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Parshat Shem . ni,
Shabbat Machar
Chodesh: Leviticus
9:1-11:47; I Samuel
20:18-20:42.

H

ow do we ascribe meaning to
tragedy?
This week's Torah portion,
Shemini, describes a terribly sad episode
in the life of Aaron and his family. It hap-
pens in the Tabernacle:
"Now Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu
each took his fire pan, put fire in it and
laid incense on it; and they offered alien
fire before God, which He had not com-
manded them. And fire
came forth from God and
consumed them, and they
died in the presence of
God:'
The death of one's chil-
dren is perhaps the most
horrifying thing imagin-
able. The Torah describes
Aaron's reaction as silence.
Was this due to shock? The
text does not elaborate.
Moses makes an
attempt to explain their
deaths with a cryptic asser-
tion that priests serve God in order to
demonstrate Divine "authority:' So when
they bring "alien fire what can one
expect?
There's no record of Aaron's reply, and
it's not entirely clear what Moses meant.
For one thing, we have no idea what
"alien fire" was. How could it be so unac-
ceptable that it merited an instantaneous
death sentence?
Generations of commentators
struggled to explain Nadab's and Abihu's
deaths. Most of them went down the
road of impugning their character. After
all, went the reasoning, if they received
the death penalty they must have really
deserved it. Some said that bringing
"alien fire" demonstrated their arro-
gance. They did whatever the heck they
wanted, and they justly paid the con-
sequences. Others claim that they were
irreverent or even drunk.
Not everyone agreed. The Hellenistic
Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria
(c. 25 B.C.E.-50 C.E.) attempted to
salvage Nadab's and Abihu's reputa-
tions, writing that they were actually
super-pious; that their deaths took them
"up to the threshold of heaven" as pure
sacrifices who exchanged mortality for
eternal reward. Not much comfort for
Aaron, I suppose. But at least it casts his

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sons in a better light.
Modern commentators, too, have been
uncomfortable with the idea that Aaron's
sons were killed for the crime of a poorly
conducted ritual. In the Reform move-
ment's commentary, W. Gunther Plaut
suggests that their deaths were triggered
"automatically — as might happen if
one touched a high-tension electric wire
without proper precautions:' Not a pun-
ishment. Not a reward. More
like insufficient insulation.
These explanations remind
me of how we all struggle
when confronted by difficult-
to-explain tragedies. This is
because we crave reasons. We
always want to know why!
For many of us, the proposed
answers range from the unsat-
isfying to the downright appall-
ing. (Think of the wide diversity
of theological responses to the
Holocaust) With so many dif-
ferent ways of understanding
the nature of the world we are unlikely to
reach any consensus.
What we can all agree about, how-
ever, is that those who are left behind
frequently suffer the kind of shock and
despair that we imagine Aaron experi-
enced. This reality transcends our efforts
to make sense of it all. It directs us to
embrace and comfort the survivors,
helping them both to grieve and to move
on with their lives.
All the answers in the world may fail
to satisfy us. But when we are there for
each other, we are providing the only
response that really matters.

❑

Jeffrey L. Falick is rabbi of the Birmingham
Temple Congregation for Humanistic
Judaism in Farmington Hills.

Conversations

• How does your world view
affect how you explain the exis-
tence of evil?
• Are your answers the same
when you are considering human
evil as opposed to natural evil?
• Should our understandings of
the root causes of evil affect
the ways in which we respond to
those who suffer?

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April 16 • 2015

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