Parashat Shemini (5761)

With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Shemini, 5761

Torah Study and Historical Truth

Our parashah describes the deed of Nadav and Avihu, the two sons of Aaron, who offered strange fire before the Lord, and therefore

they are consumed by fire within the Holy of Holies. Afterward Moses turns to Aaron, who is mourning, and says to him: “This is

what the Lord spoke, saying: ‘Through those near to Me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be honored’” (Leviticus 10:3). Many interpret the death of Aaron’s sons

as the death of the righteous, which comes to atone. Thus, for example, it is explicit in the Jerusalem Talmud, which expounds the verses at the beginning of

Parashat Acharei-Mot [the two sons of Aaron, “when they drew near before the Lord, and died” (Leviticus 16:1)], to teach us that the death of the righteous

atones like the Day of Atonement. On the one hand, we have here a description of death following from sin, and on the other hand,

there is a treatment of it as a death intended to atone for the community as a whole.

These two notes also appear in the Sages’ remarks about the death of Aaron’s sons. On the one hand, some expound

that the cause of their death was that they issued a legal ruling in the presence of their teacher, or that they entered the Sanctuary intoxicated,

and on the other hand, the Gemara says:

Moses said to Aaron: Aaron, my brother, your sons died only in order to sanctify the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Once Aaron knew

that his sons were known to the Omnipresent, he was silent and received reward, as it is said: “And Aaron was silent” (Leviticus 10:3).

Seemingly, this is a description of a death without sin. Many have wrestled with these contradictions between the various expositions

and especially with the question of how to reconcile this exposition with the plain sense of the verses, which speaks of the offering of strange fire

that had not been commanded.

A more general question arises here: are we indeed always required to reconcile the interpretation according to the plain sense

with the interpretation according to exposition? Seemingly, it is accepted among us that there are several ways to interpret Scripture.

For example, here, according to the plain sense, Aaron’s sons died because of their sin, whereas by way of exposition they died in order to atone for

the people of Israel as a whole. There are many cases in which the midrash contradicts the plain sense, and nevertheless we adopt

both interpretations together.

Yet precisely here the question seems more complicated, for this is a factual question: why

did the Holy One, blessed be He, cause Aaron’s sons to die? Was it in order to atone for the community, or rather in order to punish them for

their sin? On a question of this sort there can seemingly be only one answer. If they sinned, then they

died because of their sin, and if not, then we must conclude that they probably died in order to atone for the community. If so,

it appears that one of the midrashic approaches is mistaken.

Here, admittedly, the difficulty can be removed by reconciling the different methods of interpretation with one another, for example

in the following way. Aaron’s sons did indeed sin, and what was distinctive about their death was the proportion (or, more precisely:

the lack of proportion) between the sin and the punishment. The treatment of the righteous is distinguished by the fact that they can

be punished very severely even for a slight sin, and this too in order to atone for the community. It would follow from this

seemingly that there is no punishment without sin, and that the familiar concept of ‘sufferings of love’ should be interpreted with respect to

the proportion of the punishment, not to the very fact of punishment itself (and this is apparently how Maimonides interprets it in the Guide

of the Perplexed). This approach is problematic according to most opinions, which interpret the concept of ‘sufferings of

love’ literally (not like Maimonides). Beyond that, it is not clear whether there must always be a reconciliation

among the different methods of interpretation, and whether a dispute cannot exist on a point connected to reality.

The basic assumption underlying the difficulty with the existence of a dispute about reality is that our attitude toward the views of

the Sages is governed by the principle that “these and those are the words of the living God”; that is, we assume that all

the views that appear among our Sages are correct. Such a position, although it appears at first glance

paradoxical, can be adopted with respect to ideational questions, or questions of values and ways of

looking at things. Each sage apprehends a certain facet of the truth, while the truth is composed of all those facets. However,

in disputes on questions that concern reality, it is very difficult to understand the approach of “these and those.” When

the Sages dispute concerning the concubine at Gibeah whether he found a hair in the soup or a fly in the soup, it does

not seem reasonable that both are right (although the Gemara itself offers a solution there).

The accepted approach in the world of the Torah academies is that there are no disputes at all among the Sages about reality, and all

the disputes concern values and ideas, and therefore, as we have seen, it is possible to regard both

positions as true. Yet there are disputes, such as the one about the concubine at Gibeah, that are plainly

disputes about reality, and if so it is not clear how one can evade the obvious conclusion that one

side in that dispute is mistaken.

Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, of blessed memory, addresses this in his letters and explains that even disputes concerning reality

are not really such. When the Sages dispute whether what was found in the soup was a fly or a hair,

their intention is to draw value-based conclusions from it. We, as students of Torah, are not interested in what happened in reality,

for, as is well known, “the past no longer exists.” We are interested only in what value-based conclusions we should draw from

the historical-factual description in Scripture.

If so, when the Sages come and draw from what is written in Scripture opposite conclusions, it is clear that one of them

was mistaken about the reality; however, the value-based conclusions that were drawn, if they were indeed derived according to the ways

accepted among us for the study of Scripture (including the method of exposition), both of them alike are in the category of “the words

of the living God.” Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner calls this phenomenon “the concealment of knowledge.” The factual reality

which apparently is not described unambiguously in Scripture was concealed in order to make possible the two exegetical approaches,

and all this so that we might derive the two value-based conclusions. For our purposes, we may say that both value-based conclusions—

that the death of the righteous atones, and that bringing strange fire is a grave sin whose punishment is death at the hand of

Heaven—were both correct. What was the real cause of the death of Aaron’s two sons? That is concealed from us,

and it is also not really important. When we study Torah, we are not engaged in history. This principle

has additional important implications, but this is not the place for them.

Sabbath greetings

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