In my book on Leviticus, I established the following foundational principles: 1) Sacrificing to God is parallel to the giving of gifts to other human beings; 2) The different reasons for giving gifts to other people parallel the different reasons for giving sacrifices to God.1
As developed so well by R. Eliyahu Dessler in his Kuntrass HaChesed,2 the primary result of giving is the binding of the giver to the recipient.3 Another way of describing this process is to say that it represents the building or enhancement of love. Accordingly, no matter whether a sacrifice is given as atonement, as thanksgiving or for any other function, it enhances a person’s relationship with God and increases the love of the person offering the sacrifice towards God.
Based on the above, we might think that the more we sacrifice to God, the better it is. Yet even a cursory knowledge of the laws of what we are allowed to sacrifice, when and where, belies such a perspective. Below we will discuss why that should be and elaborate on its possible ramifications.
Balance and Imbalance
Due to the complex yet finite nature of the world in which God has placed us, any action we take necessarily excludes others. If one is sitting, for example, one cannot simultaneously stand. To a large extent, the same is also true about emotions. Granted, if one is experiencing love, there are some compatible emotions, such as compassion or serenity, that one can feel at the same time. But there are also incompatible emotions, such as detachment or scorn, that generally cannot be felt together with love. Yirah4 would also seem to be such an incompatible emotion. At the very least, it creates tension and dissonance with many aspects of love.
In the mystical tradition, the related tension created by God’s love and truth (justice) is reflected by the paradoxical coexistence of His natural expansion (hitpashtut) and His restriction (tzimtzum). The first corresponds to God’s love, whereas the second corresponds to His justice, which in turn engenders yirah. What is most important for us here is that – though these qualities create tension – they nevertheless coexist. In fact, it goes beyond coexistence; they actually enhance one another. There are many reasons for this, most of which are not directly relevant to the subject at hand. However, one reason that is clearly relevant to us is that the restraint created by a countervailing force prevents the excesses of either. In a word, it is what creates balance or equilibrium.
This balance is demonstrably reflected in the three patriarchs of the Jewish people. Because the first two, Avraham and Yitzchak, needed to concentrate on either love or yirah respectively, neither of them created a basis for the development of their descendants. That is to say that they lacked balance. It was only with the third patriarch, Ya’akov/Yisrael – who was able to embody both traits – that balance was attained and a proper basis set. That is why the next stage of development only begins with his children and not before.
The balance found in God’s relationship to His creation, and that is personified by Ya’akov, is presumably a good thing and, hence, worthy of our emulation – even if it requires us to stretch beyond our natural emotional resources. The question is how to do so. Fortunately, the Torah gives us some guidance, a significant measure of which is associated with the sacrificial rite:
Since giving (i.e. sacrificing) binds the giver to the recipient in love, it is an activity that distances him from yirah, to the point of – at least temporarily5 – doing away with it altogether. That is because the all-encompassing nature of the resulting bliss leaves no room for competing emotions. If follows that the most natural sacrifice would be free of any level of yirah. And the Torah’s first recorded sacrifice – that of Kayin – was arguably just that, which is precisely why it was rejected! (See the next section below.)
To understand this better, however, we have to first look at the principle of HaAhava Mekalkel HaShurah – that love corrupts the line (meaning the intuitive sense of what is appropriate).6 This principle tells us that love’s natural passion can make us lose sight of why we should not push away anything that gets in the way of its expression. The most famous example of this is Avraham saddling his donkey on the morning of his imminent sacrifice of Yitzchak. His enthusiasm to fulfill God’s command made him bypass the accepted procedure of delegating this menial task to one of his servants.7 Since he was a respected elderly man with several attendants at his service, doing this was denigrating and made him look silly. Yet because of his love for God, he got carried away; he forgot that deference to the image of God that he carried should have prevented him from doing this type of thing. In his case, there was the additional consideration that the more one is associated with God, the more one must avoid that which could be seen as demeaning. Avraham was not only elderly, wealthy and wise. He was also seen as a representative of God and, therefore, not meant to do menial tasks if it could be avoided.8
As shown by the Biblical story of David dancing wildly before the ark of the covenant,9 there are judgment calls – when the proper balance is not clear. In that case – in spite of Michal’s critique – it would seem that the Biblical text approves of David’s behavior. Regardless, both stories show us that the passionate nature of love often blurs other considerations that should be present in deciding how to act.
