Running With The Weight Of Gold — Letters to a young man

26: In The Terrible Presence

BS”D

Jerusalem — 1 April 2019

Dear D –

The Torah begins with a question — and we have spent the last 3,500 years grappling with it.

Rashi, the greatest rabbinic commentator, asks why, since the Torah is a book of laws, does it begin with the story of Creation, when God does not begin giving laws until chapter 12 of Exodus with the establishment of the calendar? Rashi’s answer comprises political group identity, a national homeland, the requirement to maintain a just society, and the dire consequences of a society’s decline in morality. This, all before the giving of any religious laws. The Torah’s message is clear: social justice and a cohesive group identity precede religious observances.

This week’s Torah reading (Lev. 9:1–11:47) revisits the God of Creation, calling our relationship into question. If the Torah is a book of laws, Leviticus is the most Torah-like of its five books, drily listing laws and observances, even as tragedy unfolds in the midst of rejoicing. I am trying to imagine what the Torah would be like if we had only Leviticus — because in one sense, I believe that is what God would have preferred.

This week’s portion marks the literal center of the written Torah: chapter 10, verse 16 reads, “Moses inquired, inquired about the goat of the sin-offering…” The poetic double verb (in Hebrew, Darosh derash meaning “he inquired insistently”) straddles the exact midpoint of the word count of the Five Books. “Inquire,” says the Torah as it ends the first half, and “inquire,” opening the second half — which it continually requires us to do.

In the next chapter, the Hebrew word Gakhon, meaning belly, marks the midpoint of the letter count of the Torah. In Genesis 3:14, God tells the serpent, “You shall go upon your belly [Gakhon]…” The midpoint of the Torah’s letter count comes in the list of animals prohibited for consumption. This unusual word reminds us that we were thrown out of Eden because we ate prohibited fruit. Moses urgently inquires of Aaron’s sons and discovers they did not eat the sacrificial food which they were explicitly commanded to eat as part of the inauguration of the Tabernacle. The Torah’s stories always trace back to the earliest pages of Creation.

Historically there are three competing Jewish versions of Creation, two of which continue in force today. The first, probably the earliest historically, is now seen as problematic, if not heretical. This is the notion of an eternal God co-existing with an eternal formless matter. Genesis shows God taking control over this primeval matter and forming the cosmos. Time and motion arise when undifferentiated matter takes form. Distinct forms occupy space and move towards or away from one another, and time measures the relationship of objects in motion.

The second trope is creation ex nihilo — something out of nothing. It appears that this concept was brought to fruition by the early fathers of the Christian church, then migrated into Jewish thought. It is quite a striking idea: God creates the cosmos and all of us out of nothing. Without God’s creative act, we would never come to be.

The third idea is that God is the only thing that actually exists, and that all creation is part of God, emanated through attenuating processes described by the Kabbalists and embraced notably by the influential Chabad school of Hasidism.

Each Creation story implies a theory of evil. If God takes hold of primal matter and forms order out of chaos, then evil is chaos reasserting itself. If God creates the world from naught, each created thing has its own independent existence; evil arises when the fundamental nature — or the trajectory, the needs, the appetites or the free choice — of different elements of creation come into conflict.

If God creates everything out of God’s own self, then evil too arises organically from God’s own nature. This Kabbalistic approach speaks directly to the Torah’s fundamental paradox: we are called to worship a God who creates both life and death. In a polytheistic system, one can worship the gods who bring life, and appease or flee those who bring sickness, suffering and death. But how are we to reconcile our religious devotion, our worship and our gratitude with a God who brings us to life, only to kill us?

In Isaiah 45, the prophet addresses the Persian monarch Cyrus, whom God has designated as the instrument in human history through whom the Jews will return from the Babylonian Captivity and rebuild Jerusalem. God tells Cyrus, “I have proclaimed you by name and knighted you, though you did not know Me…. I will gird you, though you did not know Me… I am God; there is no other. Who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates evil; I, God, do all this.”

This text is so important that the rabbis of old incorporated it into the daily Jewish morning prayer, which opens with a slightly altered version: “Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe, who forms light and creates darkness; who makes peace and creates everything.” The rabbis hesitated to emphasize God’s role as creator of evil — but it is there. Isaiah contrasts the God of the Old Testament with the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia. Zoroastrianism believed in one god who is wholly good, and the universe as the battleground of the forces of good versus evil. Isaiah puts before Cyrus the notion that one God, and one God only, is responsible for everything. The implications are staggering.

