BY: Alex Schindler
The central idea of Leviticus – indeed, the central idea of the Torah, both conceptually and structurally – is that of קדשים תהיו. This fundamental directive is usually rendered in English, for lack of an appropriate analogue to the Hebraic concept of קדוש, as “You shall be holy.” The commandment-laden perasha of קדשים תהיו near the center of Leviticus, often referred to as the “Holiness Code,” is usually seen as the culmination of this concept. Perhaps less obvious is that perashath[1] Shemini introduces this notion for the first time in Leviticus, part of the latter’s expansion of the Sinai covenant to pervade all aspects of Jewish life with the responsibilities of a “kingdom of priests and sanctified nation.”[2] The biblical approach to sanctity is introduced by a narrative (rare enough in Leviticus, dubbed torath kohanim by rabbinic tradition and overwhelmingly legal in presentation) relating the final phase of the dedication of Aaron’s family as kohanim and the tragedy of his sons’ demise, as well as its aftermath. This is followed by the introduction of laws of kashruth, which concludes shemini but initiates a several-perasha series of legal portions dealing with matters of טמאה and טהרה. As we shall see, all aspects of this week’s Torah portion are closely interlinked, with their uniting thread being the evolving concept of sanctity.
The perasha begins by continuing the inauguration of the Aaronide priesthood begun in last week’s reading of perashath צו. Moses summons Aaron and his sons, along with the leaders of Israel, for the final phase of dedication of the mishkan and priesthood. Rabbi Moshe Shamah notes, “In contrast to the previous seven days that focused only on the priests, the eighth day includes sacrifices on behalf of the people.”[3] This is one of many observations which indicate that this day is about more than just the family of Aaron. Rabbi Shamah notes, building on the research on biblical arithmology of Rabbi Solomon David Sassoon, to support an understanding of this day of dedication as something unique, carrying covenantal significance. It is important to recognize that the number eight is used all over the Pentateuch to signify the covenantal relationship between Israel and God, and the new order ushered in by this covenant.[4] Some numerological features that Rabbi Shamah points out are the following:
The special day of dedication, the topic of our weekly reading, occurs on the eighth day. The phrase “כאשר צוה ה' את משה” or a very slightly modified permutation thereof occurs eight times in the two-chapter unit spanning the eight days (from last week’s chapter 8 to this week’s chapter 9). Seven were attested in the previous chapter[5], “a detail of particular significance given that the seven days were not narrated individually”[6], with the eighth here in shemini.[7] The Exodus portion detailing the priestly garments and construction of the mishkan similarly used “as God commanded Moses” exactly eight times. The total number of qorbanoth commanded for the eighth day ceremony was eight: an עלה and חטאת each for Aaron, and a חטאת, two עלות, two שלמים and one מנחה for Israel.[8]
Thus we find, both by observing the unique features of the eighth day and partially by interpreting covenantal number symbolism, that what has the appearance of a priestly ritual actually involves all of Israel and its covenant with God—in turn establishing the priesthood as an Israelite institution rather than some separate, higher caste uniquely involved in the Temple worship. This is one feature of the redefinition of sacrificial ritual effected by Leviticus, to transform the existing ancient institutions of sacrifice, priesthood and temple into a uniquely monotheistic expression of the human drive to worship. The next portion of the perasha differentiates this new order in a much less subtle manner.
The Transgression of Aaron’s Sons
Chapter 10 of Leviticus, also known as the third, fourth, and fifth ‘aliyoth, relates the account of the deaths of two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, and the aftermath of their demise. As a fire came forth from God to accept the priestly offerings, Nadab and Abihu offered incense to God with their own fire: anאש זרה אשר לא צוה אתם . Motivated perhaps by the intensity of the moment, and possibly even with good intentions, they nonetheless were immediately consumed by God’s fire. To understand the transgression and punishment of Nadab and Abihu is to begin to understand the function of Levitical worship in the Torah’s program for the evolution of Jewish behavior and consciousness.
