This week’s Torah portion, Acharei Mot–Kedoshim, begins by referencing the death of two of Aaron’s children, Nadav and Avihu, in Parshat Shemini, which we read a few weeks ago: “God spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew close to God’s presence.” The parsha then continues to describe the Yom Kippur service, seemingly presenting a way to approach the Divine within the Holy of Holies and avoid the fate of Aaron’s two sons. This parsha implies that they died because they rushed into the Holy of Holies without the temporal and procedural guidelines of the Yom Kippur service. Yet, in the source narrative in Parshat Shemini, Moses seems to imply that the death of Aaron’s two sons was not the product of their sin, or of miscalculation or haste, but something more fundamental.

“Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took a fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before God a strange fire, which had not been commanded of them. And fire came forth from God and consumed them; thus they died before God. Moses said to Aaron, This is what God meant by saying: ‘I will become sanctified through those who are close to me and before all the people I will be glorified,’ and Aaron was silent.”

It seems on the textual level that Moses expected this to happen. That at some point God told Moses that God would be glorified through the death or sacrifice of people close to God. Did God indeed tell Moses that holy people would have to die in order to instill a sense of God’s glory and weightiness upon the Jewish people? This seems to go against everything the Torah preaches about the anathema of human sacrifice. In fact, later in this week’s Torah portion we read about the practice of Molech, mortally putting one’s child through fire for the pagan deity, and how terrible it is. Additionally, isn’t the binding of Isaac all about drawing attention to the idea that God does not desire human sacrifice?

I have been thinking this week about the jarring juxtaposition of Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s memorial day for fallen soldiers, which is followed immediately by the great messianic joy of Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel’s independence day. An immediate transition from mourning to joy, from tragedy to redemption, from death to life. The message of this emotional and theological whiplash is of course that the modern state of Israel rests on the foundation of the sacrifices of Jewish fighters since the beginnings of modern Israel. Additionally, a week before Yom HaZikaron is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust remembrance day. The modern state of Israel emerged not only out of Israel’s wars of independence and defense but also out of the ashes of the greatest destruction in Jewish history, the Shoah. 

As strange as it sounds, are all the profound and tragic sacrifices of Jewish history in some way a reflection of Moses’ statement in this parsha, “This is what God said, among those who are close to me I will be sanctified and before all the people I will be glorified”: that holy people have to die on the path to highlighting the sanctity and glory of God? Does national closeness to God, and the sanctity and redemption which comes with it, require sacrifice of the holy ones, as it did in our parsha? 

This is strange stuff that does not sound very Jewish, but seems to be a significant part of the story of Jewish history. A persecuted nation, pummeled again and again, only to rise consistently and quickly like a phoenix from its ashes. 

May God change this well-worn path of Jewish history and find a new way to be sanctified, a new way to raise His people to their rightful place as a moral nation on the land of its ancestors, to truly sanctify God in the eyes of the world and be, as God promised Abraham, “A blessing to all the families of the earth.”