The first 34 verses of Acharei Mos discuss the holiest person, place, and time in the Jewish experience. They detail the service of the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest—who is “separated, to be sanctified as most holy [of people],” in the Kodesh Hakodashim, the Holy of Holies in the Temple—the most sanctified space in the world, on Yom Kippur—the holiest day on the calendar.
Reading this Parshah annually encourages us too to likewise strive for holiness. The key to this quest for holiness lies in the name Acharei Mos.
Acharei
The words acharei mos literally mean “after the death of,” and refer to the circumstances in which G-d conveyed to Moshe the mitzvos recorded in this Parshah: after the deaths of Aharon’s sons Nadav and Avihu. According to Chassidic teaching, they died as a direct result of their ecstatic love of G-d, which became too intense for their bodies to handle. They truly “drew near before G-d,” albeit to a fault. Thus the name Acharei Mos—“After the death [of the sons of Aharon],” implies that there is still something to strive for even after reaching the extraordinary heights Nadav and Avihu reached at their deaths.
How is this possible? We are told in the following Parshah, “You shall be holy, because I, Hashem, your G-d, am holy.” This means that a Jew has the ability to reach truly unlimited levels of holiness, mirroring the infinite holiness of G-d Himself, as the soul of every Jew is “a veritable part of G-d above.”
The Torah therefore categorizes the mitzvos given in this parsha as “Acharei Mos,” after—or beyond—the “deaths of the sons of Aharon,” to teach us that even if we have reached what seems to be the “spiritual ceiling” for a living human being, there is still more work to be done and greater holiness to attain.
—Likkutei Sichos, vol. 12, pp. 92–93