Maimonides, in Guide to the Perplexed 3:31, explains that all of the 613 commandments are designed either to promote social justice and good conduct or to rectify problematic ideas and values either explicit within the nation or lurking in its collective unconscious. The next chapter elaborates on one of Maimonides’ most controversial and profound observations: the sacrificial rite was given not because sacrifices are something desirable to God, but, because the opposite is the case! To clarify, the book of Leviticus narrowly constrains sacrificial worship to a particular location, a particular family, and particular rules to be followed in the execution. Sacrifices were a vital and problematic part of the precovenantal world, a sensual, bloody, raw expression of the pagan drive to worship natural forces or pull the strings of their divinities via theurgistic rituals with intense emotional impact. Their most extreme manifestations might have involved murder of humans, various practices of extreme cruelty to other living things, ritual sex acts debasing human dignity and often nonconsensual, and the promotion of highly irrational superstitions. But sacrifices could not have been done away with altogether with the giving of the Law at Sinai, as explained:
It is, namely, impossible to go suddenly from one extreme to the other: it is therefore according to the nature of man impossible for him suddenly to discontinue everything to which he has been accustomed. Now God sent Moses to make [the Israelites] a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exod. xix. 6) by means of the knowledge of God… But the custom which was in those days general among all men, and the general mode of worship in which the Israelites were brought up, consisted in sacrificing animals in those temples which contained certain images, to bow down to those images, and to bum incense before them.... It was in accordance with the wisdom and plan of God, as displayed in the whole Creation, that He did not command us to give up and to discontinue all these manners of service; for to obey such a commandment it would have been contrary to the nature of man, who generally cleaves to that to which he is used; it would in those days have made the same impression as a prophet would make at present if he called us to the service of God and told us in His name, that we should not pray to Him, not fast, not seek His help in time of trouble; that we should serve Him in thought, and not by any action. For this reason God allowed these kinds of service to continue; He transferred to His service that which had formerly served as a worship of created beings, and of things imaginary and unreal, and commanded us to serve Him in the same manner; viz., to build unto Him a temple… By this Divine plan it was effected that the traces of idolatry were blotted out, and the truly great principle of our faith, the Existence and Unity of God, was firmly established; this result was thus obtained without deterring or confusing the minds of the people by the abolition of the service to which they were accustomed and which alone was familiar to them.[9]
It is in this context that we should strive to understand the error of Nadab and Abihu. The acceptance by Divine fire of the offering prior to their unsolicited incense signified God’s approval of a sacrificial rite commanded. That rite was part of a system intended to channel Israel’s primal urge to worship into a strictly monotheistic, well-regimented system, one which does not indulge arbitrary and personal whims. A personal deviation from the regimen, even based on personal piety, may be well-intended, but feeds into a human drive which the law intends to regulate, not to encourage. Not all worship is good worship. Some is foreign worship: עבודה זרה. Thus the אש זרה of Nadab and Abihu represents a type of unsolicited ritual, even motivated by personal piety, which frustrates the Divine goal of channeling man’s drive to worship into a holistic system of personal and national moral and behavioral development. Any worship out of those boundaries, even when it feels good, is a form of self-worship – the worship of worship rather than the worship of God[10].
The archetype of the מחטיא הרבים, King Jeroboam, who set up a Golden Calf in the north of Israel to rival God’s Temple in Judea, had two sons which the text curiously names Abijah and Nadab (1 Kings 14)—spelled nearly identically to the sons of Aaron who died for their unsolicited worship (actually identically without matres lectionis). The prophetic author equates one unsolicited worship with the other.
The priests’ punishment exhibits מדה כנגד מדה: Their punishment involved a deviation from the command with their own fire, so God’s fire, arguably even the same fire which accepted the last offering[11], punished them appropriately.[12] Moses reacts to the event by explaining that God is “sanctified by those nearest Him.” This is an ambiguous comment, with “קרבי” meaning either “those near me” (God’s beloved), or literally those who approach too near, as Nadab and Abihu did. This sanctification of God seems to be the message that went out to all of Israel: that the sacrificial rites have to be regarded with extreme seriousness, and that no caprice or whim could enter the service except at great peril.
