When Our Grief Is Quarantined

Parashat Shemini, Leviticus 9:1–11:47

Chaim Dauermann, Brooklyn, NY

I never dreamed that I would live through such interesting times.

For the past month, owing to the restrictions enacted to slow the spread of COVID-19, I’ve experienced the outside world almost entirely through the windows of our apartment in Brooklyn. I’ve watched as traffic patterns have lightened, as foot traffic has gone from frequent and carefree to sparse, masked, tense, and distanced. The infectious energy of the city I love has been at a sustained ebb. The size of our lives, too, has somehow seemed diminished by this pandemic. I can think of no other time in my life when I have felt as confined.

A change in circumstances necessarily brings with it a change in perception. This year I’ve found the story of God’s liberation of our people from bondage resonating more deeply and fully, now that my own freedom of movement has been temporarily removed. Even matzah has been difficult to come by this year—we’ve had to ration ours to make it last.

This change in perception is also felt when I read this week’s parasha, Shemini. Our Torah portion opens in chapter 9 as Moses finishes consecrating Aaron and his sons as priests. With that completed, Moses takes them through the process of making the first offerings, according to God’s instruction as given on Sinai (Exodus 29). In chapter 10, Aaron’s two eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, are unceremoniously immolated by God when they offer “unauthorized fire” before him. 

Like much of Leviticus, these passages read as rather dry at first glance. The description of the sacrifices is so meticulous that readers might get the feeling they could accurately duplicate the tasks themselves. Even when Nadab and Abihu are burned alive, the events are described with clinical brevity. Leviticus isn’t typically thought of as a breathtaking read. And if you aren’t paying attention, it can be all too easy to miss the very real human drama vibrating just beneath its dry recitations of process and ritual. It is a book about holiness—about what it looks like to draw physically near to God, and what the consequences of that nearness can be.

If we are looking for drama, let us consider Aaron: He is a central figure in this portion. Although he says very little, he experiences—and suffers—much. As our portion begins, the consecration of Aaron and his sons has been completed. It is the eighth day, and—with Moses—Aaron and his sons now bring offerings before God:

Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them. Then he stepped down from presenting the sin offering, the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings. Moses and Aaron then went into the Tent of Meeting. When they came back out and blessed the people, the glory of ADONAI appeared to all the people. Fire came out from the presence of ADONAI, and devoured the burnt offering and the fat on the altar. When all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. (Lev 9:22–24)

Then, abruptly, things take a turn:

Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his own censer, put fire in it, laid incense over it, and offered unauthorized fire before ADONAI—which He had not commanded them. So fire came out from the presence of ADONAI and consumed them. So they died before ADONAI. (Lev 10:1–2)

Not much is said about what Nadab and Abihu did wrong, why it was wrong, or why this was the punishment. Proximity to the presence of God had already been shown to be something coming with great risk. In Exodus, before God descends to Mount Sinai, he instructs Moses: “Whoever touches the mountain will surely be put to death” (Exod 19:12).

Regarding the death of Aaron’s sons, Rashi comments:

Rabbi Eliezer says: Aaron’s sons died only because they rendered halachic decisions in the presence of Moses, their teacher. Rabbi Ishmael says: They died because they had entered the sanctuary after having drunk wine. The proof is that after their death, Scripture admonished the survivors that they may not enter the sanctuary after having drunk wine.

Indeed, later in the passage, after Nadab and Abihu’s deaths, God does speak directly to Aaron, saying: “Do not drink wine or fermented drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you go into the Tent of Meeting, so that you do not die” (Lev 10:9).

The book of Exodus records that God was extremely specific with Moses when describing how and when incense should be burned by Aaron the priest (Exod 30:7–9). Yet, in our passage, we see that Nadab and Abihu each took “his own censer,” put incense in it, and offered “unauthorized fire” before the Lord. Any one of these points, or all of them together, could have borne responsibility for the offense.

But let us return to Aaron. Beneath all of the meticulous and dry detail of this narrative—the instructions, the penalties, the results—is a story that harmonizes in surprising ways with things we are going through today as a nation. The offering of sacrifices at the altar might seem rather foreign, but grieving over the sudden loss of someone close to us is something many of us are all too familiar with. And as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the world, even those of us who are fortunate enough not to have lost a loved one to this disease likely know someone who has. One of the truly heartbreaking consequences of this pandemic is how it has altered our mourning. People who are hospitalized are unable to have visitors, and the people who die must die alone.

A recent Wall Street Journal article explores this phenomenon:

A brutal hallmark of the pandemic is the way it isolates its victims even in their final moments. Patients die alone in hospital rooms, cut off from their spouses, children, siblings and often their pastors or rabbis. The emotional end-of-life moments, if they happen at all, unfold over an electronic tablet or phone, with a stranger serving as an intermediary.

This is true not only of people who are passing away from COVID-19. Hospitals and hospice centers are all on lockdown. Because of social distancing rules, people have had trouble having funerals or sitting shiva. That lack of physical presence, both for the ones who are passing, and the ones left behind, comes at a great cost. I am haunted, still, by a photo I saw a few weeks ago, of a woman standing outside a building, looking in through a window while holding a cell phone to her ear. The building was a hospice care center, and on the other side of that window was the woman’s father. It was the last time she spoke to him before he passed away.

The Scriptures record what happens in the moments after Nadab and Abihu are killed: Moses tells Aaron and his surviving sons they cannot mourn, nor can they even so much as go outside the entrance of the tent of meeting, “or you will die, for the anointing oil of ADONAI is on you” (Lev 10:7). Aaron’s cousins are conscripted to remove Nadab and Abihu’s remains from the sanctuary, and the priestly work continues. How must Aaron have felt? It’s an otherworldly scenario, and yet as I read this passage in the context of what has become of our grieving today, I cannot help but feel that Aaron’s experience here is closer to us than it otherwise might be.

As we approach this coming Shabbat, we also bring Passover to a close. As we recount the story of the Exodus at our Seder tables, we are reminded of the deaths of the firstborn throughout all the land of Egypt. Even Pharaoh—a wicked man—got to mourn his dead, while Aaron, Israel’s Kohen Gadol, lost his own firstborn, and yet he could not. The tension between the contrasting circumstances of the two men is striking. Some might even call it unjust. What do we do with that imbalance? What can we make of a world that produces such brokenness?

We who believe in Yeshua also spend time during each Passover season meditating on Messiah’s role as Passover Lamb (Exod 12:5, John 1:29, 1 Cor 5:7). When thinking about Yeshua’s suffering, death, and resurrection, we have an opportunity to remember that God has experienced true nearness to our pain. The prophet Isaiah identifies the Messiah as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53). Through the death of his own Son, the God of Israel entered into our human experiences of sin, pain, grief, and even death. Through the process of drawing near to us, he drew us nearer to himself:

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have boldness to enter into the Holies by the blood of Yeshua. He inaugurated a new and living way for us through the curtain—that is, His flesh. We also have a Kohen Gadol over God’s household. So let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and body washed with pure water. (Heb 10:19–22)

All Scripture references are Tree of Life Version (TLV).

Photo: Paul Frangipane/Brooklyn Eagle