Chasidic Insights
1 Liable to the death penalty: From a deeper perspective, Aaron’s sons did not sin, nor was their death a punishment. It was not only in full accordance with God’s will that they offer up their incense before Moses could command it, it was a vital conclusion to the consecration rites.
The innate consciousness of our Divine soul is its awareness of being bound to God, being one with Him. Normally, this awareness is obfuscated by the self-awareness of our human/animal souls, but we have seen how drinking wine can, under the proper circumstances, allow the Divine soul to overtake our consciousness. In the words of the Talmudic sages: “When wine enters, secrets emerge”—the ultimate “secret” being our unity with God. Wine is also a metaphor for the inner dimension of the Torah, the study of which also aids the Divine soul in manifesting itself in our consciousness.
This is why Aaron’s sons drank wine—in order to open their minds and reveal their Divine souls. At the same time they drank wine literally, they also drank “wine” metaphorically: by allowing their Divine souls to overtake their consciousness, their minds became simultaneously flooded with profound insights into the Torah’s inner dimension, increasing their sense of oneness with God.
When this sense of oneness with God overtakes our conscious mind sufficiently, we gain an intuitive knowledge of God’s will. At this level of consciousness, there is no need for God to articulate His commandments to us explicitly, since we already know what He wants of us.
(There are advantages both in waiting to fulfill God’s will until He expresses it and in intuiting His will before it is expressed—or fulfilling it beyond how it is expressed. On the one hand, submitting to God’s express will evinces our devotion to it, our willingness to override our own agendas in favor of His. Thus, the sages teach us that “one who performs [a Divine commandment] having been commanded [to do so] is greater than one who performs [such a deed] though not having been commanded [to do so].” On the other hand, intuiting His will before it is expressed and/or fulfilling it before we are required to—or when we are not required to—evinces our identification with His will, the substitution of His agenda for ours. The first is a greater sacrifice; the second a greater achievement of Divine consciousness.)
It was to this level of Divine consciousness that Nadav and Avihu ascended on the eighth day of the installation rites. Thus, their incense offering was one “that He had not commanded,” for they intuited its necessity even before God disclosed it.
Moreover, their incense offering was an expression of their conscious unification with God. Incense is offered up on the Inner Altar, which parallels the inner dimension of the heart—i.e., our Divine soul, which is constantly bound to its Divine source—and serves to reveal and intensify this bond. In contrast, the sacrifices offered up on the Outer Altar are designed to elevate the outer dimension of the heart—our human/animal soul—to Divinity. Thus, the Hebrew word for “sacrifice” (קרבן) means “to come close,” implying that the offerer is not yet close, and that through the sacrifice he comes close but does not necessarily become one with God. In contrast, the Hebrew word for “incense” (קטרת) means “bound,” implying that through the incense, the offerer binds himself with his Divine source, becoming one with it.
Aaron’s son’s incense offering therefore completed the rites performed by Moses and Aaron and sanctified the Tabernacle. Although the Divine Presence had already descended upon the Tabernacle, it did not permeate it; the Tabernacle and the Divine Presence remained separate entities. This dichotomy mirrored the Divine consciousness that Aaron had evinced in performing his rites: he had done all that he was commanded, but had stopped short of ascending to the level where commandments become superfluous.
Therefore, the Tabernacle’s sanctification, the achievement of oneness with God, required an “alien fire,” one that was different than any rite that had yet been performed, by virtue of having originated in consummate Divine consciousness. Nadav and Avihu’s incense satisfied this requirement, and therefore elicited a fire from God that surpassed the fire that descended through Aaron’s sacrificial service, permeating the Tabernacle with holiness rather than just manifesting holiness in it.
Nadav and Avihu’s elevated Divine consciousness led them to lose all sense of their physicality, until their souls left their bodies. As Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar explains, in their intense desire to cleave to God, they continued to rise through spiritual heights even as they felt their souls leaving them. From this perspective, their death was not a punishment; they died in the same way that Moses and Aaron would later die: by the Divine kiss.
Nevertheless, their behavior was acceptable only as an ad hoc measure required for the purposes of that special day. Therefore, we are not intended to emulate their example; on the contrary, we are expressly forbidden to pursue such suicidal spiritual rapture. Although it is necessary to seek inspiration and renew it constantly, the purpose of reaching increasingly higher planes of Divine consciousness is to bring the acquired consciousness down into the world, thereby making the world increasingly more conscious of God and transforming it into His home.
This duality of seeking inspiration by transcending the limitations of the physical world and then applying the inspiration gained to elevating the physical world is but one reflection of the oscillation that characterizes all life. In the words of the prophet Ezekiel, “the living beings were running and returning,” which is interpreted to mean that “all life exhibits running and returning motion.” Physically, this oscillation is manifest in the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs as well as in the systole and diastole of the heart. In spiritual terms, the health of the soul requires periodic oscillation between world-forsaking flights of inspiration and world-affirming dedication to our Divine mission. Inasmuch as the purpose of creation is to make the world a home for God, the ultimate goal is to return from spiritual ascent to worldly engagement, infusing the mundane with holiness.
