By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California —In this week’s parsha we read about the death of Aaron’s two sons, who died from an accidental explosion in the Tabernacle. Aaron’s reaction is quite telling–despite the absence of scriptural detail from the narrator. As is often the case with biblical narrative, more is said by what isn’t stated, than by what is actually mentioned. In the book of Leviticus, the biblical narrator says in but a couple of words the reaction of Aaron: וַיִּדֹּם אַהֲרֹן (wayyidöm ´ahárön) “And Aaron was silent” (Lev. 10:3).
Nowhere does the biblical narrator provide us with a sense of what Aaron must have been feeling. Did he blame himself? Was this God’s pay-back for when he made the Golden Calf? Did he neglect to tell his sons how to carry out their duties in a safe and careful manner? To decipher Aaron’s response, we must read in between the lines and look for clues.
Among the Hebrew words for “silence” dumah stands out as a term associated with grief and loss.
Another bereaved father in the Bible, Job, does not accept his children’s death silently or stoically–much to the surprise of his community. The differences between these two men’s emotional response certainly ought to pique our curiosity. Job’s community criticizes Job for questioning God’s justice. He refuses to play the role of the quiescent victim, resigned to his misery. Perhaps the men of Job’s community expected him to react like Aaron did after he lost his two sons Nadab and Abihu, who died in the prime of their youth.
In both the narratives of Job and the death of Aaron’s two sons Nadab and Abihu, there are a number of nuances that define the shape and pathos of a grieving silence.
Unlike Aaron, who is forced to hold his feelings within because his priestly office demands no less, Job refuses to accept his loss in stoic silence. He is determined to confront his feelings of torment and anger by directing these toxic feelings to God. Job deeply resents the theological attitude espoused by his “friends” that since his sons were obviously “sinners,” they ultimately received what was coming to them–death. Job’s friends assert that the social order is maintained whenever God exacts vengeance against His enemies. Job cannot accept such theological nonsense.
Whereas Aaron’s silence was pierced with a divine visitation by God, Job was not as fortunate as Aaron, he is denied an immediate revelation. God seems to be reluctant in responding to Job’s plea for justice. Job’s own silence–and especially the silence of God–threatens to destroy him.
It is an experience known well by anyone who has ever suffered. The best way to understand someone who is grieving is for us to see ourselves as walking in the shoes of the Other. Ergo, the feelings of restlessness, disorientation, incoherence, shock, and terror often reduces us to silence. Extreme suffering often destroys our ability to communicate for the weight of our suffering leaves us feeling verbally incapacitated. We feel stone-like and lifeless. Trauma makes us feel overwhelmed, terrified and distressed. When we suffer, we must find a language that will lead us out of our bondage of muteness and through the wilderness of silence. We seek a language of redemption. We have felt wronged, we have cried, and we have felt outraged.
All the subtle nuances of Aaron’s and Job’s silence are familiar experiences to most Holocaust survivors and to a lesser extent to their children who grew up in the captivity of silence. Many survivors like my father, whose family was murdered in Auschwitz, lost their capacity to speak about the horror of the camps. Many second-generation children of survivors grew up never hearing our parents speak about the atrocities that they experienced. Frightened and confused, we never encouraged our parents to tell us their stories.
Several years ago, a refined woman in my congregation lost her father and husband to cancer within the same year. On the anniversary of her husband’s death, her son hosted a golfing tournament. He was a very well-fit young man, age 26, who exercised every day and was the apple of his mother’s eye. After personally winning the tournament, he dropped dead from a heart attack. After the autopsy, they discovered he had ephedrine in his blood, which caused him to have his heart attack. His mother faced a sorrow of Jobian proportions; and for many years, she could not bring herself to pray in the synagogue. Who could honestly blame her?
Another young woman I once knew, had worked at a bar and went to bring a hot beverage from a large coffee maker, which exploded and burned over 90% of her body. Accidents like this occur every day, and it is in these painful epiphanies of the diabolic, the human soul often gets mangled and disfigured along with the body.
Any close brush with the diabolic makes it exceedingly difficult to even talk about faith. Martin Buber asked poignantly:
In this our time, one asks again and again: how is a Jewish life still possible after Auschwitz? I would like to frame this question more correctly: how is a life with God still possible in a time in which there is an Auschwitz?
The estrangement has become too cruel, the hiddenness too deep. One can still “believe” in a God who allowed those things to happen, but how can one still speak to Him? Can one still hear His word? Can one still, as an individual and a people, enter at all in a dialogical relationship with Him? Can one still call on Him? Dare we recommend to the survivors of Auschwitz, the Jobs of the gas chambers: “Call on Him, for He is kind, for His mercy endureth forever?”[1] There is a place in Judaism for religious skepticism. When the wisdom literature of the Bible included Job into the Canon, the ancient Sages revolutionized Judaism forever. You could say that today’s skeptic serves an almost prophetical role in keeping professional rabbis and theologians honest. There is a place in Judaism for questioning and doubting. Skeptical feelings should never be silenced but welcomed into any discussion about faith.
When we suffer we hunger for a restoration of God’s Presence (theophany), and a settling of the records. Like Aaron and Job, not only do we wait for consolation—we expect it; we demand justice. The Psalmist was not unaware of this kind of evil, “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from Him comes my salvation” (Psa. 62:1).
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Rabbi Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Sholom in Chula Vista. He may be contacted at michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com