The Role of the Priesthood—and of Israel
God speaks directly to Aaron following these events, a rare occurrence. In a very short passage of just three verses, at the center of Shemini, God commands priests for all time not to drink intoxicating beverages before entering the sanctuary, because of the clarity of mind required for their purpose: (י) וּלֲהַבְדִּיל בֵּין הַקֹּדֶשׁ וּבֵין הַחֹל וּבֵין הַטָּמֵא וּבֵין הַטָּהוֹר: (יא) וּלְהוֹרֹת אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֵת כָּל הַחֻקִּים אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהֹוָה אֲלֵיהֶם בְּיַד משֶׁה:
A kohen must distinguish between “sanctified and mundane; unacceptable and acceptable.”[13] He must teach all of Israel God’s commands. This introduces the concepts of טמא and טהור, which are elaborated in the final two ‘aliyoth and last chapter of our perasha, and throughout Leviticus right up to the Holiness Code. As we shall see, these missions are not limited to the priests at all, but to all of Israel.
Laws for a Sanctified Nation of Priests
Chapters 11-18 of Leviticus present five categories of laws relating טמאה and טהרה. These begin with Shemini’s final chapter and two ‘aliyoth dealing with what we now call kashruth, dietary laws, and continue in turn with laws regarding טמאה resulting from childbirth, skin ailments, reproductive system ailments; the day of Kippur which renders Israel טהור as a nation; laws regulating divine worship and restricting sacrifices to the mishkan in order to render all worship acceptable (טהור); and finally, a regulation of sexual behavior with the reminder that the sexual improprieties of other nations “defiled the land.”[14] This is all capped off by the famous קדשים תהיו portion of Leviticus 19, and so, “Purity laws” in fact culminate with ethical laws. In this manner, the Torah takes “purity rituals,” a mainstay of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, and makes all ethical legislation part of Israelite “purity”: The Sinai covenant and its ethical legislation, as well as its expansion in Leviticus 19 and onwards, are the peak of “purity laws.” This redefines Hebraic “holiness” or “purity” as ethics, in effect rendering withholding of workers’ wages or the bearing of grudges the height of impurity, while loving one’s neighbor becomes the apex of purity– far more than any amount of immersion in a miqwe could possibly accomplish.
Our particular portion begins with God speaking to Moses and Aaron, the consummate kohen and thus distinguisher-between-fit-and-unfit, describing which animals are fit and unfit for consumption, throughout the sixth and longest ‘aliya. Afterwards, in the final reading of shemini, after the prohibitions of gross fare like carrion, rodents, and insects (apart from certain hopping locusts, which I’m told are deliciously crunchy when deep-fried) we are given the rationale that (מד) כִּי אֲנִי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וְהִתְקַדִּשְׁתֶּם וִהְיִיתֶם קְדשִׁים כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אָנִי וְלֹא תְטַמְּאוּ אֶת נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם בְּכָל הַשֶּׁרֶץ הָרֹמֵשׂ עַל הָאָרֶץ: (מה) כִּי אֲנִי יְהֹוָה הַמַּעֲלֶה אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לִהְיֹת לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים וִהְיִיתֶם קְדשִׁים כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אָנִי:
Familiarly, we see that we must conduct ourselves according to the principles of sanctity, because God is qađosh and sanctifies us. We are not to eat all these low-down creepy-crawlers, because God has “elevated” us from Egypt, and so we are to be sanctified unto God (God says words with the root קדש in abundance here. A reader should be sensitive to a leitwort or root that clusters so densely). Finally, the reading concludes, “this is the dietary law,” and uses familiar language: לְהַבְדִּיל, בֵּין הַטָּמֵא וּבֵין הַטָּהֹר; וּבֵין הַחַיָּה, הַנֶּאֱכֶלֶת, וּבֵין הַחַיָּה, אֲשֶׁר לֹא תֵאָכֵל
Now, the law, given to all of Israel, is to do this same distinguishing between fit and unfit – between animals which we can eat, and that which we cannot. The laws are designed to sensitize the nation to the distinction between “pure and impure,” and thus serve as an introduction for a “kingdom of priests and sanctified nation” to grow into their task, the task of a priesthood: distinguishing between fit and unfit, sanctified and mundane, and, ultimately, between right and wrong.
שבת שלום !
[1] My transliteration of the Hebrew word פרשה will be unusual to most. As per Sephardic tradition, I vocalize the Hebrew noun meaning a “separation” according to the same mishqal as the words derasha, neshama, ze‘aqa, ṣe‘aqa, and many other such nouns in binyan qal. Mishna Shabbath 8:3 in the vocalized Livorno edition similarly vocalizes the word perasha with a shewa na‘.
