Acharei Mot and the Strange Fire

The Torah portion Acharei Mot (Lev. 16:1-18:30) deals primarily with the laws for Yom Kippur. Strangely, it is introduced with a statement that this corpus of Yom Kippur law was communicated to Israel after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they drew near unto God and they died (10:1-2). To appreciate fully this disposition of texts, we have to go back three portions to the beginning of Shemini (10:1-11), where that tragedy is first recounted. There we are told that on the eighth day of the ceremony of installing the priests in their new status and office Nadav and Avihu, sons of Aaron, took their fire pans and put into them strange fire that God had not commanded them to take and offered them on the altar. A peremptory punishment was visited upon them both: And fire came forth from before the Lord and consumed them and they died (10:1-2).

Sages and commentators have struggled to understand this episode, and to determine what precisely was the heinous offense that incurred such a terrible punishment visited upon two young men who were endowed with such promise and leadership potential. Particularly mystifying is the fact that they were engaged at that very time in a sacred rite at the very altar of the newly consecrated sanctuary. Presumably, they were interceding with God; their thoughts must have been pure, and their frame of mind spiritual. Admittedly, they added a ritual that God had not commanded. But, so what! What was so terrible about adding a ritual flourish? Would they knowingly have forfeited their lives on account of it? After all, religious scholars and synagogue leaders have been doing just that down through the ages. Indeed, countless Temple rituals – such as prayer and the singing of psalms – were introduced that were not commanded by God.

We shall never know. We can only conjecture. One of the most interesting suggestions, with considerable relevance for contemporary spirituality, was offered by the 19th-century scholar the Netziv of Volozhin, author of

Ha’amek Davar. For him, the strange fire that Nadav and Avihu used should not be understood literally, but rather as a figure of speech; it was a metaphorical fire. Their intention was not to reject a Divine fiat. Quite the contrary. They felt themselves to be literally on fire, blazing the trail of their own spirituality. They were supposed to be participating in an initiation ceremony of the entire priesthood, performing the same rites as their fellow priests, and receiving the identical priestly aura. They had committed themselves to the same tradition that was intended to inspire and unify the whole people as a covenanted community. However, instead of sharing in and helping to augment the nation’s collective fire and spiritual enthusiasm, they chose to experiment with a strange fire, that was an external, privately nurtured, spiritual experience which was other than that which God had commanded.

Thus, from the Netziv’s perspective, not only did they not participate in or promote their endemic, Sinaitic tradition, they were actually undermining it by following their own independent spiritual paths. They generated a strange fire that reflected an exclusive form of spirituality rooted in their own powerful needs and emotions and religious yearnings, perhaps their own perceptions of the nature of God and His relationship to man.

As such, this would seem to be an act of idolatry, for they were serving themselves and not God. They were satisfying their own needs, not God’s will. They were creating their own, privatized expression of the Israelite religion, not allowing God’s Torah and the fulfillment of the Divine mitzvot to be the determinants of (to use a later term) halakha, the way to “walk” in the light of God. The result was a strange and alien fire which was not the fire that came from above to warm and illuminate man. It was an earthly, secular fire, generated by the passionate imaginings of the human heart and mind, and not the light descending from the One who created light to illuminate man.

Some argue that the origin of these spiritual imaginings lay in the love of God but, nevertheless, it was a fire that He had not commanded or initiated. Thus, unlike the burning bush which came from the Deity, theirs was an alien fire that would soon exhaust itself and be consumed.

Some speculate that this interpretation offered by the Netziv was inspired by his generation’s bitter struggle against the new, reforming tradition that

developed and was attracting adherents in Europe at that time. Reform Judaism, as it was called, for him, was the strange fire that God had not commanded. It was seen as a man-made form of spiritual expression, a nonhalakhic form of ritual and an attempt to reinterpret and revise the age-old halakhic system. The traditionalists argued that the reforms were rooted in the modern Jew’s secular orientation, which was a product of the Emancipation and not at all connected to the original fire of what they regarded as the authentic heritage.

In our day, numerous varieties of New Age religious systems have been created, to the extent that for decades many textbooks on religion have included Marxism and scientology in their list. More recently, Kabbalism has joined the list as an independent religious system, yet a Kabbalism that is almost totally wrenched from its legitimate moorings within Judaism’s mystical and rabbinic traditions. Instead, this so-called 21st-century Kabbalism is a mish-mash of ideas, mystical concepts and formulae from a whole range of disjointed and irreconcilable sources. It is surely a strange fire if ever there was one.

There is no shortage of dangers that have a way of arising from within the traditional, religious camp. Interestingly, this was long ago suggested in the warning expressed in the second verse after the reference to the death of Aaron’s two sons: And God said to Moses, ‘Tell Aaron your brother that he should not enter the Sanctuary at all times’ (16:2). This verse has been understood as a caution against religious exhibitionism, and against feigning familiarity with God.

God also has to be allowed His space. As classical theology has it, He does not wish to share heaven with man. He wants man to celebrate life and to be active within earthly society. He wants him to enjoy the blessings of nature, of education, of culture and creative endeavor. He wants man to live in the real world where his moral mettle can be put to the test, where he can be enticed and distracted – and gain reward for overcoming all those beguiling obstacles.

The Torah has to be wedded to life. It is not meant to be studied or experienced in a vacuum or in a hot house of pure spirituality, divorced from the world and its concerns.

A classical homily has it that it is only on Yom Kippur, one day in the year, that humanity is invited to enter a spiritual hot house. This may explain why the biblical laws of Yom Kippur are introduced with that passing reference to the two sons of Aaron. For their fire did not originate in the collective tradition. Their fire was totally absorbing, and totally private. Its effect would have divorced them totally from the world, living a life wherein every day was a Yom Kippur. This perspective has inspired the monastic traditions of some other faiths. It never was the way of Judaism.

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1. With regard to the Eternal Light, the commandment reads to bring you. The other mitzvot use the expression for Me and unto Me. Nehama Leibovitz cites the Talmud (Menahot 86b) which explains that the light was not needed by God but by humans. The light also had spiritual and symbolic significance, therefore to bring you.

2. Moses is given skin leprosy as a sign (Ex. 4:6). Miriam, his sister, is also afflicted (Num. 12:10).

3. Yom Kippur was from earliest times the day of moral rebirth and therefore deemed the appropriate day for socio-economic liberation too (cf. Hertz and S.R. Hirsch). According to the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 8b), colorful celebrations, in fact, commenced on Rosh Ha- Shanah and culminated in the special shofar-sounding and liberation ceremonies on Yom Kippur