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ICJS Scripture Forum, 2003-2004
Session #8

Scripture Forum
Session #8
Goucher College
June 11, 2004

Introduction to the discussion by Rabbi Charles Arian:

   This year's Scripture Forum has been devoted to trying to understand both Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ and the responses to the film. We began by examining texts from the Tanakh that underlie the Passion narratives in the New Testament, and then spent some time examining part of the narrative as it appears in the Gospel of Mark. From there we moved to a discussion of varying Christian understandings of the meaning of atonement and Jesus' death. As part of this discussion, we discovered that the doctrine of the atonement is far from a settled issue in Christian theol-ogy, and Gibson buys into only one understanding of it.
   When Jews and Christians talk together, they often talk past one another, making their own decisions about one another's faith. Many Christians disagree about Mel Gibson's understanding of atonement, but they do not find his understanding unintelligible. Jews do find Gibson's understanding of atonement unintelligible, but the point of today's discussion will be to show that Jews are not so far removed from Gibson's version of atonement as they think they are.

Introduction to Sefat Emet:

   Sefat Emet ("language of truth") is the designation for R. Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter, 1847-1905, a Hasidic rebbe who led a community in Warsaw, Poland. There were people in his community whose function was to memorize the talks the rebbe gave several times each Shabbat and then to write them down when Shabbat was over. The homilies were spoken in Yiddish and written down from memory in Hebrew. Some of them have also been translated from the Hebrew back into Yiddish.
   The rebbe's homilies were gathered together into a collection arranged according to Torah portions year by year. These homilies were not intended to illuminate the plain meaning of a text but to answer the question, "What does this text mean for me and how I should live as a faithful Jew?"
   In his time and place, the rebbe addressed a wide spectrum of Jews, so he tried to present his material in an accessible way. He was, in effect, the first post-modern Jewish theologian. Though he was the rebbe of his own community, he was and is studied outside of that community. He is prominent in Hasidic and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in Orthodox circles. (Abraham Joshua Heschel really liked him.)

A study of Sefat Emet on Leviticus 10:1-6:

The text (translated from Hebrew into English by Rabbi Arian):

"But your kinsmen, all the house of Israel, shall bewail the burning." It is apparent that it is incumbent upon every Jew to weep for them, as we learn in the Zohar (Aharei Mot). And the reason can be said as the fol-lowing: They were completely righteous. And our sages have said, "in the place where the repentant stand, the truly righteous cannot stand." Therefore, they were punished on our behalf, this is why we must weep for them. And it is better not to go on at length about this point.

The text on which this commentary is based (JPS trans-lation):

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.
   Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, "Come forward and carry your kinsmen away from the front of the sanctuary to a place outside the camp." They came forward and carried them out of the camp by their tunics, as Moses had ordered. And Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, "Do not bare your heads and do not rend your clothes, lest you die and anger strike the whole community. But your kinsmen, all the house of Israel, shall bewail the burning that the LORD has wrought."

   In studying the homily, the goal is to understand the commentary, not the text on which it is based. So what is troubling the commentator? The commentator is troubled by the fact that Aaron's other sons are not permitted to mourn the death of their brothers, but the rest of Israel is allowed to mourn them.

• Question: How does the Zohar establish that Nadab and Abihu were "completely righteous"?
• Response: One of the goals of Kabbalah is mystical union with God, which literally means being en-gulfed in flames. Only the righteous would be so engulfed, Nadab and Abihu were consumed by fire, therefore they were completely righteous. The tradition accepts the notion that Nadab and Abihu were righteous.
     There is a strand in the tradition, based on what follows Lev. 10:7*, that Nadab and Abihu were guilty of the sin of drunkenness, which would indicate that they were not righteous. However, since Torah is compared to fine wine in Proverbs, there is a Hasidic layer of interpretation that holds that Nadab and Abihu were drunk on God.
  (*Lev. 10:8-11: And the LORD spoke to Aaron, saying: Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die. This
  is a law for all time throughout the ages, for you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and be-tween the unclean and the clean; and you must teach the Israelites all the laws which the LORD has imparted to them through Moses.)

   The common understanding of "in the place where the repentant stand, the truly righteous cannot stand" is that one who is penitent stands on a higher level than one who has always been righteous. Sefat Emet turns this understanding on its head: The righteous stand on a higher level than the penitent, and they cannot be around those who are unrighteous. To do so would be to stand on profane ground. The penitent have no chance to go higher and there are no righteous around them.
   That Nadab and Abihu "were punished on our behalf" is the point of the text. There has to be a reason to explain why they were killed, and that reason is what they were able to accomplish for others because they were "completely righteous." The gift they have to offer is being able to accomplish something that others can-not. This notion is not self-evident; this sense is derived from the text because the text is understood within a tradition.
   The notion that "it is better not to go on at length about this point" sounds very Christian (cf. the discus-sion in Scripture Forum session #7 where it was pointed out that what a lot of people see in Gibson's film is that Jesus did something that they themselves could never do). Because it sounds so Christian, it shouldn't be talked about too much. This is normative Jewish doc-trine, but if you talk about it too much and follow it out to its conclusions, it will lead to heresy. Putting it another way, Sefat Emet was warning his people that, although this line of thinking is truly Jewish, if Jews talk about it too much, if they start sounding like Christians, they may be in danger of assimilation or they may be killed for it. This Christian-sounding notion of the righ-teous Nadab and Abihu being killed on behalf of Israel made Sefat Emet uncomfortable and his speech was cautious; nevertheless, he did talk about it.

