This week's Torah portion: Sh'mini (MODIFIED)

I gave a Dvar Torah today on Sh'mini, so I thought I should at least give an outline of my remarks. I will try to make it interesting and relevant, even for the pagans in the crowd.

Sh'mini is the third portion of Leviticus, the third book of the Torah. It follows the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness to God's specifications, and two portions on the detailed rules of sacrifice. It is now the time for the first sacrifices to be offered in the new tabernacle. Leviticus, the book of laws, picks up the trail where Exodus left off and continues the historic narrative.

God, through Moses, instructs Aaron on how to perform the sacrifices at the opening ceremony of the tabernacle. Aaron follows these procedures, but then two of his children, Nadab and Abihu, bring "alien fire" and presumably try to sacrifice in a way other than as instructed. They are immediately burned to death through some mysterious fire that emenates from God. Aaron is not allowed to mourn.

Here for now, the narrative ends, and Leviticus, true to its name and major characteristic, continues with the recitation of various divinely given laws. First comes the listing of allowed and forbidden foods, the rules of kashrut, and then rules on ritual cleanliness and purity, all again spoken by God through Moses.

The story of Nadab and Abihu is a very unpleasant one, morally ambiguous at best (and that is probably an exaggeration), and not necessary. The rabbis have tried to rationalize it, but I do not find that they have been successful.

I thought of Thomas Jefferson, and his desire to simplify the bible (he was dealing with the New Testament) by eliminating all of the supernatural and the historical, and sticking only with the ethical teachings of Jesus. He actually re-wrote the bible, thinking that his text would form the quintessential American scriptures. He was wrong of course. You cannot change these texts just because you would like to. But it was a good attempt.

Jefferson was coming at this from a Deistic perspective, with a creator God, who did not intervene in the works or activities of his creation. Judaism, on the other hand, is filled with divine intervention, and its Torah is primarily a story of the Jewish people and their often troubled relationship with God over time.

You can think of God, I believe, as having three different attributes (sorry, I do not think I am becoming trinitarian). First, there is the Internal God, the one you pray to when you are in trouble or need of support, and the one you thank for seeing you through the difficult times; this God appears to be almost universal, irrespective of your particular denominational adherence. Then, there is the Creator God, the one who created the universe, whether in the literal manner set forth in the first chapters of Genesis, or through what is for now known as the Big Bang; the Deists would add this to the Internal God. Finally, there is the Intervenor God, the one who brought the Jews of out of Egypt or sent Jesus to redeem the people or gave the Koran to Mohammed. It is this Intervening God that gets us all into trouble.

There are many sections in the Jewish scriptures (and therefore also the Christian) that show the Intervening God in quite a bad light. Stories that, like Nadab and Abihu, seem ethically indefensible. I am thinking about such things as the killing of the first born in Egypt, the slaughter of at least 75,000 non-Jews following the death of Haman in the book of Esther, Joshua's killing all of the inhabitants of Hazor as he retook Canaan, the killing of all of the men of the village of Dinah's captors, the murder of his daughter by Jephthah to fulfill a vow made to God. And there are many others.

We are not going to rewrite the text a la Jefferson, to alter the reported interventions of God, but perhaps we
can begin to treat these reported events (most of which have little detailed historical evidence, of course) in a different manner.

Now, the killing of the first born is, in effect, celebrated on Passover; the slaughter of the 75,000 non-Jews read from the Book of Esther on Purim in a carnival-like atmosphere; the murder of the inhabitants of Hazor viewed as clearly justified as the Israelites were simply taking The Land back, as had been promised them; and events like the death of Nadab and Abihu rationalized away (they were sons of priests and needed to have exemplary behavior; they were bringing pagan customs into the tabernacle; they were out for their own glory and not for God's, etc.).

If this event in fact occurred, I would think that Nadab and Abihu died because of some freak accident, and not because God ordained their death (but I am not much of an interventionist). So, why can't we interpret it in that way, or in some other way that does not set it up as an example as what happens if you are "over zealous" or if you stray outside of the rules.

By holding on to the current midrashic interpretations, it seems to me that, even in this one parsha Sh'mini, we set ourselves up for a paradoxical result that is untenable, although I have never seen anyone tie these two things together. Here goes:

The rules of kashrut are very clear in the text. Eat this, and do not eat that. There is nothing there about not mixing dairy and meat dishes, or about not eating chicken and cheese together, or waiting a certain amount of time between eating certain foods, or being able to eat cold before hot, but not hot before cold (or whatever the rule is), or about how animals are to be slaughtered.

These additional rules were all rabbinical extrapolations of the text.

What is the difference, when you come right down to it, between Aaron's sons zeal regarding sacrifices at the tabernacle, and the rabbis' zeal regarding increasingly arcane rules of kashrut. If God struck down Abihu and Nadab, why does he not do the same to those who shun chicken Kiev?