April 16, 2023|כ"ה ניסן ה' אלפים תשפ"ג Responding in Silence and Heroically in the Face of Tragedy
Print ArticleAaron’s two children died and “vayidom Aharon.” Aaron was silent. Is that the appropriate response? Is that how a broken father responds when the lives of two of his children are tragically cut short? Is it any different if the father loses his wife in addition to two children?
What is Aaron feeling when he is silent? I am not sure. Is he simply in shock, like how the Abrabanel describes, like an “even domaim” – a silent stone? Was he silent the way God told Moshe to be silent (Menachot 29b) after God showed Moshe the greatness of Rabbi Akiva and then his horrific and gruesome and tragic death and Moshe said, “Is this Torah and this is its reward? Does Aaron represent the ideal picture in the face of tragedy of the loss of his two sons and is this that we are all supposed to do? Not react? Is that even humanly possible?
Let me share with you how the Rashbam reads this Biblical story. According to the Rashbam, Aaron wanted to mourn for his children as soon as they died, but Moshe told him that as a kohen gadol he had to continue to do the avoda, the ritual service in the mishkan. Even though normally an onen is exempt from all positive mitzvot, Aaron, being the High Priest, was the exception. He had to continue performing the service. What is Aaron’s response? He was silent. He wanted to mourn and cry but he didn’t do so and he went back to work. Now that’s what he did. But how did he feel? Well, how would you feel if you cannot express any anguish and you must simply continue with the avoda? What does it mean to be silent but to continue with the avoda?
This past week we commemorated the thirtieth yahrzeit of the towering giant from our community, Rav Soloveitchik, who reshaped the way that the modern Jew thinks about halacha, religious life, and so many fundamental issues of faith. Rav Soloveitchik dealt with theodicy, how we relate to the existence of evil in this world, and whether vayidom Aaron, or silence, is the appropriate response to evil. In his famous work, “Kol Dodi Dofek,” Rav Soloveitchik writes that we cannot explain evil. We do not understand God’s plan. We are people of “fate,” as we are passive objects to circumstances that we cannot understand. Even if we believe that God represents goodness so there must be a logical reason why He caused or allowed this evil to happen, our perception is limited and fragmented, so we cannot plumb the depths of evil and the mystery of suffering. Our only response as people of “fate” is silence. Ultimately, we do not understand, we are not comforted by any rational explanation, and we are left speechless and dumbfounded.
However, he writes that even though we are people of “fate” as we are objects to circumstances that we cannot understand, we are also people of “destiny.” We cannot control our fate but we can control our destiny, how we respond to evil. In Rav Soloveitchik’s philosophy there is a belief in God, an acceptance of evil, but no attempt to try to understand it; rather, we try to respond to evil by sanctifying God. Our relationship with God is not defined by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Rather, it is defined by the way we relate to Him in the most difficult of circumstances. Suffering requires us to respond in an elevated and refined manner.
This was Aaron’s response. Yes, he was silent. He didn’t fully understand why this happened, why it was his destiny to lose two of his children on this holy day that the people welcomed God’s Divine presence into their midst. He didn’t deny his evil misfortune. He realized that at that moment he was a man of fate, but he responded heroically.
And that’s what we try to do. That is what we try to do when we face the unspeakable tragedies that leave us utterly speechless. Who has not been inspired by Rabbi Leo Dee’s response to the unspeakable tragedy of losing two beautiful daughters, Maia and Rina and his beautiful wife, Lucy, of having to bear two separate funerals? And yet, Rabbi Dee responded in silence – not complaining to God, not asking why. He understood that we are a people of fate. But he also understood that we are a people of destiny, and he used the tragedy to encourage people in Israel and around the world to post a picture of an Israeli flag on social media as a message of unity in our homeland that is currently undergoing a very crippling, divisive crisis. He used his wife’s death as an opportunity to donate her organs to save five lives. Some of us also read what he did on the last day of Yom Tov. He was at shul and the chazzan began leading Hallel. He didn’t lead any singing for the first mizmor of Hallel. He didn’t lead any singing for the second mizmor. After all, how can anyone sing Hallel and praise God with Rabbi Leo Dee in a minyan still waiting to sit shiva for his wife and two daughters! After the second mizmor, Rabbi Dee walked up to the chazzan and he whispered, “ana, she-ha-tefilla tihyeh mesamachat” – please, make the tefilla joyous. And the community sang the rest of Hallel. Someone described the scene as “me-same-ach, k’tzat atzuv, aval b’ikar b’ikar menachem” – happy, a little sad but mainly comforting. This is what it means to be silent and to respond heroically.
