Unacceptable Fire: Shemini

Unacceptable Fire:  D’var Torah for Parashat Shemini

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

April 1, 2016

“Our eyes register the light of dead stars.” 

This opening line from The Last Of The Just, my “favorite” novel about the Holocaust (if one can have a “favorite” anything about the Holocaust) came to mind the other day.

I thought about it when I read the news that NASA’s Kepler telescope captured the flash of an exploding star.  This star, about 300 times the size of our sun, exploded 1.2 billion years ago.  That means that the light of this mighty explosion traveled 1.2 billion years to reach us. 

I don’t know what amazes me more—that we built a telescope powerful enough to register this explosion, or simply how powerful this explosion actually was.

The Kepler telescope may probe the farthermost depths of space, but our own eyes perceive much more recent fires.  Of course, both result from the same forces of physics and chemistry.  It’s just that some fires are bigger than others. 

The human being’s ability to control fire was a huge first step in evolution.

The next step was in our understanding that fire comes from somewhere far beyond us. 

For ancient people, fire was a powerful tool of the gods.  In myths people told, the gods would hurl lightings from clouds or mountaintops.  In the legend of Prometheus, one of these gods steals fire and presents it as a gift to humanity.

There is no such story in the Torah, no account of how human beings first encountered fire.  The Torah simply explains fire as energy that emanates from God.  It is part of the enormous energy God used—and still uses—to create the universe.

In the Sinai Wilderness, which the Israelites traversed for forty years before reaching the Promised Land, there were several kinds of fires.  At the entrance of the Mishkan—the holy Tabernacle—stood the Menorah, the seven-branched candelabra made of solid gold, which Aaron, with an unwavering hand, lit every evening.

On the sacred altar, an eternal fire was lit and continually maintained by the priests.

And of course there were also the home fires, which provided light and warmth, and where families prepared their communal meals.  These were all man-created fires, maintained and controlled by people. 

But there are also other stories in the Bible where fire erupts from heaven, a fire representing God’s hand.  So it is with the seventh Plague of Egypt, hail, when frozen balls of ice interwove with plumes of fire.  And so it was also in that amazing vision of the Burning Bush, burning but not consumed, when Moses heard God’s call for the very first time.

In the Torah, fire represents God’s favor, or conversely, God’s anger.

In this week’s Torah portion, Shemini, it does both.

Shemini (Leviticus 9:1—11:47) begins where the previous portion leaves off, on the eighth day of the Dedication of the Tabernacle.  For seven days Aaron and his sons, the priests, sat at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, not allowed in, not permitted to venture out either.  On the eighth day, Moses tells the Israelites, if they do things right, God’s Presence will appear before them all.

Bayom ha-shemini—on the eighth day, Moses and Aaron bring an offering to God. Aaron lays the sacrifice on the altar, arranging the pieces exactly as he is instructed. The two brothers then offer a prayer, and—lo and behold!—a flame shoots out milifnei Adonai, “from before God,” and, in view of all the people, consumes the offering. As God’s Presence appears above the Tent of Meeting, the Israelites bow to the ground in joy and gratitude.

But then, a terrible thing happens.  Unbidden, Nadav and Avihu, two of Aaron’s four sons, decide to offer a similar sacrifice.  However, they bring eish zara—“a strange fire”—to the altar, one that makes their offering un-acceptable; once again a flame shoots out mi-lifnei Adonai, “from before God;” but this time, instead of the sacrifice, God’s fire consumes the two brothers.

There are many interpretations that try to explain why this calamity took place, what exactly went wrong.  What was that “strange fire” which Nadav and Avihu brought to the altar?  Was it simply, as some rabbis say, fire from the kitchen, used for ordinary, everyday purposes?  Or was this perhaps the fire of excessive passion, as some other Rabbis explain.  It’s possible that in their fanatical zeal, Aaron’s sons were consumed by their own inner fires.

Or was the explosive spark that they brought to the altar plucked from the fires of jealousy and greed, from the kind of blind hate that has caused more pain and destruction than almost anything else in the world?

The many possible explanations all have one thing in common:  The fire that Nadav and Avihu brought to their sacrifice was offensive to God.  The opposite of the energy of Creation, this was destructive energy, used to put a tear in the fabric of society, not to mend it.

Tragically, the story of Nadav and Avihu is not an isolated case.  That eish zara, that “strange fire” that they brought to the Temple is still used to stoke the fires of ruin and devastation.  Hatred, fear and greed are today’s eish zara, “strange fire.” Rampant and uninhibited, these are the passions that drive terrorists to commit unspeakable acts of horror.  And these are also the motives behind vicious words—against this minority or another—that once again have become common and almost acceptable in our culture.  Today’s eish zara is rampant in the social media.  It is all too clear in headlines and world events; in vulgar and even nauseating election-year speeches and rallies; and in the shameful prejudice lurking behind laws that still refuse to recognize the beautiful and wide diversity of the human race.

The Torah, the Jewish People’s eternal instruction manual, teaches that though they both emanate from God, there are actually two kinds of fires:  A holy fire, and an evil fire.  The first unites people, bringing them together in love and compassion.  The other is the fire of hate.  Rather than uniting people, this fire excludes those we see as different, as the other.  Fed by ignorance, prejudice and fear, this is the strange fire, the eish zara, that Shemini refers to.  It is the fire of jealousy and greed.  Divisive to the community, this fire is not acceptable.  Not in our eyes, not in God’s eyes.

This is the great lesson of this week’s Torah portion. 

May we all learn to distinguish between the fire of love and the fire of hate, between the fire of Creation and the fire of Destruction.  And may our sacrifice always be acceptable before God and our community.

Ken y’hi ratzon—may this be God’s will.  Amen.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman