The Torah has already described the tragedy of the family of Aaron, when his sons Nadav and Avihu died while burning incense on the day the Mishkan was finally dedicated. Why then does the Torah return to the subject again in this week’s Torah reading? This repetition has enabled commentators over the ages, from the time of the Talmud onwards, to derive many explanations, laws and moral ideas from this parsha.
Since the Torah is limitless, eternal and speaks to all generations, I take the liberty of suggesting another idea to help us understand the depths of the Torah’s sensitivity to the human psyche and condition. In a subtle but important way the Torah emphasizes here that, from this point onwards, everything that Aaron and his sons will do in the service of God and Israel, inside the holy Mishkan or outside it, will always be influenced by the tragedy they witnessed and the feelings they experienced on the day their sons and brothers died. Moshe comments that Nadav and Avihu were holy people, close to God, so to speak. This only amplifies the tragedy, making it harder to comprehend and rationalize.
For the rest of their lives, Aaron, his surviving family and the entire Jewish nation will be haunted by this tragic event. It will hover over every occurrence that befalls them, personally or nationally, for all time. Everything will now be encapsulated in the time frame of “after the death of the two sons of Aaron.” And this idea is implicit in the message of the Torah to us this week.
The Holocaust exemplifies this point. The inexplicable iniquity of that tragedy haunts the Jewish people today, even decades after the fact. It seems that every accomplishment and shortcoming in Jewish life generally, and regarding the State of Israel particularly, is Holocaust-driven. Everything is seen as being holy vengeance or justified retribution, as “remember and do not forget,” or “never again!” There is no event that takes place in Jewish life today that does not have Holocaust overtones. We are always “acharei mot”—after the tragedy that brooks no feasible explanation, constantly challenging our faith on one hand and our rationality on the other. It is as though the formal commemorations of the Holocaust are not that special, hard as we try to make them so, because every day and every event now is still just another form of that memorial.
Naturally, the formal commemoration of the Holocaust invokes again the emotional connection to this enormous national tragedy. That is why such a national day of mourning is justified and necessary. This only serves to enhance our realization that we are all living in the time of “acharei mot”, which in turn explains a great deal of the mood and behavior of the Jewish people in our time.
And now, since October 7th, and with the war that we are engaged in now, “Acharei mot” reflects the attitude and behavior of our people.
Rabbi Berel Wein
