Kavanot: פרשת שמיני תשפ״ב

This past Sunday was the funeral of HaRav Chaim Kanievsky. There are no coincidences, and the next day, while waiting for my wife at someone’s house, I noted a small volume on the bookshelf. It was a collection of Rav Kanievsky’s comments on the parsha.

In this week’s parsha, after two of Aharon’s sons are killed, Moshe tells the remaining כהנים that they need to continue with the עבודה:

Rav Kanievsky’s comment:

That will require a lot of unpacking. חז״ל understand the conversation between Moshe and Aharon to be a halachic one. The sacrifices had to be eaten even באנינות, even though Aharon and his sons were now mourners, before the burial.

But in general, an אונן cannot eat קודשים.

As חז״ל reconstruct the argument, Aharon felt that specifically the שעיר החטאת, which was the קרבן for ראש חודש, was not part of the חנוכת הבית ceremony, and so was not one of those that should be eaten באנינות. So he felt it should be burned, like any other invalid sacrifice. But the question is, why didn’t Aharon ask Moshe what to do?

ביעתא בכותחא (egg in milk sauce) is an interesting phrase.

To see why this question of מורה בפני רבו is so important, we have to go back to the beginning of the parsha:

What did נדב ואביהוא do wrong? It seems obvious: ויקריבו לפני ה׳ אש זרה אשר לא צוה אתם.

But that’s not right. ה׳ had commanded them to bring the fire.

We need to understand what happened in this יום השמיני ceremony. After ויקרב אהרן אל המזבח; וישחט את עגל החטאת אשר לו, we are told וישא אהרן את ידו אל העם ויברכם; וירד מעשת החטאת והעלה והשלמים. What was וירד מעשת החטאת?

That’s not particularly helpful. I would assume that מקום נשיאת כפים was the מזבח; where else would אהרן be? Rashi is telling us that the text is emphasizing that אהרן's ירידה was from the מזבח. So what?

Now, the fire from heaven (or from the קדש הקדשים) doesn’t come until two psukim later, after אהרן has come down:

So we have this picture of אהרן on top of the מזבח; he’s set up the first sacrifices that he will offer (the previous week, it’s been his brother doing everything), he turns to the people and blesses them, and then…nothing. That’s not how it is supposed to work:

That last sounds familiar; in our perek, when the fire finally does come down, וירא כל העם וירנו ויפלו על פניהם. But it doesn’t come down when אהרן blesses the people. וירד מעשת החטאת והעלה והשלמים is אהרן's failure. This was to be the return of the כבוד ה׳ in the fire from heaven that had last been experienced at מעמד הר סיני and lost with מעשה העגל. And nothing happened.

So what does אהרן himself do after he trudges down the ramp, with no divine fire in sight? Rashbam explains why the next pasuk is ויבא משה ואהרן אל אהל מועד:

Rashi’s second explanation goes with this:

We talked last year about Moshe’s response to Aharon’s depression. But while Moshe is dealing with his brother, his nephews (no Torah slouches! They know the halacha!) need to address the problem.

In other words, Artscroll has it wrong. אש זרה אשר לא צוה אתם doesn’t mean “an alien fire that He had not commanded them”; it means “an alien fire that he had not commanded them”, with a lower-case “h”. Moshe had not commanded it.

And so Rashi explains (in his first explanation) that their fundamental error was in not asking משה first.

All the myriad explanations of the sin of נדב ואביהוא center around their arrogance. Their death was a result of their inability to ask, of assuming they already knew everything. They knew what ה׳ meant by ונתנו בני אהרן הכהן אש על המזבח.

And that makes the question of Aharon’s actions later on, all the more important. How can he say, ואכלתי חטאת היום הייטב בעיני ה׳? Wasn’t that מורה הלכה בפני משה רבו?

And that, I think, is the point that Rav Kanievsky was making. חז״ל saw Moshe as teaching not only the “what” of Torah, but the “how” of Torah. The מידות שהתורה נדרשת בהן are part of the תורה שבעל פה. Rav Kanievsky said אהרן סבר שאין בזה שום שאלה. I don’t think that means that Aharon thought the halacha was obvious, because that would still be מורה בפני רבו like the ביעתא בכותחא. I think it wasn’t a question of הוראה, but of דרשה. Stating an explicit halacha, דכתיבא ומנחא, in the presence of one’s teacher, is arrogant. Stating a דרשה, a logical deduction of existing Torah in a novel situation, is using the tools that one’s teacher gave. As the Ohr Hachaim says, וכיון שנאמר לו מפי משה דין מעשר כאלו אמר לו משה לשרוף ולא הורה הוא לעצמו כלום, כי בכלל מעשר חטאת בקל וחומר וכגון זה מותר לתלמיד להורות, וקל הוא מביעתא בכותחא.‎ קל הוא doesn’t mean easier; it means less egregious. When Moshe hears Aharon using a קל וחומר, his response is וישמע משה וייטב בעיניו.

The greatest reward for any teacher is the original contribution of their student.