The Right Kind of Fire

This week’s Torah portion is Shemini, which means 8th. This eighth day was to be a grand holiday, the day on which the priests offered sacrifices on behalf of the people in the newly built Tabernacle for the very first time. All the Israelites were assembled there. They had made the Tabernacle and the priests vestments just as they had been commanded. The priests offered the sacrifice exactly as God instructed them and the cloud of God’s glory, showing God’s approval, appeared to them, letting them know that God was happy with them. Then tragedy struck. The Torah says, “Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, they put fire in them and placed incense upon it and they brought before God an alien fire that God had not commanded them. A fire came forth from before God and consumed them and they died before God.”(Levit 10:1-2) This is one of three notable instances in the Torah in which fire is associated with misfortune.

Twice in Numbers fire injures us. The Torah says (Num. 11:1) “The people took to seeking complaints. It was evil in the ears of God and God heard; God’s wrath flared and a fire burned against them and it consumed at the edge of the camp.” Just a few portions later, “They journeyed from Mt. Hor by the way of the Sea of Reeds to go around the land of Edom and the spirit of the people grew short on the way. The people spoke against God and Moses, ‘why did you bring us up from Egypt to die in this wilderness, for there is no food and no water and our soul is disgusted with the insubstantial food.’ God sent fiery serpents against the people and they bit the people.” (Num. Chukat) In these three passages we can see that the fire, or the energy for the burning, came from the people themselves. In each instance, these people were acting for themselves alone, not for the greater good.

Rabbi R.S. Hirsch brings out the very important point that the two sons, Nadav and Abihu, took their own fire pans, not the holy objects that belonged to the nation to make this sacrifice. This tells us that they were concerned with their own prestige, their own ideas, and their own power. The people who complained in the book of Numbers had lost sight of the reason for their wandering, the reason behind the existence of the Jewish nation, and its mission. Shemini tells us that there is a mission, a reason for us to participate in the what the S’fat Emet calls a “system of restraint,” which could mean the laws in the Torah, or even just the dietary laws at the end of this portion.

There is a reason for everything that has been commanded, and asked of us. There is the right kind of fire and a wrong kind of fire. From our small vantage point, none of it makes sense, when the focus is on ourselves. We literally cannot see the forest for the trees. Rabbi Hirsch says that in idol worship, the aim of the sacrifices was to bend the Gods’ will to our own, but Judaism concerns the fulfillment of God’s will which is a better life for us all. This requires us to send out the right kind of energy into the world. Not the fire of complaints or of ambition, but the fire of love for goodness, a burning desire to be of help and service to others, the fervent faith that what we do matters vitally in the world, so that God can guide it toward greater goodness and blessing for us all.

We all want to feel important, to live lives in which others look up to us. We all want to live secure lives of comfort and ease, expressing ourselves and fulfilling ourselves. We can achieve these ends by harmonizing our inner fire to serve the unfolding of a higher consciousness in the world, and by exhibiting that consciousness when we interact with others. As Rabbi Hillel famously said in Pirkei Avot, “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?” And if not now, when? Our unfolding and the quality of our growth is in our own hands. And anyone who wants to expand into goodness will be encouraged, helped, and lifted from above.