Extremely Close, Incredibly Far: Nadav, Avihu and the Alien Fire

mascettiBy Yaakov Mascetti*

The inauguration of the altar ends a seven-day-long process through which Moses sanctifies his brother Aaron and his sons for their sacrificial work in the Tabernacle. As a completion of this process, the eighth day concludes a series of complex preparations for the building of a framework, both architectural and orthopractical, in which the People of Israel will be able to “serve” their God, a service which comes to signify, as the Hebrew root “k-r-v” clearly indicates, a sense of proximity to God. This proximity is established, so to speak, by and through the sacrifices offered within the Tabernacle. Both the act of sacrificial offering and its object (the animal itself), point to the establishment, through the act and the animal receiving the act, of an intermediary, a means for the establishment of a state of proximity or even communion between man and God, within a framework of sanctity. It is at the end of this process that the Torah narrates a tragic moment, in which two Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, die. The circumstances of their tragic death have been traditionally interpreted as a clear indication of fault – they sinned by offering God an alien fire, offering that which had not been requested, and were thus eaten alive by Divine wrath allegorized by a fire descended from above. As others greater than myself have argued, I would like to show here, on the other hand, that their deaths were the direct consequence of an extreme proximity with God, a moment of quasi-communion with God which necessarily had to result in their immediate death. And if we truly must opt for sin or error, the two sons of Aaron sinned or erred in discarding or setting aside the technicalities of ritual in the name of enthusiasm – and their religious enthusiasm does not bring them to a closer relationship with God or to a moment of communion, but to death and destruction.

So the error is technical – proximity, filtered by ritual, is certainly a main part of the life and work of the sacerdotal class, but must not be undermined on the basis of personal initiative. The sacerdotal praxis is defined by Moses as a set of regulations which are focused upon the offering of sacrifices and a number of other operations to be performed within the framework of the Tabernacle (and then, later, the Temple). Sacrifices are, when conceived as the result of a complex system of actions charged with allegorical connotations, the bridge established by God for humankind in general, and the people of Israel in particular, to draw closer to Him. The animal is turned into a means, as it is slaughtered (though innocent) after having been charged with sins or other qualities belonging to the sacrificing individual, and then its body is cut apart, its blood sprinkled on the altar, and its flesh consumed by fire and / or eaten by the kohanim / Israelites. In the parsha of Shemini, Moses teaches Aaron what to do, he sanctifies him into his new sacerdotal duties and at the very end of the whole operation, the two bless the people of Israel as God reveals himself in a very theatrical and awe-inspiring manner:

(Lev. 9:23-24) Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of the Lord appeared to all the people.
Fire came forth from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat parts on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces.”

What I have called here the complex ritual infrastructure is therefore that which creates the conditions for the descent of the Divine fire from the Heavens, which is, we could argue, a clear sign of God’s acceptance of the offering – through the ritual, therefore, man can perform act through which he draws closer to God, but will not meet him. The fire is seen, and feared from afar – it inspires awe, and instills terror in the viewers, who are then brought to sing the praises of the Divine on the wings of a moment of holy enthusiasm. The two side, therefore, do not meet, but come close enough for there to me a moment of holy eros.

Moshe Harberthal has argued in the past in his On Sacrifice (2012), elaborating on Marcel Mauss’ ideas on The Gift (1950), that sacrifices are offerings in which the active side (man) cannot expect the supposedly passive side (God) to certainly accept the offering – in gifts, though, the situation is different, and the side receiving the gift is often expected to return the gesture. For this reason, gifts are less appropriate in the religious sphere – within the framework of the hierarchical relationship between the Israelites and God, the offering of sacrifices is necessarily accompanied by the understanding that God could refuse the act and the animal offered. The traumatic yoke is that of Cain, whose offering is refused, and who thus murders his brother Abel. In order to fill in the abyssal and traumatic gap between the offering individual and the receiving (though not necessarily accepting) God, the ritual systematizes the potentially destructive emotional chaos, and turns it into a neutral set of actions in which the individual charge is literally elided. Against this ritual background, continues Halbertal, there is always a small group of individuals that endeavors to prove its proximity to God by dismissing the technical character of ritual act and endeavors to approach the Divine through a series of spontaneous actions.

(Lev. 10:1-3) Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the LORD alien fire, which He had not enjoined upon them. And fire came forth from the LORD and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.” And Aaron was silent.

Nadav and Avihu are not sinners but are representative of those men who, eager to prove their intimacy with the Divine, dismiss ritual and opt for spontaneity. In doing so, though, the two enthusiastic sons of Aaron do not realize that they also turn themselves from the neutral side in a sacrificial transaction between men and God, and become the sacrifice themselves. In other words, rather than being those who offer the “korban”, or that which brings men closer to God, they become the korban – and thus Moses’ words should be interpreted not only as an explanation of some sort for the death of Aaron’s sons, but as the enlightening understanding that “kerovai” or “those near to me” become the means for God to show himself holy. And just as the fire consumes the parted animal on the altar, so the two young, enthusiastic and embracing men are eaten alive, and become the very signs of Divine love. Sacrificial signs are the manifestation of both proximity and distance, of distinction and embracement – when the individual decides to reconceive the ritual of sacrifice offering according to his enthusiastic initiative, he must also understand that in doing so he can become “that which signifies Divine proximity” and must, therefore, die.

*Yaakov Mascetti holds a Ph.D. and teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar Ilan University.