A man placed some flowers on the grave of his dearly departed mother and started back toward his car when his attention was diverted to another man kneeling at a grave. The man seemed to be praying with profound intensity and kept repeating, "Why did you have to die? Why did you have to die?"
The first man approached him and said, "Sir, I don't wish to interfere with your private grief, but this demonstration of pain is more than I've ever seen before. For whom do you mourn so deeply? A child? A parent?" The mourner took a moment to collect himself, then replied, "My wife's first husband."
“Two kings can’t wear the same crown,” the Talmud stated Usually, a nation has one leader. “Too many chefs spoil the pot.” Yet in the first generation of our people, G-d designated two leaders: Moses and Aaron. He commanded both of them to go to Pharaoh and together to liberate the Jewish people from Egypt. Why did the first generations require two leaders?
The answer is that Judaism, from its very genesis, needed to be inundated with two seemingly paradoxical components. This dual identity of Moses and Aaron, and Judaism and its people, expresses itself in this week’s portion Shmini.
In this week’s Torah portion Shmini, sadly, a tragedy occurred when two of Aarons sons, Nadav and Avihu, brought “strange fire, which [G-d] had not commanded them and they died.
There then follow two exchanged between Moses and Aaron, one peaceful, the other angry.
The first: Moses, comforts his brother by telling him how holy and special his children were. “They did not die, because they were sinners; they died because they were so holy. Too holy and transcendent for our world.” But Aaron remains silent. He does not agree; he does not even disagree. He is just silent.
In the second exchange, Moses is concerned that Aaron’s personal grief does not destroy the momentum and significance of the day. It is as if Moses had said to Aaron: “My brother, I know you are in a state of grief. But you are not just a private person. You are also the High Priest. The people need you to perform your duties, whatever your inner feelings. In war, people fall. But the march continues..”
These are words of truth, not of kindness.
Aaron replies: “After what happened to me today, would G-d have been pleased if I had eaten the sin offering today?” Aaron was saying : Would G-d really be pleased if I lose my humanity for the sake of my obligations as High Priest? Does G-d want me to go on with “business as usual” as though my two sons were not taken from me today?
This time, Moses is silent. Aaron is right, and Moses knows it. Moses, the paradigm of Truth, concedes to Aaron, the paradigm of kindness. Aaron was correct in burning rather than easting the sacrifice.
In these two exchanges, the Torah paints the profiles of Moses and Aaron. Both were giants, but their approach to life varied.
A verse in Psalms reads: “Kindness and truth have met; justice and peace have kissed". Justice is Moses; peace is Aaron.
Moses embodied truth and justice; Aaron personified kindness and peace. These are two very different, often opposite, qualities. Truth is resolutely objective, while benevolence is gloriously subjective. Peace advocates compromise, which is anathema to truth. Truth speaks in the name of absolute values, while kindness is always relative to what a person needs at this very moment.
“Truth hurts;” kindness never hurts, at least not in the short term. Truth by definition is often brutal, honest, it does not change its position because of sensitivities and circumstances. Kindness by definition is all about relating to the sensitivities and circumstance at hand, and accommodating a person in a particular situation.
“Do you want me to tell you the truth, or do you want me to be nice?” Are you ready to hear the truth, or are you only ready for kind words?
Moses’ message is that life is not only about pleasure, it is also about duties.
Life is not only about telling G-d how great our problems are, but also about telling our problems how great G-d is.
Aaron, in contrast, tells us that truth cannot uproot kindness.
Religion cannot replace or even repress human emotion. We are human, and death hurts. It hurts beyond words. It sometimes hurts beyond any possible expression.
G-d would be unhappy if we lose that human touch, for what G-d ultimately wants is human holiness not angelic holiness.
This is the mission of our people. We can never lose faith in G-d, and we never allow that faith to anaesthetize our human vulnerability.
SHABBAT SHALOM,
RABBI YOSEPH GEISINSKY