While Avraham’s willingness to forego the restrictions that go with his position may not have been such a serious problem,10 the same cannot be said about the restrictions one must observe towards God. For even if we choose to forgo our own honor (in spite of the divine image that we carry), we most certainly do not have the right to forgo the honor of someone else, all the more so when the someone else is God. Hence there is a need to be on guard when love threatens to remove not only restrictions that protect one’s own honor, but also those that protect the honor of God. One important way to do that is to inculcate yirah in situations that are likely to be devoid of them. And – as mentioned earlier – sacrificing is certainly one such situation.
Kayin, Nadav and Avihu
With the above in mind, let us return to Kayin’s offering. One influential commentator has suggested that the first recorded sacrifice represents a type of primitive insurance policy – sharing with God as appeasement, so that He doesn’t take everything. That commentator, Rabbi D. T. Hoffman asserts that this type of motivation replicates that of idolatrous sacrifices, given as a bribe to protect oneself from those forces thought to potentially threaten one’s well being. Yet this hardly explains why he would not give the finest of his produce, as does his brother.11 Someone afraid knows that his gift needs to impress the one he fears; and that there is little room for error, given that his very life could be at stake. Hence it seems to me that there must be a different reason for Kayin’s selection of what to sacrifice.
Recalling what we discussed about the most natural (and, hence, default) sacrifice coming from unrestrained love, the explanation could be straightforward. It is true that lovers often show their love with very expensive gifts. But the opposite is also true. The act of bringing flowers found in the field to the beloved, for example, is as old as it is common. The intimacy of a more intense love makes such an inexpensive and casual gift meaningful and welcome. The message is that one wants to give the beloved anything that they would appreciate, no matter how small or trivial. In such a case, the flower does not have to be perfect. For the idea is not the effort put into its selection, but rather the indication of simply thinking about the beloved at all times, even when one is not looking for a present. Though this was likely the motivation, Kayin was still mistaken. The fact that such an expression of love is, for whatever reason, acceptable towards another person does not automatically make it acceptable towards God.
Not only does this seem to be the best explanation for why Kayin would think of giving a rather mundane and unimpressive gift to God, it also fits the story’s context. No one had yet thought of giving a gift to God. Perhaps for good reason. For what does God not already own, that we can “give” to Him? In other words, the gift cannot be functional, such that the greater its functionality, the greater the gift. Rather it is merely symbolic showing the Recipient that the giver is thinking of Him. Such a gift would make a great deal of sense.12
This fits well with the word, mincha, the word used to describe the sacrifice here.13 That a mincha need not be lavish is shown by the sacrifice very frequently associated with this word, the grain offering. Indeed, when the Torah speaks about a mincha to God (as opposed to one given to other people), it is otherwise always speaking about a grain offering. Moreover – as opposed to korban, olah or zevach – mincha is a word also used for gifts to people, something which strengthens our contention that Kayin’s frame of reference was the giving of gifts to people beloved by the giver.
There may, however, be room for some confusion here: Throughout the Tanakh – as is also the case here – a mincha is given by someone subservient to his protector (or Protector). This, of course, might be seen as supporting Hoffman’s approach. Yet the fact that in the context of the sacrificial rite, mincha describes the humblest of all offerings shows that such a gift to the master is not meant as a bribe, but rather as a show of affection (even as that affection may or may not be sincere14). Because we tend to think of these types of relationships in more political terms, it is easy to miss the fact that they are described both in the Tanakh and in the literature of other local cultures of the time as ones in which the subservient party loves his protector. Granted, the Biblical word for love, ahava, may have wider implications than what we think of as love today, but it is nevertheless used to show that the essence of the relationship is typified by loyalty and emotional concern for the master, as opposed to fear.
