Shemini: Human Sacrifice

Death is the central character in Shmini. This is the parsha in which Nadav and Avihu, the eldest sons of Aaron, die in a temple service gone wrong.  Moses frames the event: 

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֜ה אֶֽל־אַהֲרֹ֗ן הוּא֩ אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֨ר יְ׀ לֵאמֹר֙ בִּקְרֹבַ֣י אֶקָּדֵ֔שׁ וְעַל־פְּנֵ֥י כׇל־הָעָ֖ם אֶכָּבֵ֑ד וַיִּדֹּ֖ם אַהֲרֹֽן׃ 

Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what Gd meant by saying:

Through those near to Me I show Myself holy,
And gain glory before all the people.”And Aaron was silent.

The death of Nadav and Avihu is sandwiched between the animal sacrifice rite that initiated the mishkan (a process that requires the slaughter of the offerings,) and   the  rules and lists that define the animals, birds, fish and insects that are and are not permitted to eat (after ritual slaughter). The parsha ends with laws of tumah, ritual impurity that apply to the carcasses of these animals. 

At the close of the parsha, death is an invisible, but transmissible substance. It is the core of tumah, ritual impurity. When an animal dies by "natural causes", that natural cause may be a transmissible, thus the carcass is taboo.  Touching it ,or carrying it, could transfer the deadly process to the bearer. This is not  irrational. There are processes, e.g.anthrax, that kill people who touch the carcass of an animal that died from it.  Such explanations that involve science are avoided by religionists.  The science may change; the situations of  applicability can be identified.  Explanations that appeal to modern understanding are to be avoided; they dilute the purity of the commandment.  Perhaps the spread of disease is one of several elements in ritual impurity. 

Entering the temple after an exposure  to the tamei ( ritually impure) is a grave trespass. Bringing the transmissible death substance into the crowded courtyard is a public ill. The ritually impure were also excluded from the isolated inner sanctum. The danger of an approach to the Divine had to be purely supernatural, with no trace of the peril of disease.   

Entering the temple while tamei ( ritually impure) carried  the penalty of kareith. Kareith, translated as excision, means that a person was cut off from the community. An element of the excision is early death.   It was recognized that the contaminated might enter the temple courtyard by accident. A sacrifice of expiation was expected  for such a violation.  The purifying death compensates for the pollution of death

People killed the animals in the sacrificial rite. Since the cause of death is human intervention, there is no reason to think that some transmissible death is lurking in the corpse. 

Nadav and Avihu, Aaron's eldest sons,  died because of  their error in ritual. This was  neither a natural ( tamei) death, nor a manslaughter. It was not an ascent, like the deaths of Moses and Aaron. It was an overdose-  an attempt to get higher gone terribly wrong. 

The post hoc interpretation is:

בִּקְרֹבַ֣י אֶקָּדֵ֔שׁ וְעַל־פְּנֵ֥י כׇל־הָעָ֖ם אֶכָּבֵ֑ד

Through those near to Me I show Myself holy,
And gain glory before all the people.

This became a paradigm for thinking about deaths that seem to violate the idea of overwhelming potential power that allowed a terrible injustice.   It brings Psalm 116;15  to mind 

יָ֭קָר בְּעֵינֵ֣י יְ הַ֝מָּ֗וְתָה לַחֲסִידָֽיו׃ 

The death of His faithful ones

is grievous in the LORD’s sight.

Moshe's obituary is disquieting and ambiguous. It reinforces the mortal  danger of approaching Gd.  בִּקְרֹבַ֣י אֶקָּדֵ֔שׁ, through those near me ekodesh . Ekodesh does mean I will be holy, but it also has the implication of incineration. The Talmud (Chulin 115a) renders 

פן תקדש פן תוקד אש

Lest it be burned [pen tukad esh]. 

 Nadav and Avihu are cast into the role of human sacrifices. Their death by ritual  serves some atonement function for those who mourn them.  This epitaph becomes the framework for thinking about soldiers who die in battle, victims of pogroms, suicides, etc. Why did Gd fail to save them? Their deaths are given a (complex) post mortem significance. Gd does not (always) save the unwise and the innocent, but their deaths have meaning. Go figure it out. 

We stand between the filth that is death and the purity of the Divine. Death is grievous, inevitable, significant. Much depends on the interpretation. The answer is silence