April 25th: Shemini and Yom Hashoa
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
It was the early 1920s, and two young Reform Rabbis, Jacob Rader Marcus and Sheldon Blank, decided to enhance their educations with Ph.D. studies. At the time, American doctoral studies were in their infancy, and so they were told: If you want a real doctorate, you need to go to Germany. Both went, Marcus to Berlin and Blank to Jena, and two legendary academic and rabbinic careers were off to significant and prestigious starts. Both became major figures at the Hebrew Union College and in the fields of Biblical Studies (Blank) and Jewish History (Marcus). Their German doctoral studies prepared them for greatness.
The point of the story—as told to me by both professors—is that, a hundred years ago, Germany was the World’s center of academic culture and scholarship. Germany was at the pinnacle of civilization, and yet, in just a few years, it became the pinnacle of evil. How could such a thing happen? What were the Germans thinking?
As we commemorate Yom Hashoa this week and mourn the tragedies of the Holocaust, I am reminded of a story told by Dr. Franklin Littell, a Methodist minister and the founder of what we now know as Holocaust Studies. In his extensive research into the role of the Church both in supporting and in resisting the Nazis, he found this statement of a Protestant bishop in the 1930s who assured his flock, “Hitler is God’s man in Germany.” Hitler? God’s man? What was this bishop thinking? What was he smoking?
In many ways, Dr. Littell’s entire professional life was devoted to refuting that statement, and, in his work as the founder and leader of the Anne Frank Institute in New York, he coined his own term for Christianity’s role in the Holocaust. Inasmuch as every perpetrator of the Nazis’ evil was a baptized Christian, the Nazi atrocities were A Shadow on the Cross. How could these Christians so brutally betray Jesus? What went so wrong in the Christian stewardship of Europe? How could so many smart people think so poorly? One could also ask what they were smoking.
I mention smoking, a reference to the importation and use of opium in the late 1800s, because the phrase is often used as an ironic or sarcastic response to absurdity. A rational, reasonable person would never do such a thing. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, he/she must have been smoking some kind of intoxicant that impairs the intellect.
Thus do we arrive at our Torah portion. In Leviticus 10, in the afterglow of the Tabernacle’s dedication, a great tragedy comes to the Israelites. Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s two older sons who also serve as Kohanim/Priests, go into the Tent of Meeting and offer “aysh zarah / alien fire” to the Lord—“and a fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them.” They do something wrong and are immediately and violently destroyed. Unfortunately, the Torah’s term aysh zarah is so vague that the Tradition must struggle to figure out exactly what they do and why it is so bad.
One possibility is that Nadab and Abihu are inebriated—that they approach their Priestly duties while drunk. This explanation is suggested by the passage that follows the story of their deaths:
“The Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting…for you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, and you must teach the Israelites…” (Exodus 10.8-11)
Whatever they are drinking—or smoking, their judgment is impaired, and they are unable to distinguish between things that are significantly different. Thus are they unable to fulfill their most sacred responsibility: teaching the Israelites.
When I look at our current crisis of anti-Semitism—especially as it has occupied so many campuses and academic organizations, I wonder about what some academic leaders have been smoking. Freedom of Speech has always been a conditional freedom, and responsible jurists have always understood that some expression is more than just speech—is more than just opinion, that it crosses a line into assault or worse and can therefore be restricted. That the leaders of prestigious universities and major academic organizations cannot tell the difference between free expression of opinions and the assault or exclusion of Jews is stunning and absurd. What are they smoking?
My suspicion is that it is an ideological intoxicant—that certain positions have been so refined and exaggerated and then pursued ad infinitum and ad absurdum that they, much like crack cocaine, are more powerful, more addictive, and more capable of overwhelming rational thought. What started in the Enlightenment as the recognition that all people—even marginalized people like Protestants or Catholics, or Jews, “Mohammedans,” Blacks, women, homosexuals, etc.—are human beings entitled “by their Creator” with “inalienable rights” and civil liberties has morphed and been weaponized to create new categories of marginalization and to assault these new “enemies” under the banner of academic-sounding terms like critical race theory or intersectionality. When people who on October 5, 2023 held that “misgendering someone is violence” could not after October 7, 2023 recognize that “violence had occurred” when Hamas massacred, raped, and kidnapped hundreds and hundreds of Israelis at a music festival and in peacenik kibbutzim and villages, then something has really gone wrong with their thinking. They are ideologically inebriated and have ceased to “distinguish between the sacred and profane,” thus polluting their intellects and impairing the wisdom they claim to teach.
One should not underestimate the alarm and agitation over their impaired thinking that has gripped so many in our nation—and how it has fueled the overblown reactions now being mounted or threatened by our new and angry President. He is right in calling out the failures of our intellectual stars, but I wonder if his solutions are more emotive than remediative. Is a “stick”—and such a big stick—necessary to get academia to return to wisdom? Does the Federal Government have to get involved, or are private donors adequately flexing their monetary muscles? And how long is reasonable in the repentance process of ideological detoxification that places like Harvard, Penn, and Columbia so desperately need?
These are all larger questions than can be answered quickly, but it may be helpful to ponder the value and effects of philosophy and ideology. When are they wisdom and guidance, and when are they intoxicants that muddle our minds? When is philosophical consistency a useful discipline, and when is it the hobgoblin of formerly great minds? We need our intellectual “priesthood” to think clearly.