements of this teaching is, “Do not bear a grudge.”
In times of grief, my stressful search for reasons sometimes leads to blame, and to bearing a grudge. A grudge is like a veil. When I bear a grudge, all my thoughts get stuck behind the veil. The more intense my thoughts get, the more they say about the veil, and the less they say about the truth of any interaction. When I give up a grudge, I lift veils of anxiety, anger, and fear. I open a curtain to see the world more truly.
Some of Or Shalom’s wonderful new members joined at times of grief. They report that saying the Kaddish in community each week helped them heal. Some of this magic lies in the regular reminder Kaddish offers to do the delicate and difficult inner work of mourning. Some of the magic lies in the healing words of the Kaddish itself. Kaddish hints at the mysterious nature of God, which sits beyond anything we can express even through ineffable prayer or music. These words remind us that our inability to calculate reasons and causes is not our failure. Kaddish also expresses our hope that a perfected messianic time is near. It invites us to reframe our desire for rational understanding as our yearning for a perfected world, in which all events flow in straight lines to goodness.
Surely some of the magic lies in the quality of our communal davenning space. We recognize that people come just as they are. I don’t just mean the casual dress code, or the way people trickle in just in time for their favourite prayers, or even the way we sometimes sing three different melodies in a sort of harmony. On any given week in our inner lives, some of us are just beginning; others are reflecting. Some of us are wandering in a wilderness; others are claiming with clarity our true names. Some weeks we stew behind our veils and some weeks we shine with brilliant smiles of objective clarity. It does not matter. Our holy space can hold it all, and in this way, it reflects the holy ineffable nature of God.
Image: hammergod.deviantart.com
Written for Parshat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim at Or Shalom, at the intersection of the untimely loss of a beloved community member and the Shabbat for welcoming new members.
