The attitude of a religious Jew, especially how he presents himself to others, is very important in defining what is seen as a קידש השם or a חלול השם.
With this in mind I begin to explore and to try to understand an enigmatic episode in the death of Nadav and Avihu as described in this morning's Torah reading.
וירחו בני אהרן נדב ואביהו איש מחתתו ויתנו בהן אש וישימו עלי קטרת ויקריבו לפני השם אש זרה אשר לא צוה אותם.
"The sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, each took his firepan, put fire in them and placed incense upon it and they brought before Hashem a strange fire that Hashem had not commanded".
For this infraction, they were punished with death.
The obvious question is why such a severe punishment and more so what was the sin that they committed?
I sense that our first impression to our quest, is that they entered the Holy of Holies to burn incense which they had not been commanded, even if they did so in adoration of G-D, but they decided to do so on their own accord. Can we persist in our quandary and say, 'So what was so bad'?True, Hashem did not command them to do so, but they did do so for the love of G-D.
Nechamah Leibowitz explores this dilemma and states the following, "Their guilt resides, not in a formal violation of any of the regulations involved in the sacrificial service, but rather in their desire to break through, as it were, to the Almighty, to cleave unto Him, not in accordance with the prescribed ordinances but rather in conformity with the dictates of their own hearts.
The acceptance of the yoke of heaven, which is the aim of our entire Torah, is replaced, here, by a religious ecstasy which is free from the restraints of normative religious discipline, unrestrained and not subservient to the Divine will and for this they were punished.
In understanding this dilemma, I also need to reflect upon what Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch said in his understanding of the severe decree. It was to emphasize to us "To avoid personal and subjective predilections and ordinances of their own intervention in their approach to the service of the Sanctuary which belongs to G-D".
I share these sources with you to encourage you to think for yourselves in your analysis of why this "Eish Zara" caused such a condemnation. However, beyond our study , there seems to be an important modern day lesson to be learned from this tragedy.
The tragedy of Aaron's sons is our lesson in the attitude that accompany's our observances and how we approach our religious behavior.
It is well and good to be observant and to fulfill the will of Hashem as prescribed in our Torah, but one wonders what are the consequences of excess zeal and fanaticism, which comes about through our own subjective opinions, of what Judaism demands of us . We have a Torah B'ksav, we have our Torah Sh'Baal Beh,we have our Shulchan Orech, and we have our great sages through out our history, and if we abide within these boundaries we will succeed as true Jews.
Greater observance does not demand greater Chumros and our Torah especially does not want us to inject into our rituals our own subjective opinions of how Halacha is to be performed.
Let us live within our prescribed Halacha , and leave any of our subjective opinions, which often border on fanaticism out of our Judaic way of life.
עץ חיים היא למחזיקים בה , Judaism is our tree of life,let's maintain it in this fashion, for the GLORY of
G-D and the GLORY of Man.
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