Parshat Shemini: Vayidom Aharon— On Sacred Silence, Humility, and Moral Clarity

One of the things I struggled with most after I lost my mom, was the silence. I was so painfully aware of it when people didn’t say enough, but so desperate to welcome it back when I felt a person saying too much. The world had suddenly become so quiet after she died; but it became loud too. Every sound and question and conversation, an intrusion into my grief. Every patch of quiet a reminder that so few people understood the unique kind of pain I was in. 

And I remember the din of shiva– hearing pieces of conversations happening around me, apart from me– from my low and lonely perch on the couch in the middle of the living room. It was overwhelming, and something about the chatter felt wrong, misplaced, inappropriate. In fact, Rabbi Yochanan teaches that comforters are not permitted to say a word until the mourners open conversation. And Rav Pappa says that the merit of attending a house of mourning lies in maintaining silence. 

But I also remember when shiva ended, and just how much I missed the noise. How I missed those little distractions that pulled me away from my sadness, that drew me out of myself. Those conversations and stories that made me laugh and made me feel like myself again, even if just for a moment. But more often than not, especially in those early weeks and months of mourning, I needed everything and everyone to be quiet. Needed to linger in the silence to feel safe, to feel that healing was ever going to come. 

In this week’s Parsha, Parshat Shemini, we encounter tragic loss and subsequent silence. At the beginning of Leviticus chapter 10 we read:

Now Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before G-d foreign fire, which G-d had not commanded them to bring. And fire came forth from G-d and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of G-d. The Moshe said to Aharon, “This is what G-d meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.” And Aharon was silent. 

Here, Aharon’s sons appear to violate G-d’s specific instructions about how and when exactly to offer sacrifices. And the commentators are generally in agreement that this is the reason that Nadav and Avihu were killed. On the surface, this is a simple story about two people who broke the law, and contravened G-d’s word. But if we look more closely at the other two characters in this story, Aharon and Moshe, we learn something fundamental about these moments of catastrophic loss and how our tradition compels us to respond. 

This moment plays out with devastating speed. Aharon has just witnessed the death of his two sons. And he is seemingly reeling from shock. But before Aharon can even take a breath, let alone utter a faint cry, or ask why, Moshe steps in, to fill the void with an explanation, a rationalization for what is likely the most traumatic moment in Aharon’s life. Immediately following the killing of Nadav and Avihu Moshe says: “This is what G-d meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.” 

This is what G-d meant? As if an explanation or even clarity about the way G-d operates in the world could bring comfort. That this information might make Aharon’s pain disappear, that maybe even Aharon is foolish for feeling any pain at all. But in this response, Moshe fails his brother. Because in these moments, the reasons don’t matter. 

And while it’s true that many of the commentators see Moshe’s response as compassionate, an expression of genuine consolation for his bereaved brother, I think Moshe’s almost impulsive need to speak here is at odds with the scale of Aharon’s loss. 

But even so, I think we can all understand and even relate to Moshe here. Precisely because there are no words that can meet such a moment, such a tragic, terrible loss; because death and dying and illness are things that happen that we would prefer to reject, to ignore– our instinct when confronted with them, is to do our best to make them make sense. To contextualize, to explain, to help our minds grapple with the difficult reality of our very precious and precarious lives, and maybe even to try to trick ourselves into believing that it’s really not so bad, that we can move on. I think we’ve all been in these situations. I know, because I've been there, too– sitting at a Shiva, feeling so awkward, uncomfortable, not knowing what to say; so painfully aware of the fact that nothing I can say will change anything. Afraid of causing more pain. And somehow feeling like the right thing to do in moments like that is to keep talking. That if I manage to fill the void, I can take away some of the pain. 

But I realize, in reading Moshe now, that we do this to protect ourselves from the mourner’s pain. To put distance between us and their tragedy. Our minds prefer neat and tidy narratives, to disordered, unexplainable chaos. A story, with a reason, with a plot, is predictable, and easier to stomach. But we don’t live in a simple world, and thank G-d, we are so much more than simple emotions. 

