Between Our Tears & Hashem's Compassion — Kendell Pinkney

Over the past day or so of reading and thinking through this week’s double portion, Achrei Mot-Kedoshim, I’ve had the chance to sit with the magisterial Ladino commentary (in translation), Me’am Lo’ez, which was spearheaded by Rabbi Yaakov Kuli. Kuli was an 18th century Sephardic commentator and scholar of Talmud whose family fled from Spain to Palestine and eventually landed in modern day Turkey. While Kuli, unfortunately, passed away before finishing his Torah commentary, other well-known Turkish rabbis of the day stepped in to finish it, making it truly a one-of-a-kind literary object in early modern Jewish history.

While there are many significant insights into wonderful laws and commands (e.g. loving your neighbor) as well as into some of the most frustrating and infamous Jewish laws and commands (e.g. the prohibition on gay sex) in Me’am Lo’ez, I find myself drawn to a piece of commentary near the beginning of the portion, where the commentator, Rabbi Yitzchak Magriso comments on the fact that our portion rehashes some of the plot from a couple of portions ago. In parashat Shemini, the Torah recounts the horrifying, untimely deaths of Nadav and Abihu. Magriso implicitly wonders, why are we talking about this story again in our portion? Haven’t we put it to rest, so to speak? What is the reason for the redundancy? From this question, he offers a very interesting reading by reflecting on the fact that our portion is read as part of the Yom Kippur service:

This is why it was ordered that this Portion of Acharei Mot be read on Yom Kippur. All Israel should hear about the death of Aaron’s two sons and grieve for them. As a result they will weep for their sins. They say to themselves, “Aaron’s two sons were even greater than Moses and Aaron… Because of a relatively minor sin that they did, they died. We are full of sins. How much more do we deserve such a fate?” … If a person grieves and sheds tears for the death of Aaron’s two sons, G-d announces, “Your sin has left and your iniquity has been atoned for” (Isaiah 6:7)

First, how peculiar and wonderful that Magriso references this tradition in which Nadav and Abihu were even greater than Moses and Aaron. This tosses away the notion that they died because of some essential immorality. Rather, they committed a minor infraction and G-d became enraged. Second, it is very moving to see a tradition that states Hashem has pity on those who shed tears for Aaron’s two sons. This is all the more moving because Aaron himself was forbidden from mourning the deaths of his sons. In doing so, it is as if we later generations of Jews heal the hurt of that loss by performing a retroactive mourning ritual on behalf of our ancestor, Aaron. And still, I think there is a deeper meaning that can be made here.

I argued in the Torah blog a couple of weeks ago that through the use of postmodern literary tools, we can bypass some of the apologetics that generations of rabbis have offered on the story of Nadav and Abihu and create the space to acknowledge that for some losses, there are no satisfactory words or stories that can make sense of the loss/grief. As an attempt to build on this idea, I have found Magriso’s observation quite powerful. Here it is again: “If a person grieves and sheds tears for the death of Aaron’s two sons, G-d announces, ‘Your sin has left and your iniquity has been atoned for.’” If we pair Magriso’s commentary with the above postmodern understanding of the story, we find that the process of mourning for those inexplicable losses is elevated to a spiritual plane of immense value. To state it more simply, the tears we shed for those senseless losses that leave us speechless are not tears cried in vain; rather, they are the very thing that moves G-d to compassion. 

In a week where so many of us have experienced a storm of emotions over the verdict rendered on the killing of George Floyd, not to mention the senseless killings of other Black individuals, it is heartening to know that the very frustration and tears we cry over these brutal losses are seen by Hashem. What is more, Hashem knows full well the goodness that those murdered individuals brought into the world and can see past the rhetoric of people who would try to portray them as less than worthy of life and dignity. Between our tears and Hashem’s compassionate knowledge, may we find comfort, love and rest this shabbat.

Kendell Pinkney is the Rabbinic Fellow at Ammud: The Jews of Color Torah Academy.