Dear Community,
This week’s double portion, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim begins with the words,
The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of Hashem.
Torah is referring here to a shocking incident that happened earlier, one we read about a few weeks ago in Parshat Shemini. Aaron’s two sons, Nadav and Avihu, offered a “strange fire” at the altar of the Mishkan/Tabernacle and were immediately killed.
As I mentioned in my Shabbat message for that week , we aren’t entirely sure what the “strange fire” is or why Nadav and Avihu were killed for offering it. There are volumes worth of midrash written about what happened, but consulting only the Torah portion, it isn’t clear what went wrong. What we do know from the text is that this offering results in their immediate death.
This incident is violent and shocking; it also seems unfair. Why is it that sometimes we read about a Gd who seems to care for all of creation and other times it seems that Gd is more than willing to destroy all of humanity?
Torah contains many different examples of a Gd who does not desire the death of humanity. For example, in the Book of Jonah, Gd reprimands Jonah for wanting the people of Nineveh to be punished but grieving the death of a shade-giving plant. Gd famously scolds Jonah:
You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight. And should not I care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many animals as well!
There are also moments when an angry Gd is willing to concede, such as the time Moses is able to talk Gd down from obliterating the Israelites by appealing to Gd’s reputation with the Egyptians:
And Gd said to Moses, “I see that this is a stiffnecked people. Now, let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against [the Israelites] and that I may destroy them [...]
But Moses implored Gd, saying, “Let not Your anger blaze forth against Your people [...] Let not the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that Gd delivered them, only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth.' ’’
Studying Torah is complicated. Sometimes the words of Torah can feel affirming, like when our values line up with what it appears the Gd believes too. At other times, studying Torah can feel alienating. Personally, I prefer to read about a Gd who cares about Gd’s own creation. But unfortunately, we don’t always get that “version” of Gd in our Torah. Sometimes we might be left with the question, What kind of a Gd would do this?
As a proud student of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, I was trained to come to the text from a different angle. Instead of asking What kind of a Gd would bring so much pain and misery upon their creation? I was encouraged instead to ask, What is this text saying about Gd?
Or in other words, What does the text say about how our ancestors made sense of Gd?
In my opinion, one of the most compelling texts about Gd appears in Job. Gd speaks directly to Job, admonishing him (lovingly?) for attempting to understand the mysteries of the world:
Then Hashem replied to Job out of the tempest and said:
Who is this who darkens counsel,
Speaking without knowledge?
[…] Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Speak if you have understanding.
We humans ask why? Why did this happen? Why was I punished? Why is there suffering? And the response, at least to Job, is, What could you possibly understand about the makings of the universe? Now this is a theology that speaks to me. Instead of offering apologetics about why some people suffer and others seem to escape it, or doing theological gymnastics to justify suffering through Divine justice, here Gd responds by saying, What do you mean why? You are mortal and you can’t possibly understand anything.
This connects nicely to a concept called “Deep Time.” I spoke about Deep Time in a d’var Torah a few Friday nights ago. Deep time is different from how many of us were taught to view history, especially human history. Deep time is how mystics view time. Deep time is the notion that grounds me. What is happening in our world and in our lives at this very moment is real. What makes it to “breaking news” in the endless news cycle can be terrifying, demoralizing, and rage-inducing. But in terms of deep time, it is never the whole story. In other words, we don’t yet know what this all means. And as Gd explains to Job, we can’t fathom what any of it means. But we can hold firm to the belief that life itself, and our living it, has meaning.
May we continue to truly live.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Janine Jankovitz