And the encounter continues, and ends by describing Aharon’s condition: Vayidom Aharon, and Aharon was silent. 

The commentators offer a variety of explanations on Aharon’s silence. Abarbanel teaches that Aharon’s heart turned to lifeless stone, and he did not weep and mourn like a bereaved father. Nor did he accepts Moshes’s consolation, for his soul had left him and he was speechless. 

Sforno, on the other hand, teaches that Aharon actually consoled himself after having been told that the death of his sons represented a sanctification of G-d’s name. 

Nachmanides points to the verb vayidom, and he became silent, as referring to a silence that follows a period of wailing and audible grief. That Aharon isn’t uniquely pious in this moment, but perhaps moving through the initial stages of mourning, just as any of us would. Nachmanides, unlike many other classical commentators, suggests that Aharon’s silence is not in fact acceptance of or acquiescence to what feels like Divine injustice. But rather that Aharon’s silence is protest; more human, more humble protest. 

Internet culture has robbed us of sacred silence. For better or worse, each of us now has a platform, a place to vent, to relitigate, to advance our own personal agendas without vetting, and without responsibility. We can be and say anything on the internet. We can be unilateral in our positions, and we don’t have to do the hard work of engaging the other. 

On Tuesday, seven World Central Kitchen relief workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike while delivering aid to desperate Palestinians in Gaza. Their names were: Zomi Frankcom, James Kirby, John Chapman, James Henderson, Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, Damian Sobol, and Jacob Flickinger. This was a tragic and preventable accident. And it is important to acknowledge that the Israeli military took responsibility for this horrible disaster. 

Since the war began, people on both sides of the political spectrum have taken to the internet to try to publicly understand, rationalize, contextualize, and explain away the tragic and unimaginable loss of life. And this catastrophe was no exception. 

My attention was called to a tweet this week that suggested that Zomi, James, John, James, Saifeddin, Damian, and Jacob were complicit in their own deaths. This tweet implied that these seven relief workers were working with Hamas– a claim that has not been verified– and therefore deserved to die, even though each of them put themselves in harm’s way to help, to save lives. 

I was sick to my stomach reading this tweet. And the truth is, I can’t stop thinking about it. It was arrogant, hateful, and so deeply dismissive of the humanity of other people. Not only did it lack empathy, it reeked of the worst kind of myopic thinking– a greediness of pain– an admission that nobody’s pain, but my own, matters. A trivializing of death. And so I wonder, if this person had taken the extra minute to really think about what he was posting; if instead of feeling a need to react in the moment, that he just said nothing. Of course, there is a place for analysis and protest and noise. There are moments when we are actually commanded not to be silent. But in the face of such tremendous loss, maybe all we can say with any amount of moral clarity or credibility, is that there really are no words. 

We are six months into the war. And I hope that we can all agree, regardless of where you might land on the political spectrum, regardless of how you think about the legitimacy and necessity of this war, that the terrible loss of life is tragic. Full stop. 

I think about Moshe and Aharon and the way they are bound together not only by the loss of Nadav and Avihu, but by their respective responses to such trauma. And I can’t help but wonder what that encounter would have felt like for Aharon if Moshe had simply said nothing. If, instead of speaking empty words, he  took Aharon’s hand, and offered to meet him in the place of his very deep, very raw, and very real pain. 

We should be humbled in the presence of another person’s pain. Casual indifference for the loss of life, any life, is anathema to what it means to be a Jew, and perhaps more importantly what it means to be a human being. 

When we visit a shiva home, we are instructed to say the following to a mourner: Hamakom Yinachem Etchem B’toch Sha’ar Avlei Tzion v’Yerushalayim. May G-d comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. G-d can give comfort that we can’t. G-d is comfortable with silence in a way that we are not. Because G-d is the place, is the Makom, where we don’t need any words. 

May the memories of Zomi, James, John, James, Saifeddin, Damian, and Jacob be for a blessing. 

Shabbat Shalom.