Baruch Hashem, Rabbi Dee’s community has responded heroically. While Lucy clung to life, Efrat residents organized in-person gatherings in private homes to recite Tehillim for her recovery. Her shul hosted several programs of Tehillim and words of Torah in an effort to offer hope and spiritual strength to the community. A Tehillim WhatsApp group was established, the group plans to continue to recite Tehillim until the shiva ends and they have completed Tehillim hundreds of times. A number of community initiatives were started in response to this tragedy. One initiative was a Pirkei Avot project and over ten thousand people have joined this project worldwide. It was started by two young women who explained that since the COVID pandemic, the Dees learn Pirkei Avot each Friday night after the meal and discuss ways to embody the principles as people and bring them into our everyday lives.
How do we respond to tragedies like these? We can debate from today to tomorrow about what the government and the military can do and should do to stop terror, but Rabbi Dee and the community in Efrat have inspired us into thinking about what we can do – theological silence in the face of evil recognizing that we will never have an adequate answer to the question of why, while simultaneously responding heroically, like Aaron did thousands of years ago.
Let me conclude with a story from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the founding chief rabbi of Efrat, who once told a story about how he, as a very young boy, was at the first Shabbat brit milah of the Klausenberger Chasidim in the temporary home that they made for themselves in New York before they rebuilt their community in Kiryat Zanz in Netanya.
Now almost the entire Klausenberger community was destroyed in the Holocaust. Approximately 15% survived, including the Rebbe, who lost his wife and eleven children. At this very first brit milah, the Klausenberger Rebbe cited the verse in the Book of Yechezkel, a verse that we all read in our Pesach Sedarim that we celebrated with family and friends last week. The verse was “va’e’evor alayikh va’er’ech mitboseset b’damayich va’omar lakh b’damayich chayee va’omar lach b’damayich chayee” – and I saw you were mixed in blood and I say by your blood you should live. This verse refers to the blood of circumcision and blood of the Passover sacrifice – two mitzvot which the Hebrews performed in Egypt just before they were redeemed by God. Then the Rebbe blessed and named the newly circumcised child. But the Rebbe continued and said, “I always understood these words “b’damayich chayee” to mean “by your blood shall you shall live.” However, now that we have suffered unspeakable tragedies in the Holocaust, it seems that Yechezkel’s damayich comes not from the Hebrew word dam, meaning blood, but rather from the Hebrew word dom – silence, as we find in this week’s parsha, “Vayidom Aaron” – Aaron was silent, following the death of his two children. Whatever the sins of Aaron’s children were - they offered a strange sacrifice, they entered into the holy of holies without permission, they were intoxicated - the blow to Aaron was too much, but vayidom aaron. Aaron remained silent and he continued to perform the avodah, the service of the miskhan.”
“So,” said the Klausenberger Rebbe, “it is because vayidom - b’damayich - because we swallowed our cries, and we did not scream out that God is no more; rather, we utilized our energies not to weep over our past losses but rather to recreate our communities, our synagogues, our study-houses, here in America and, please God, soon in Israel, that we continue to live and even to flourish.”
This has been our open secret throughout our national existence, from Aaron in this week’s parsha thousands of years ago to Rabbi Dee and our broader community’s response to last week’s tragic murder of Lucy, Maia and Rena Dee. May we find some comfort in our heroic response and hopefully through this response, b’damayich chayee, may we continue to flourish despite this tragedy.