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April 16, 2004/Nisan 25 5764, Vol. 56, No. 30
Respect the sacred
Torah study
RABBI NEIL GILLMAN
Sh'mini/Leviticus 9:1-11:47
Two episodes, one in this week's portion and one in the haftorah, deal with a common sin. I call it the sin of trivialization.
In the portion, two of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, take a fire pan with incense and a flame and enter the sanctuary. Fire comes forth from God and consumes the two men. In the haftorah, King David transfers the Holy Ark with the twin tablets of the covenant from its temporary abode in the house of Abinadab to Jerusalem. When the oxen pulling the cart stumble, a bystander, Uzzah, grasps the Ark to steady it. God strikes Uzzah and he dies on the spot.
The two episodes echo one another. In the earlier episode, we don't know the precise nature of Nadav and Abihu's offense. What was this "alien fire"? Whatever the offense, why did it merit this outburst of divine anger?
There are multiple midrashic attempts to explain the nature of the two sons' offense. They were inebriated, they were impatient to succeed Moses and Aaron, or more charitably, they were motivated by excessive piety.
But underlying these accounts runs a common theme, one that is also suggested by the Uzzah story. The sanctuary was sacred space. This was where God's presence was manifest. This was where heaven and earth, the sacred and the everyday met.
If the sanctuary represented God's presence on earth, its sanctity must be respected. Therein lay the sins both of Nadav and Abihu and of Uzzah. They failed to grant proper respect to the sacred. Instead, they trivialized it.
It is difficult for us today to appreciate the power represented by sacred space in antiquity. But even in our own world, there are places, moments and institutions that demand a particular kind of reverence from us.
I recall, for instance, my visit to the Supreme Court where it was clear that in that chamber, everyone dressed, spoke and conducted himself very differently than at home. Simply being in that space made a difference in how I felt. The sense of respect for the institution of the court was palpable.
When Heschel characterizes the Sabbath as a "palace in time," he implies that on that day that God sanctified, we feel and conduct ourselves differently than we do during the week of profane time. The Sabbath is sacred time.
An extended comment by Rabbi Moses Isserles at the very beginning of the very first paragraph of the "Shulchan Aruch," the 16th century halachic code, pursues this notion.
Rabbi Isserles begins by reminding us that we conduct ourselves differently in the presence of a sovereign than we do in the street. How much more so, then, should we take note of our conduct if we become aware that we live all of our lives in the presence of the sovereign of all sovereigns. The appearance of this passage at the very beginning of a Jewish law code suggests that for Isserles, the overriding purpose of halachah is to infuse every moment of our lives with a sense of the sacred.
Not for a moment do I want to suggest that any of these examples capture the power of the Nadav and Abihu and Uzzah stories. Violating our sacred spaces and sacred times hardly merits a sentence of death.
What I do want to suggest, however, is that even in our own world, space and time are not homogenous. We too perceive the difference between the sacred and the profane. These evoke very different feelings and behaviors on our part. We should be aware of those differences. We should avoid trivializing those hints of the sacred that remain in our largely desecrated world.
Rabbi Neil Gillman is professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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