Parshat Acharei Mot: Dancing in Front of the Curtain

Parshat Acharei Mot opens with these words: “and Hashem spoke to Moshe after the death of Aaron’s sons.”1 Aaron’s sons – Nadav and Avihu – die in Parshat Shemini. The very parsha is named after this occurrence.

The text tells us that they are killed for bringing an alien fire that Hashem had not commanded.2 Other reasons for their deaths are also given. Rashi cites two sources in the Gemarah: one concludes that they are killed for making a halachic decision in front of Moshe without consulting him; the other says that they died for entering the Sanctuary while intoxicated.3

While many reasons are given, the underlying message is often highlighted: their death was the consequence of getting too close to Hashem, to transgressing His boundaries. They followed the arc of Icarus and flew too close to the sun.

Rav Steinsaltz explains that they became over-familiar with the Divine, that they became desensitized and lost their sense of distance, awe, and respect.4 Rav Matis Weinberg expands and highlights how there runs a dangerously thin line between love and vulnerability, loss and pain.

Love is risky. With closeness comes passion, life, and love, but so too do we teater on the edge of the cliff. With love comes responsibility.

With love, the boundaries of the ‘selves’ in the relationship become that much more important.5 It is said that Nadav and Avihu died the way of the tzaddikim – through a neshika (kiss): their souls simply left their bodies, like a hair being pulled from milk.6 They experienced such a fantastic exposure of light that the darkness and confines of this world felt unbearable for them. They put up no resistance to death for, in that moment, life had become only an obstacle to closeness, the self merely a physical prison.

At first glance, this message might feel elusive and unrelatable. How many of us have, or will merit, to experience such light in our lives? Most of us likely struggle at times to feel connected in prayer, let alone do we risk the kiss of death during our morning Shachrit. The reality is, however, that all of us at times struggle with reconciling the physical nature of our bodies and this world with our spiritual aspirations.

Work and obligations inevitably get in the way of our striving to transcend to a place of peace and quiet, perspective and connection. We’ve likely tasted that place of transcendence – on a beach somewhere, high up in the mountains, with the right group of people. We miss it now. The daily responsibilities – bills, work, errands, at times even family – serving as apparent barriers.  We live in a generation where marriage and even children are often seen as an obstacle to getting what we want in this world. How much easier is spiritual enlightenment without a kid tugging at your pants? It is quite easy to see all that up there as the goal and all this down here as the barrier, so much so that we might tear down the curtain as well if given the chance.

We can often notice this struggle in our rabbinical commandment to pray in a minyan. It can often be a struggle for people. Prayer is a point of connection, an opportunity for transcendence. Perhaps the minyan prays too fast, too slowly, with too much life, with too little life. If only we could pray alone, if only the minyan was at the right pace. Rav Raz Hartman explored the idea that perhaps the goal of praying in a minyan is not to feel as connected as in individual prayer. Rather, the goal is to surrender our own personal desires for the sake of something higher, for the sake of the community. Perhaps speeding through the prayers to keep pace with everyone else is what we’re supposed to be doing. It is written in the Gemarah that when the great Rabbi Akiva would pray in a minyan, he would pray quickly so as not to keep others waiting. But when he would pray alone, “one could leave him in one corner and afterward find him in another corner, due to his many bows and prostrations.”7

But what about that terrible feeling of being rushed? What about the fact that we feel stressed and anxious when life speeds up? The irony is that often, it is our very desire not to be rushed, not to feel stressed and anxious, that creates such feelings in the first place. It is well known that the greatest barrier to spiritual experiences is our desire to have them. It can often be our very yearning for peace and calm and connection that creates our block.

Why? It is not simply because with expectations comes the potential for it not being what we want. Rather, even when we do get what we want, such expectations rob our process of joy. In pursuit of our end goal, feeling, or state, we are constantly evaluating and judging the moment according to our expectations. “Are we there yet? Is this going how we expected it to be?” Instead of simply being and experiencing, we are thinking about the moment. It is this very act of judging that robs our experience of joy.

As long as we define our happiness and connection by our circumstances, we will never experience true peace. It is often said that a difference between Judaism and eastern spiritual practices is that in Judaism, spiritual experiences and peace are not the ultimate goals. I would modify this slightly: the ultimate goal is not to achieve spiritual experiences at the expense of our service in this world. It is beautiful to find those experiences in our day-to-day lives: to stay rooted in this world, doing our laundry, raising our children, while still remaining connected to Hashem. “And Hashem appeared to him [Avraham] by the Plains of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. He lifted his eyes and saw: behold, three men were standing before him. He saw, and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent.”8 Avraham sits meditating with Hashem, yet, when guests arrive, he rushes forwards to greet them. To Avraham, this did not constitute a break in his service or awareness of Hashem.

How do we achieve this level? We let go of our desires and expectations for things to be or for us to feel a certain way and we raise our eyes to something higher. We must stop judging whether we like the situation or not and rather, simply begin to ask ourselves: how does Hashem want me to respond? We may not know the perfect response, but simply an awareness that the now is not a mistake, can give us the courage to allow reality to unfold with little resistance.

When we do this, the most incredible change occurs. We actually get what we want. When we stop making our spiritual connection dependent on our surroundings, the connection enters every moment. It no longer matters whether we are doing laundry or standing in the Kodesh Ha’Kodashim. We no longer clamor to open the curtain, for our greatest joy is not in stepping behind the curtain, but dancing and living in front of it. Our joy and life eventually sweeps it open.

When we focus, not on the outcomes, but on the present, our fears and blocks that keep our hearts and eyes closed melt away. What do we have to fear when all we need is right here, when our hearts yearn only to do Hashem’s will, when it matters little to us whether we pray quickly or slowly, only that we are acting in accordance with something higher? We rejoice in time. Time is only Hashem’s gift to bestow or deprive. It is the great equalizer, that which no one can steal. Hashem gives grass to our fields and animals and we eat and are satisfied.9 When we allow ourselves to accept this gift, we find true satisfaction.

This also reminds us to avoid a most common pitfall – to not limit Hashem with our own minds. Too often we define for ourselves what must happen for us to be happy, or safe, or alive. With each of these foregone conclusions, with each fear and expectation we hold on to, we (metaphorically) box in Hashem a little bit more. Who are we to tell the Master of the Universe what is required for our happiness or spiritual connection? With a snap of His (metaphorical) fingers, we could feel such spiritual bliss that we would welcome the kiss of death. Just let go.

Ultimately, we want to find peace and quiet within our obligations. How do we unlock this? By living fully in the present moment, by noticing every time our fickle minds try to pull us into the future or the past, by noticing those fear voices that tell us that it’s not safe to let go, that it’s not safe to drop our holding on to the way things are supposed to be, otherwise, they might not be. Those fears are rooted in a time when we needed things to be a certain way. We must see the lie. For even when a storm rages around us, we can find peace and calm within. As we slowly begin to unravel our fears of not getting what we want, ultimately, we get exactly what we want. We simply need patience. What Nadav and Avihu wanted was always assured to them. They simply needed to relinquish their own definitions of how it was meant to unfold, to look around and realize that Hashem lay as much behind them as in front, and realize that it was not them making the rules. May we all merit to respond to the unfolding of life – even when it is not as we wish – as Aaron did upon discovery of the death of his two sons: by remaining silent.10

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