As we strive to take our lead in life from the Bible, we receive a powerful jolt in this week’s portion when, at the height of the inauguration ceremony in the Tabernacle, Aaron’s two older sons, Nadav and Abihu, are consumed by fire.

Under Moses’ guidance, Aaron completes the initial sacrifices. Then Nadav and Abihu spontaneously take their firepans — ritual incense burners — and offer (10:1–3) “an alien [or ‘strange’] fire which God had not command them. Then a fire went out from before God and consumed them, and they died in the presence of God. Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is that which God spoke of, saying “I will be sanctified by means of those close to me, and I shall be honored before the entire people.”’ And Aaron was silent.”

Aaron and his remaining sons must still officiate in the Tabernacle. They do not have time to mourn — and contact with death will render them ritually impure. Moses rushes them through, making sure they complete the ritual. Then chapter 11 seamlessly launches into detailed lists of animals, birds, fish and insects — those permitted for human consumption, and those prohibited — and laws of ritual purity and impurity. This is jarring, but consistent with Leviticus as lawgiving over narrative. Moses’ abrupt dismissal of Aaron’s family tragedy mirrors the Torah’s own urgency to get on with the matter at hand. In a striking sense, this episode is precisely what the Torah is about: God is giving us laws. Occasionally people do things they should not — whether out of ignorance or malice, or even out of spiritual elatedness — but ultimately God needs to get the message out. We deviate from God’s instructions at our peril — and we must carry on regardless.

What are we to make of God’s seeming wantonness, Moses’ impatience and urgency to get the job done, and Aaron’s acceptance of it all? How can we worship and serve a God who kills us? And yet, we do. The Torah’s Creation narrative blames the serpent, and Eve and Adam — like a master magician, the Torah’s misdirection lets God off the hook for the fact that we die. Until this week’s portion reminds us that death also comes from God.

No story in the Torah stands on its own. The Tabernacle is a replay of Creation: the seven days of dedication mirror the seven days of Creation. The tragedy of Nadav and Abihu’s draws on the sin of Eve and Adam, and the tragedy of Cain and Abel.

Other themes from the earliest stories of Genesis include forbidden food, spontaneous offerings and sacrifices; Cain and Abel are in the mix, but so are Noah, and Abraham and Isaac. The Zohar reminds us that Aaron never did repentance for the sin of the Golden Calf and says Nadav and Abihu are reincarnations of Cain. The theme of other people suffering for Aaron’s sins will return; Aaron suffers from his status. As High Priest he must always officiate in the Tabernacle, thus he can not be killed for his own sins, and he also must not contaminate himself by coming into contact with those punished in his place.

This Torah portion begs the existential question: why do we yearn to have a relationship with a God who is so predictably unpredictable? So harsh and so arbitrary? Who — at best — gives us life, only to kill us off?

Is it fair for me to leave you with nothing but a question? With no “happy ending”? In a world ruled by death, religion — with all its problems — offers the hope of meaning. How pathetic must we humans be, to cling to that promise. This is the most existentially challenging passage in the Bible, yet the rabbis mainly deal with this by following the example of Moses and Aaron: the show must go on.

The Hassidic rebbes make the radical suggestion that Nadav and Abihu knew what they were doing. That they desired the death of the body, in order to release their spirits to return to eternal communion with God. But this is the one wrong approach to serving God; our job is in this world. It is to serve God, through serving others. To bond with our community, to create a just society, and to relieve suffering. To return to the values Rashi invokes on Genesis 1:1.

The Torah comes clean in this reading: Yes, there is death in the world — and yes, God created it. Look not to your end, says the Torah, except insofar as it makes your life more urgent. Make the most of everything that comes before death. And consider that we do not mourn the aeons elapsed before our birth. We care about death only because we are alive. And who ever hinted that life should last forever? Rather than dwelling on the certainty of death, we should dive with full enthusiasm into the challenge of being alive. God gives us life for free. God doesn’t owe us life. God doesn’t owe us anything.

We are put on this earth for a brief moment — yet each of us with infinite capacity. Our lives are measured by how much of our potential we realize, how much we help others to realize their own potential. By the compassion and the love and the service we provide to others, using our unique talents.

A man once said to me, I don’t know much, but I do know that I will spend a lot more time dead than I will alive. Nothing is more certain. Nothing is more true.

May we be blessed to make the most of it.

Yours for a better world –

Moshe