With the completion of the week of installation of the priests in the Mishkan, we reach the height of tension and anticipation. Parashat Shemini begins: “On the eighth day Moses called Aaron and his sons, and the elders of Israel” (Vayikra 9:1), a dramatic opening that expresses the climate of that moment – a moment of excitement and exaltation. These emotions are translated into sacrificial acts in which everyone plays a role – priests and simple Israelites. Yet, at the day’s climax, two of Aharon’s sons will die. According to the rabbinic sages, the title: “On the eighth day” already foreshadowed that terrible reversal of fortune.
Much has been written about this terrible turnabout and what may have been its cause. Most commentaries searched for – and found – different reasons for the punishment that was meted out on Aharon’s sons. The Midrash Tanhuma stands out in choosing to focus on the illusion of joy in the world:
“On the eighth day.” This is the meaning of the verse: “To the celebrants [hollalim] I say, ‘Do not celebrate!’ to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horns!’” (Tehillim 75:5).
What is the meaning of: “To the celebrants [hollalim] I say, ‘Do not celebrate!’?”
Why?
Because it mentions “the dance [meholat] of the two companies” (Shir HaShirim 7:1),
And it also says: “to join in the dances” (Shoftim 21:21).
For joy waits for no man.
Not everyone who is joyous today will be joyous tomorrow, and not everyone who suffers today will suffer tomorrow.
For joy waits for no man, as it says: “Of revelry I said, “It’s mad [me-holal]!”
(Kohelet 2:2)
The midrash creates a word-play between holalot/meholot. The relationship between these words is not only based on the closeness of the pronunciation (because of the way the het and the heh are pronounced), but also because of the content. Dancing and celebration are a pair – one is the expression of the other. From the outside it appears that a mahol dance is the visual expression of the experience of a person trapped in a moment of joy. From a spiritual perspective, a mahol dance is a circle that has no beginning and no end. It builds on itself, with each circle inviting yet another circle. The impression made by dancers in a circle, pulls in others to join, just as joy can do. In a paradoxical manner, it is the mahol circle dance that serves as a reminder of the constantly spinning world and the cyclical experiences of life.
But no joy lasts forever, and that joyous moment contains in it a deceptive element. Centrifugal force pushes the celebrating dancers outwards – away from the joy of the circle and into a world of pain and sadness. The use of the metaphor of the mahol circle dance does not only emphasize the back-and-forth between moments of joy and happiness with moments of sadness and pain that a person undergoes throughout life, it also deepens the realization that the joy itself often becomes the source of sadness and pain. It is the mahol dance that pushes the participant out of the dance circle.
The midrash brings a number of examples of cases that illustrate the foreshadowing of pain hidden within instances of great joy.
The first example relates to the Creation story:
For the joy of the Holy One blessed be He did not remain for Him.
When?
When the Holy One Blessed be He created the world, there was great joy before Him
As it says: “May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in His works!” (Tehillim 104:31).
And it also says: “And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good” (Bereishit 1:31).
This teaches that the Holy One Blessed be He was most proud and satisfied with His handiwork.
And He commanded Adam, the first Man, to keep a simple commandment, yet he did not do so.
He immediately judged him, as it says: “For dust you are, And to dust you shall return” (Bereishit 3:19).
And it is as though He could not rest in His joy, as He said: “I only created all in order to satisfy the needs of Mankind. Now Man is mortal, what pleasure do I have?”
(Tanhuma, Shemini)
God’s immense happiness at the time of Creation, His joy and pride in the apex of that creation – Man – is undone almost immediately by Adam’s sin, which led to his death sentence. Introducing Man’s mortality as a great disappointment for God strengthens two foundational truths: First, the idea that every joyful experience will ultimately be undone is part-and-parcel of the reality of our world, to the extent that even God cannot avoid it. Second, with regard to Mankind, it becomes clear that all happiness will come to an end with death. Recognizing the finality of every man holds up all goodness and happiness to ridicule, presenting it as a mere illusion. No man can escape his sad fate. The beautiful creation contains within it the ugliness and the degeneration of withering and death.
The Midrash Tanhuma presents the experience of grief and joy as a natural cycle of events in the world: “If the Holy One blessed be He experiences it so, how much more so do human beings.”
After presenting the Godly tragedy, the midrash continues, listing human tragedies. Avraham was victorious in the wars that he fought as well as in his other activities, and even merited to have a son in his old age. At that very moment, however, he was commanded to sacrifice Yitzhak, and when he returned from that experience unscathed, he learned that his wife had died, finding himself a beggar at the doorstep of Ephron in Hebron. He, too, ultimately died in old age.
How Yaakov must have celebrated having seen a vision of Heavenly angels in his dream, with God standing over him! He married, found success in his endeavors, became wealthy and had children. But in the end his daughter Dina was kidnapped and his son Yosef was sold into slavery. In his old age he was forced to emigrate to Egypt.
The midrash continues with stories of Yehoshua who died childless, and of Eli the High Priest whose sons were both killed in a single day.
The midrash has not forgotten the ultimate promise held out by children and future generations of offspring. That is why each example points to the lack of guaranteed happiness even in those settings: Avraham and Akeidat Yitzhak; Yaakov and Dina’s kidnapping and the sale of Yosef; the childless Yehoshua, Eli whose sons Hofni and Pinhas are killed. From a literary standpoint, the tension builds from one example to the next by means of a methodical pause: “If this is true for the righteous, how much more so for the wicked.”
According to the midrash, the drama of the deaths of Aharon’s son was predestined. The tragedy was an intrinsic part of the powerful joyful experience; it was not dependent on their actions in any way.
The midrash closes with a different story where tragedy overwhelms joy:
It once happened that one of the great men of Babylonia was marrying off his son…and he made a banquet for the sages.
He said to his son: Go and bring us a barrel of wine from the attic.
He went up to the attic, and while standing between the wine barrels a snake bit him and he died.
His father waited among the guests, and after a time realized that he was not coming.
His father said to himself: I will go up to see what my son is doing.
His father went up to the attic and found him dead, lying between the barrels.
What did that righteous man do?
He waited until all of the guests had eaten and drunk their fill.
When they had finished, he said to them: “You did not come to bless my son, the groom – now you can recite the blessing for those in mourning. You did not come to bring my son to his wedding canopy – now you can bring him to his burial.”
They said about Rabbi Zakkai of Kabul and opened with the verse: “Of revelry I said, ‘It’s mad!’ Of merriment, ‘What good is that?’” (Kohelet 2:2).
Here the illusion is magnified by the similarities between the rituals: The wedding blessings turned out to be mourning blessings. The wedding meal and anticipated seven blessings become a mourning meal and seven days of mourning. The hope for continuity is destroyed. The finality of life mirrored the eternity of life. “Of merriment, ‘What good is that?’”
Throughout the lifetime of every human being, life and death, finality and eternity, walk hand-in-hand. We are so used to searching for guilt and sin when we suffer, that this perspective suggested by the Tanhuma regarding the deaths of Aharon’s sons offers something comforting and reassuring – almost stoic. This is the way of the world. This – and nothing more.