In any event, Kayin’s gift is rejected. If we are correct thus far, it follows that the problem with Kayin’s offering was its lack of balance. Specifically because it was an unrestrained expression of love, it failed to meet up to what is required by yirah, i.e. an offering that shows respect for God as well as love. Because Kayin was exploring uncharted territory, he was not punished. Nevertheless, the contrast to the acceptance of his brother’s more respectful offering made matters quite clear.
Kayin’s mistake was understandable. His natural feelings of love for God made him want to express that love in the same way as he would legitimately express it to another human being. With God, however, it is a dangerous path that can destroy the foundations of the balance so necessary to a healthy relationship between man and his Maker. Yet it appears that the lesson was not fully internalized.
Hence, the offering of Nadav and Avihu in the book of Vayikra can be viewed as a sort of replay of Kayin’s mistake earlier on. Like Kayin, they engage in a spontaneous and uncontrolled expression of love, which utterly fails.
The Torah describes their offering as one about which He did not command.15 That He did not command it does not automatically make it something that they must not do. Just the opposite! Love is often registered precisely where one acts freely and without obligation or even suggestion. In their zealous love for God, Aharon’s sons sought to do what in other regards is positively described as lefanim meshurat hadin, going beyond the letter of the law.
So, a priori, there was no immediately obvious reason for Nadav and Avihu to know what they were doing was wrong – unless they had studied the history of sacrifices (which could well have been part of their training on how to serve as a priest). Yet had they thought more carefully, it is likely that they could have understood that – by its very nature – their initiative was bound to be devoid of yirah. And even more than Kayin was expected to have some intuitive awareness of the problem this creates, Aharon’s outstanding sons were expected to be aware of it as well.
Hence the true problem here is allowing themselves to be swept up in love and, so, allowing for the eclipse of their sense of yirah. In that case, the specific violation of the law is secondary, which is why many commentators trying to understand what law they actually broke are stumped.16 Much more than the violation of a specific commandment, it was their entire approach that was wrong.
As to the unusually immediate death meted out to Nadav and Avihu, this too follows well from our approach. It is not so much punishment as justice that we see here, but rather punishment as a deterrent. Because the passionate uncontrolled love of God shown by Nadav and Avihu was so seductively appealing, it had to be powerfully stopped in a way that would prevent its imitation in the future. From that perspective, this Godly death sentence was the equivalent of what in rabbinic literature is called a horaat sha’ah, an emergency ruling. Such a ruling is allowed to violate the normative procedure of law, due to its particularly salient nature.
Destructive Love
While the balance that the Torah apparently wants to teach us may be understood narrowly as relating only to our relationship with God, I believe it has wider implications. This, even though the unique nature of God prevents us from simply replicating the teaching in full.
Indeed – as mentioned before about the giving of small informal gifts – there may be a time and place for human interactions that move towards one end or the other in a healthy way. That is certainly the case of singular interactions. True, it is not impossible that a singular burst of passion towards another person will forever throw the relationship into an unhealthy imbalance. Yet it is something much less likely than in the wholly overwhelming relationship possible with God. Even so, when we go beyond singular interactions and deal with an interpersonal relationship as a whole, it needs to reflect a balance similar to the one required in our relationship with God. That is because any relationship in which love is so uncontrolled as to leave no room for respect inevitably becomes destructive of the self, the other or both.
If that is correct, Nadav and Avihu don’t only teach us about how to relate to God, but also how to relate to each other. Its most basic lesson about balance is a critically important one, all the more so at a time when it has become popular to think that there can never be too much love. In fact, the Torah teaches that there can be very few things as destructive as too much love.
