Dear TBZ Community,
With the holiday of Passover behind us (yay chametz, leavened foods!), our calendar invites us to count the forty nine days of Omer. This counting, between Pesach and Shavuot, marks the journey from Egypt to Sinai and the receiving of Torah.
I find the ritual of counting the Omer, stopping for a moment each evening to say the blessing and count, to be fulfilling and meaningful, even when done in a rush or what seems to be without the proper kavanah, intention. The practice itself holds its own intention, a routine that lasts forty-nine days and has just one purpose: to count. Although the journey for the Israelites in the desert was filled with uncertainty, I find that the counting experience holds the opposite: not just certainty, but the promise of arrival. It is forty-nine days, seven weeks. Not a day more or less. It is concrete with a beginning and an end.
Most of our life doesn’t work that way. Though things, experiences, have beginning and ends, we don’t know for sure and we don’t have certainty, nor control, of what that journey will look like.
This week, we also return to the weekly Torah readings after a hiatus for the stories of the Exodus, and we jump back to the book of Leviticus, parshat Shmini. This parasha (Torah portion) focuses on the inauguration of the altar and the beginning of the officiation of the Kohanim, the Priests, led by Aaron and his sons.
Leviticus Chapter 9, verse 5 reads:
וַיִּקְחוּ אֵת אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה מֹשֶׁה אֶל־פְּנֵי אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וַיִּקְרְבוּ כָּל־הָעֵדָה וַיַּעַמְדוּ לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה
They brought to the front of the Tent of Meeting the things that Moses had commanded, and the whole community came forward and stood before the LORD.
The description is of a community that experiences this ritual together, almost as one: וַיִּקְרְבוּ כָּל־הָעֵדָה – and the whole community came forward.
Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, in his commentary, Ha’amek Davar, explains:
And the entire congregation approached. Every place that the Torah mentions ‘approaching’ it implies becoming closer than usual. Toras Kohanim interprets this way as well: “They all approached in rejoicing.”
A way to understand this, is that the community, as one, experienced closeness – perhaps to the Divine presence in the Altar or perhaps to each other. It implies a unified experience, in this case an expression of rejoicing and of joy.
But I wonder how is it possible to have one chapter, Chapter 9 of the parasha, describe this unifying experience followed by Chapter 10, that describes the story of Aaron, Nadav, and Avihu, who seem to not to be part of this whole communal experience and bring a “strange fire” that God has not commanded them.
Chapter 10, verse 1 reads:
וַוַיִּקְחוּ בְנֵי־אַהֲרֹן נָדָב וַאֲבִיהוּא אִישׁ מַחְתָּתוֹ וַיִּתְּנוּ בָהֵן אֵשׁ וַיָּשִׂימוּ עָלֶיהָ קְטֹרֶת וַיַּקְרִיבוּ לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה אֵשׁ זָרָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא צִוָּה אֹתָם
Now Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the LORD alien fire, which God had not enjoined upon them.
So much is taught and said in our tradition about the sin of Nadav and Avihu: they went their own way, they got too close, they got drunk, they did not listen, they made their own rules. They did what they wanted, they were not part of the communal experience or the prescribed mode.
As someone who probably can identify with lots of the ways of Nadav and Avihu (especially the younger me who always did things… and I still do, carve my own path, do things not necessarily as their supposed to be), I ask what is really wrong about Nadav and Avihu?
Perhaps one of the ways to understand it is that Nadav and Avihu separated themselves from the community not for the sake of community, not for the sake of bringing community together and closer to God, but for the sake of their own selves. They wanted, alone, to get closer and have their own, unique, experience.
Nadav and Avihu perhaps remind us that uniqueness and being different, or choosing a different path, needn’t mean separating ourselves from community.
And that brings me back to the counting of the Omer: the Omer is our own individual journey of counting, but as part of our collective experience of journeying through the desert. The promise of arrival is what keeps us walking through the journey and it is the promise of arrival as an eda, community. We might bring our differences and our uniqueness to the journey (I surely hope we do) but we go into this journey as something bigger than ourselves and not for the sake of ourselves but for the sake of closeness, to one another and to God.
As spring springs (more like summer today!) and as we leave Egypt, may each of us find our ways of counting each day, perhaps with our own gifts to bring, to share, to express in the journey, but always as part of a collective.
May this Shabbat bring renewal and blessings to all of you and your loved ones.
May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity.
May all those who are ill find healing. And may we have a joyful, sweet, and peaceful Shabbat.
Shabbat Shalom
Rav Claudia