Anxiety on the Altar
What I love about the book of Vayikra, with its tedious and off-putting instructions for sacrificial offerings and its odd rituals for moving in and out of impurity, is that at the core of the book’s vision is an orderly system for living in relationship to the holy. Life is messy, scary, uncertain… and there’s something we can do to bring ourselves back into alignment, to know that we are okay, that we are enough, that we can make up for mistakes, and that we are meaningfully embedded in a web of life pulsing with sacred purpose.
On the surface, this week’s parashah, Tzav, builds on that premise. While the first parashah of the book outlined the sacrificial offerings, this second one details the preparation of the priests, Aaron and his sons, the kohanim.
But underneath the surface, something stirs. Right away, we have subtly unusual language:
וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ צַ֤ו אֶֽת־אַהֲרֹן֙ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֣יו לֵאמֹ֔ר זֹ֥את תּוֹרַ֖ת הָעֹלָ֑ה הִ֣וא הָעֹלָ֡ה עַל֩ מוֹקְדָ֨הֿ עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֤חַ כׇּל־הַלַּ֙יְלָה֙ עַד־הַבֹּ֔קֶר וְאֵ֥שׁ הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ תּ֥וּקַד בּֽוֹ׃
GOD spoke to Moses, saying: Command (tzav) Aaron and his sons thus: This is the ritual of the burnt offering: The burnt offering itself shall remain where it is burned upon the altar all night until morning, while the fire on the altar is kept going on it.
Usually God instructs Moses to speak with Aaron and his sons, or to relay that this is the instruction for how to do something. Here we have the language of command!
The ancient sages (in Talmud Bavli, Kiddushin 29a) pick up on this anomaly and say: אֵין צַו אֶלָּא זֵרוּז מִיָּד וּלְדוֹרוֹת, “Tzav implies enthusiasm/urgency immediately and for generations.”
Why here, though? The medieval commentator Kli Yakar suggests that it is human nature to be sleepily lazy at night, and the strong word tzav, with its urgency, arouses enthusiasm amongst the night shift.
But the urgency of tzav spreads beyond this context - by the end of the parashah we have yet another subtle anomaly (Vayikra 8:36).
And Aaron and his sons did all the things that God had commanded through Moses.
Ramban’s commentary: Everywhere in this section it says ‘as’ God commanded Moses, but here, since Aaron’s sons added to the command [by bringing strange fire which God had not commanded them], it does not say it in this way, since they did not do as God commanded Moses. Rather, the verse states that they did all the things ‘which’ God commanded, and they further added to them “the strange fire” of which it said that God had not commanded them.
The urgency and enthusiasm that Aaron’s sons soak up at the beginning of their ordination warps the judgment of two of those sons. Nadav and Avihu offer strange fire “which had not been enjoined (tzivah) upon them” (Vayikra 10:1) and are themselves burnt up by divine fire. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks puts it, they die “because of an act of misplaced enthusiasm.”
Now none of these commentaries use the word “anxiety”, but I think it is a plausible reading of the undercurrent of the story. As these newly minted priests prepare for their very first official act, they have been commanded to do so with enthusiasm, but one person’s enthusiasm becomes another person’s urgency. And urgency swiftly becomes anxiety.
“There is a positive feedback loop between the two variables. A sense of urgency increases anxiety. At the same time, anxiety will tell you that everything is urgent. It treats your worries as imminent and inevitable even if they have a low probability of occurrence” (Psychology Today).
Perhaps Nadav and Avihu anxiously question their worth: Are they enough? Do they really belong in this priestly family? Ibn Ezra comments simply on their great error: “They thought they were doing something God wanted.” Sadly, they tried too much.
As Rabbi Dr. Caryn Aviv says in her new book, Unlearning Jewish Anxiety, “If we overwork, overdo, and overcompensate, then we’ll feel included. No matter that it might come with a serious cost.”
What if we read Vayikra as a meditation on anxiety, and the story of Nadav and Avihu as a cautionary tale about one way in which it manifests - striving not from a place of sacred purpose but out of an anxiety that we are not enough? A later tradition suggests that only their insides were burned but not their external body (see Rabbeinu Bachya for example), and I cannot imagine a more shocking yet resonant way to describe burnout.
We are lucky enough to get to explore anxiety through a Jewish lens with Rabbi Caryn Aviv on zoom tomorrow afternoon (you’re invited!), culminating with a sweet Kavana havdalah ritual.
In the meantime, may Shabbat bring you deep breaths and a kind heart, and the undeniable awareness that you are worthy and enough.
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Jay LeVine
