Choosing Words - and Labels - Carefully

Parshat Shmini

by Rabbi Avi Billet

Shortly after the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, the Torah tells us that Moshe “announced to Aaron and ‘his surviving sons,’ telling them to take the remainder of the meal offering and to eat it as matzah…” (10:12)

Aharon has just suffered the most devastating loss that no parent should ever experience: the loss of his two oldest sons in an instant.

In the Torah’s depiction of their deaths, it seems clear that Nadav and Avihu engaged in an act – bringing a strange fire – that somehow warranted their deaths. The rabbis discuss many other possibilities of negative behavior on their end (see a list here - 8 paragraphs after the embedded video) that may have caused their demise. At no time are their younger brothers, Elazar and Itamar, included in the discussion as if to suggest that "they too should have died for what Nadav and Avihu did, yet they were somehow spared."

So why are they called the “surviving sons” – the Targum Yonatan even calls them “his sons who were saved from the ‘sreifah,’” that last word referencing the fire that consumed the souls of their older brothers? They didn’t survive the fire! They weren’t there! And they didn’t do anything to get such a possible punishment anyway!

My grandfather left Germany in 1937 with his parents. It would be an insult to those who went through the Holocaust to call him a survivor. Escaped – yes. Survivor? No.

Now, it could be that the translation, which I took from Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's Living Torah, is inaccurate. After all, the Torah’s language refers to them as “notarim” – which translates to “remaining sons” (Artscroll uses this one).  And yet, the appellation given to them from the Targum Yonatan remains a question.

Rashi posits that they were supposed to die, as punishment to their father (in that all his sons would die) on account of his role in the Golden Calf, but were spared because Moshe’s prayer saved half of Aharon’s sons. Of course, if this were true, then pinning the deaths of Nadav and Avihu on “the strange fire” seems to be a cover for the real reason for their demise.

In explaining the reason for Moshe’s death at its time, Abravanel notes that the information we have in our parsha is so sketchy – what might even seem a minor violation – it is hard to see how the punishment fit the crime. It must mean their “crime” was hidden from us, to avoid embarrassing them.

So the question becomes, were Elazar and Itamar involved in something that should have caused their deaths, yet they survived? 

It would seem from the language used that the answer is “Yes, they were.” Haktav V’Hakabbalah points out the difference between the words “Notarim” (used in this verse) and an alternative such as “Nisharim” – remaining, is that what is Notar is usually something much worse than that which is Nishar. Use of the word “notarim” indicates they were not completely innocent. R Samson Raphael Hirsch points to his commentary in Shmot 16:19 where he addressed this subtlety in language, as he goes on to mirror the teaching of HaKtav V’Hakabbalah that Notar is worse.

One view is that the deaths of Aharon's sons were delayed from what happened in Shmot 24 – when Nadav and Avihu saw God. Another, such as of Rabbi Chaim Paltiel suggests they share blame for the Golden Calf because they were big boys when their father involved himself with the infamous idol. They should have protested, they should have said, “Dad, don’t do this.”

Based on a teaching of the Taz in Yoreh Deah 43, note 7, R Pinchas HaLevi Horowitz suggests the punishment for Elazar was supposed to reach the next generation through the death of Pinchas. Clearly both of them were spared.

But perhaps there is one more possibility. That the Torah is employing a specific language to parallel what is about to happen. In the same verse in which his “notarim” sons are mentioned, they are to be told to 'Take the remainder (“noteret”) of the meal offering that is before God.'

In the end of the day, it remains unclear whether Elazar and Itamar also did something wrong. They were not at the mountain when their brothers saw God, and they were not involved in bringing the strange fire. Perhaps we can argue that they could have questioned their father’s involvement in the Golden Calf, but nonetheless – a death sentence for not standing up to their father – that they were spared from! – makes no sense at all.

Perhaps a lesson to be gleaned is that language is very important. When parents lose a child, for example, beyond showing them love, it is hard to know what are the right words. Saying “At least you have other children” is probably not helpful. They want the one who died. Bending over backwards to try to figure out whether Elazar and Itamar deserved a similar fate – either as a punishment to their father, or on account of their zero-evidenced misdeeds – is probably not the nicest way to present things to Aharon, especially if the deaths of Nadav and Avihu were on account of his role in the Golden Calf. Because we can be assured that he got the message.

The Torah uses parallel language to show that the sons who are “notarim” should be careful about the rules of “notar” (remaining Korban parts). Being labeled in such a fashion gives the younger kohanim an ever present reminder that their roles as representatives of the Jewish people are very serious, and that they must take every precaution to follow the letter of the law. We don’t want them to die on a personal level. And on a national level, their deaths would cause such chaos, and throw the nation into religious turmoil, that they need to learn every possible lesson, from every possible angle, to be sure they are on the straight path.

We model for our children, we sometimes label our children. We also label our fellow Jew. Let us be sure that whatever labels we apply to people are the kind that are not insulting or denigrating, but are embracing and educational, as they remind us all that the game of life is not about who wins or ends up on top, but about how we can all get closest to God until the moment when our souls leave, at which time we'll have clarity as to which of us achieved the closest we could to serving God in the best way.