“He Could Have Said: Circumcision Is on the Eighth Day!?”
G-d does not need or want us us to defend Him. G-d does want us to demand of Him to bring an end to pain and suffering. This is what our requests for Moshiach are all about!
“HE COULD HAVE SAID: CIRCUMCISION IS
ON THE EIGHTH DAY!?”
Tragedy on the Day of Joy
After seven days of preparing for the dedication of the Mishkan—the portable sanctuary in the desert—the great and momentous day finally arrives. Moses hands over the High Priesthood to his brother Aaron who is to officiate on this auspicious occasion.
If not for the tragedy that followed, this might have been the most joyous event in all of Jewish history. Indeed, our Sages tell us that ten major events occurred on this day. In their words: “This day took ten crowns.” But, alas, ironically the two elder sons of Aaron— Nadav and Avihu—whom Moses regarded as being greater than he and his brother Aaron—perished as a fire descended from heaven that entered their bodies and killed them.
There are many reasons given for their untimely death; most notably the one mentioned explicitly in the Torah: they brought an unauthorized offering.
The Talmud and Midrash supplement this Biblical explanation with others transmitted to us orally that include the one that states that they were intoxicated before entering; or that they lacked their priestly garments, and other similar explanations. But all these explanations still make it hard for us to understand why it happened.
In fact, the more explanations that we see offered for an event the more it proves that there is no satisfying answer. If the answer was adequate, why the need for another answer. We find a parallel to this phenomenon of multiple explanations or answers in the narrative of Moses’ punishment when he was told to speak to the rock that it should produce water. What did Moses do wrong to cause him to lose his privilege to enter into the Promised Land?
There are, at least, ten explanations that have been offered by classical commentaries. The fact that there is a plethora of explanations points to the enigmatic nature of Moses’ punishment.
Here too, the fact that there are so many explanations as to why Nadav and Avihu died points to the fact that we cannot really comprehend its true reason.
The Enigma of Aaron’s Silence
What was Aaron’s response to this horrific tragedy?
The Torah tells us that, in fact, there was no response coming from the bereaved father: “Aaron was silent.”
There is an enigmatic Midrashic comment that makes the following observation about Aaron’s silence:
“What could Aaron have said? Aaron could have said “And on the eighth day you shall circumcise his foreskin.”
What connection is there between circumcision and what the Midrash suggests could have been Aaron’s response to the tragedy?
Aaron’s Potential Explanation
One possible simple explanation can be proposed that conveys an important message to us in this post-Holocaust era:
Aaron realized how severe was the punishment meted out to his illustrious and extremely spiritual children for what might seem to many as trivial matters. Aaron surely entertained the question that every thinking human being has asked form the beginning of time: Why? Why does G-d allow such suffering and pain? Why?
Now, for the person who professes not to believe in a Creator and Master of the universe, there is no room for any question. Neither is there a problem for the person for whom G-d plays less than a prominent role in his or her life. It is precisely the Aaron’s of the world—those who are imbued with profound faith and devotion to G-d—who are constantly raising this question. And the more one is troubled by these tragic events the more they will look for answers.
Aaron would have then been “tempted” to provide an “answer” that is strikingly similar to that which we sometimes hear from some today in response to the Holocaust and other tragedies. Aaron might have “conveniently” invoked the analogy of circumcision which occurs on the eighth day just as this tragedy occurred on the eighth day of the life of the Mishkan. This “temptation” might have been buttressed by the belief Aaron certainly had in Divine Providence. The fact that his sons perished on the eighth day could have been explained that it was his repeat circumcision—which our Sages characterized as a sacrifice—of his sons. Only this time it was the ultimate sacrifice.
Aaron may thus have reasoned that just as circumcision was intended to make the child complete, somehow the death of his two sons was intended to make the Jews—who were flawed as a result of their involvement in the creation of the Golden Calf to which he was an accessory—complete. Since circumcision is performed on the part of the anatomy that is responsible for procreation, he might have reasoned that the death of his progeny served as a collective circumcision rite that also happened to have occurred on the eighth day of the life of the Mishkan.
If this sophisticated theological “explanation” would have been so tempting to Aaron, why was he silent? Why didn’t he offer this rationalization for the loss of Nadav and Avihu?
Does G-d Need a Lawyer?
The answer is that this attempt at an explanation would not have been an answer at all; it would have actually posed more unanswerable questions than it would have answered.
Surely G-d does not need human sacrifices. Why then did G-d have to take the lives of such holy people? How can we extrapolate from circumcision, where a marginal part of the body is removed with minimal pain and discomfort, and apply it to the untimely loss of human life? Why did G-d bereave the Jewish nation’s holiest—second only to Moses, and in many ways equally holy— person? Weren’t there more benign ways of collectively “circumcising” the Jewish people?
Aaron’s greatness was that he did not fall for the trap that so many people fall for who think that they must be G-d’s defenders and will come up with specious explanations for all of the suffering G-d allows.
The truth is that G-d does not need us to defend Him!
What does G-d want from us?
There is however another legitimate question that we should pose. If we are not to serve as His defender and if we are not to look for ways of rationalizing all of the suffering for which He is ultimately responsible, what does G-d want from us?
G-d does want—in the face of tragedy—to humbly accept that there are things we cannot fathom. If G-d is infinite and transcends all of existence including the realm of logic, then it would be ludicrous for us to think that we can comprehend everything that G-d does.
But this is not where this discussion ends. One can raise a simple question concerning Aaron’s silence.
Are we to suggest that we are to follow Aaron’s example and simply be silent in the face of all the suffering we’ve witnessed? While most would agree that we shouldn’t seek and certainly not accept some specious explanation that no moral and thinking person can find satisfactory, many would find the idea of just being silent equally unacceptable.
“A Time to Speak and a Time to be Silent”
In truth, the lesson we learn from Aaron is that when one considers their own suffering, silence can be a virtue. When dealing with the suffering of others, however, G-d does want of us to question, protest and “demand” of Him to reverse the suffering.
Our response to the Holocaust and, for that matter, all earlier and later tragedies should be to cry out: “ad masai-How much longer?” How much longer will we live in a world of injustice and pain? How much longer do we have to wait for Moshiach to come to usher in a time when all of our collective good will bear fruit in an overt, palpable and permanent way?
By making these demands of G-d—even as we humbly recognize how limited we are— we affirm our implicit and profound faith that only G-d—along with our actions that He has mandated thereby empowering us— can right the wrongs of the past.
By making these demands of G-d we declare that He is responsible for all that occurs in this world—even the choices that we make, for He created us and our ability to choose freely—and therefore, He is ultimately the only one who can reverse all of the negative forces.
Needless to stress, as we have just indicated, the above is by no means a suggestion that we leave it all to G-d to make these changes and we can go to sleep, literally or figuratively.
Certainly, as our classical Jewish sources teach us, the actions mandated by G-d for us to do to alleviate the pain and suffering, coupled with all of what we do to bring G-dly light into the world through the observance of all the Divinely given Mitzvot, will finally facilitate the one final change we’ve been praying for the last 2,000 years: the final Redemption.
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Shemini by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