Brief discussion:

• Question: Does Sefat Emet's interpretation have a valence that is independent of Christianity?
• Response: Equating the death of a righteous per-son with saving the community is the basis of the Jewish notion of martyrdom.
  [Scribal note: Interpreting Jesus' death in line with the Hellenistic/Jewish tradition of "death on behalf of" -- i.e., martyrdom -- is precisely what Paul did, basing his theology and his language on 4 Macca-bees. For Paul, Jesus' death is a martyr's death, not a sacrifice.]
• Observation from a Jewish participant: "And it is better not to go on at length about this point" is very Jewish. When Christians get into sacred territory, they don't know when to shut up.
• Response from a Christian participant: Jews cut off the discussion and that's why you don't have a theology.
• A surmise and a question: What Sefat Emet says sounds very much like what a teacher says when he or she wishes to cut off a discussion, or what
  a parent says when he or she wants to cut off a child's argument. Does Sefat Emet's cut-off serve as a prohibition against further discussion, or an invitation to further discussion?
• A response: The more enlightened can understand more and be trusted with deeply spiritual or mysti-cal material, whereas the novice cannot be so trusted.
• Final comment: The distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric is characteristic of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

A study of Sefat Emet on Leviticus 16:1-8:

The text (translated from Hebrew into English by Rabbi Arian):

"The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron . . . Tell . . . lest he die . . ."

[Rashi explains in his commentary that this is like a sick person who calls a doctor, receives advice that he does not follow, then dies. The next person with a similar ill-ness is told by the same doctor, do such and such so you will not die like so-and-so did.]

What is the reason for this warning "lest he die"? It is to teach us that the death of Nadav and Avihu was a great test. Even though their action was flawed, they did not give up their souls without reason; they were great saints and they instituted a great benefit for the com-munity of Israel. The children of Israel merited the Yom Kippur Avoda because of them. That is why this is the Torah reading for Yom Kippur.

The text on which this commentary is based (JPS trans-lation):

The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of the LORD. The LORD said to Moses:
   Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover. Thus only shall Aaron enter the Shrine: with a bull of the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering.--He shall be dressed in a sacral linen tunic, with linen breeches next to his flesh, and be girt with a linen sash, and he shall wear a linen turban. They are sacral vestments; he shall bathe his body in water and then put them on.--And from the Israelite community he shall take two he-goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering.
   Aaron is to offer his own bull of sin offering, to make expiation for himself and for his household. Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the LORD at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting; and he shall place lots upon the two goats, one marked for the LORD and the other marked for Azazel.

   Aaron's dilemma is that on Yom Kippur he needs to go into the place where two people died on the only occa-sion when anyone entered that holy space. Aaron is the high priest, and God does not want the high priest to die.
   Sefat Emet's remarks state that the action of Nadav and Avihu was "flawed," which would seem to contradict the claim that they were "completely righteous." If this contradiction were pointed out to Sefat Emet, he would say, "So what?"
   What is "flawed" about their action? They added something (alien fire) to the mitzvot. The mitzvot are hard enough to follow without adding anything to them.
   The point of the text: Because of what Nadav and Avihu did, the Jews have Yom Kippur, and this is why the Leviticus text is the Torah reading for Yom Kippur. Nadav and Avihu were the first Yom Kippur offering.

Discussion:

• Reading this portion aloud is performative: We're doing the sacrifice.
• Reading this portion aloud is substitutionary: We don't repeat the sacrifice of Nadav and Avihu, we do the goat. We don't do the goat anymore, we do the reading. To think of these changes, and especially doing the reading, as substitutionary sounds really Christian.
• The community lives from the transformative power of the righteous dying on behalf of the community.

The remainder of the discussion was devoted to avoid-ing certain mistakes that can derive from the fact that these notions sound so similar in Judaism and Christian-ity.

• Christians have a tendency to appropriate Jewish notions and baptize them as Christian. Christians need to understand when something isn't theirs and therefore isn't theirs to baptize.
• When we come across something that is part of both traditions, we must not then conclude that we're the same.
• Jews and Christians are on parallel tracks, but
  the tracks are parallel in a non-Euclidean sense: Sometimes the tracks cross, but they are still foreign to each other. Perhaps some day the tracks -- or the train -- will become one.
• It is better not to go on at length when we mystically find ourselves on the same train.

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