[2] Exodus 19:6. All translations are my own unless otherwise specified. I will generally attempt to avoid translations influenced by the Christian interpretive tradition, and thus have mostly eschewed the word “holy,” which evokes a more arbitrary and perhaps supernatural sacrality divorced from any particular function. For an idea of the Hebraic conception of holiness as I understand it, see Berkovits, Eliezer, ed. David Hazony. Essential Essays on Judaism. Jerusalem: Shalem, 2002, and its longest essay therein: “The Concept of Holiness.” A one-sentence summary of the essay would define the Hebrew word קדוש as “designated specially by God for a positive purpose.”
[3] Moshe Shamah. Recalling the Covenant: a Contemporary Commentary on the Five Books of the Torah. Jersey City: KTAV Pub. House, 2011, p. 547.
[4] A long history of frivolous “gematriot” has done no favors for serious literary analysis of the numbers given in the Torah. However, several patterns emerge, and in the past century, scholars such as Cassuto have noted, for example, the presence of literary structures employing a theme-word appearing seven times, or a multiple thereof. In order to see the most complete presentation in print of Rabbi Sassoon’s more sophisticated and rigorous system, it is necessary to read the short essay “On Number Symbolism in the Torah,” found in Shamah p. 1057, also available in a raw form online at http://judaicseminar.org/general/numbersymbolism.pdf. Readers will find adduced a litany of Pentateuchal uses of the numbers eight and thirteen to signify the new, covenantal and monotheistic order of the Bible contrasted with the old order represented by the numbers seven and twelve respectively (numbers which scholars recognize was ubiquitous in Ancient Near Eastern thought). The most obvious include the ages of Isaac and Ishmael at the time of their circumcisions (eight days and thirteen years respectively) and the years Adam lived before and after the birth of Seth (130 and 800 respectively).
[5] Leviticus 8:4, 9, 13, 17, 21, 29, 36
[6] Shamah p. 548
[7] Leviticus 9:10. Moses’ usage of part of the phrase when relating instructions to Aaron is not included in this count because it is “a request to Aaron to comply, not a narration of compliance.” Ibid.
[8] In addition to Rabbi Shamah’s observations, one may also find that the Hebrew root ק ר ב is employed 16 (2x8) times in the first two chapters (or five ‘aliyoth) of shemini dealing with the dedication of the priests, the deaths of Nadab and Abihu, and the aftermath of those events. It is used in various senses, including “to approach,” “offering,” and a portion of the meat involved in the offering – certainly a leitwort of the passage relating to its central themes.
[9] Maimonides. Guide to the Perplexed 3:32. Trans. Friedlander, http://www.teachittome.com/seforim2/seforim/the_guide_for_the_perplexed.pdf
[10] Modern examples of unsolicited worship abound in all religions, and often are understood as piety. I have witnessed several rabbis inform their congregants that it is “safest” to blowtorch certain items in preparation for Passover – often in flagrant violation of the simple legal principle that the mode of a utensil’s absorption of food is the mode of that food’s expulsion. Sometimes people’s neuroses are encouraged as stringent obedience to a law which, upon further research, does not exist, or is not nearly so extreme. At the risk of ruining someone’s spring cleaning ritual, perhaps the contemporary אש זרה אשר לא צוה אתם is a blowtorch on Pyrex.
[11] Rashbam on Leviticus 10:2
[12] I believe that some of the language to describe the aftermath, using the unnecessary verb “come close” with its ק ר ב root as Moses commanded the next-of-kin to retrieve the priests’ bodies, or God’s use of the words קרבי and אכבד with their possible allusions to the קרב and כבד offered during sacrifices, serves as a subtle, somewhat morbid pun alluding to the reason for the priests’ deaths. I also believe that describing the compliance of Mishael, Elzaphan, and Aaron with the formula “as Moses had said” or “in accordance with Moses’ words” serves to further highlight the problem of Nadab and Abihu: impulsive offering rather than following instructions.
[13] “Pure and impure” as translations for these Hebraic concepts carry with them semantic associations which in my opinion mislead a reader. A pig is not “impure,” with all the moral baggage this connotes, any more than cows are morally debilitating. And certainly a woman who has just brought life into the world is in no way morally diminished. Rather, the states of טהרה and טמאה relate to fitness for a particular function, use, or activity, whether applied to a person or object.
[14] Leviticus 18:24-25
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