Holy Mess in the Middle
Leviticus is well-known as a dry rule-book for archaic purity rituals, a manual for a profession (priests) that has long been out of business. It has within its twenty-seven chapters only two stories. But if its contents are not as accessible as some of the other books of the Torah, its structure holds remarkable beauty and meaning.
In the 13th century CE, the great scholar Moshe ben Nachman (Ramban, or Nachmanides) noticed that the structure of the Mishkan (the portable temple built in the wilderness) mapped onto the instructions for boundaries around Mt. Sinai at the giving of the ten commandments. The people could gather at the base of the mountain but go no higher. Similarly, regular people could enter the Outer Courtyard of the Mishkan. Mid-way up the mountain Aaron, his sons, and the elders ascended. But only Moses reached the top where God’s intimate presence communed with him. Similarly, the regular priestly class could cross the first screen in the Mishkan and access the Holy Space. But only the High Priest could enter through the second screen into the Holy of Holies, from where God’s presence emanated. Both Mt. Sinai and the Mishkan create a three-tiered structure of access to holy intensity.
In her book Leviticus as Literature, the anthropologist Mary Douglas maps that same three-part structure onto the book itself. She imagines the act of reading the book as a tour through the structure it revolves around. I won’t go into the details of how she arrives at the layout (if you want to go deeper on her work without reading the whole book, here is an excellent 15-page article with illustrations that elaborates on this particular idea.) The key point is that the two stories in Leviticus function as the screens in the Mishkan, the gateways from one area to the next. Both stories involve violations of the rules laid out in Leviticus. The second screen, Leviticus 24:10-22, relates the crime and punishment of one who gathered firewood on Shabbat. The first screen is in our Torah portion Shmini. We learn the fate of Nadav and Avihu, two of the High Priest Aaron’s sons, who offer “strange fire” and are themselves consumed by divine fire for their misstep.
These stories that transport you from one place to the next are about messy moments. They remind me of the second act in a play. If Act 1 is about establishing the rules and the stakes of a story, Act 2 causes lots of damage and mayhem. In Act 2, everything seems to fall apart, although by Act 3 most stories bring about a cathartic resolution. The two stories in Leviticus are Act 2 stories, messy middle stories, mid-way points from one place to another.
In the Talmud (Kiddushin 30a), we learn that there used to be people called sofrim, often translated as sages or scholars because of the root meaning of sefer as scroll/book. But that word can also mean “to count”, and the Talmud teaches that these counters would “count all the letters in the Torah. They would say the letter vav in ‘belly’ (Leviticus 11:42) is the midpoint of the letters in a Torah scroll. Darosh darash ‘diligently inquire’ (Leviticus 10:16) are the midpoint of the words…”
So if you were to find the mid-point, the messy middle of the whole Torah, you’d land right in our Torah portion! The phrase darosh darash is particularly significant as a beating heart of the Torah, because that root is all about interpretation, learning, study, inquiry - in other words, the principle way we engage with Torah.
These words come right after the story of Nadav and Avihu die. Aaron and his other two sons appear to do something that Moses didn’t direct them to do, and he becomes angry and challenges them. They end up convincing him they are right, but it is an odd moment. Everyone is still grieving - perhaps Moses was afraid after losing some family members to an incorrect ritual that he is about to lose more relatives to sloppy ritual. Or perhaps we are getting yet another glimpse of Moses’s habitual anger that will continue to get him into trouble.
The 18th century Moroccan commentator the Or HaChaim has another take: “Personally, I think that Moses had not yet decided to permit consumption of the meat of that sin-offering…We may therefore understand the words darosh darash (diligently inquiring) that Moses was still busy researching the applicable ruling. The repetition of the words is a hint that it could have either of two rulings. The reason Moses was angry was not because Aaron and his sons had done wrong but because they had taken it upon themselves to decide the issue without asking him.”
What I love about this reading is not that Moses appears to be micromanaging Aaron, but that he is still involved in learning. God doesn’t just lay out every rule for him to parrot. Moses has to study hard to discern Torah. We get a glimpse of the Moses the Student, not Moses the Teacher. And it happens right in the middle of the Torah, right at the messy Act 2 story that also serves as a sacred doorway into a holier place.
What I take from this is that when we are in messy moments (and who isn’t?), when we are feeling lost, confused, unsure, hopeful but not confident, when we are struggling to see the horizon, or feel sad or alone, we might take comfort in this: Messy, hard moments are where we also learn deep and wise Torah, and messy, hard moments are a precursor to holiness. Or as Brene Brown says in her book Rising Strong, “the middle is messy, but it’s also where the magic happens.” I don’t wish messy middles on anyone, but I know we will all move through them from time to time. May we, like Moses, darosh darash, seek out meaning, and look for the doorways to the next holy home place on our journey.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jay LeVine
