Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Shlomos Drash Shimini 5766 - Clean or Contaminated?

This week, we have three major parts of our portion; we continue the sacrifices started in last week’s portion. It is the eighth day of sacrifices, and everything goes so well God performs a wonder and fire from the Lord devours the sacrifices. But things then turn tragic. As the text states: (Lev. 10:3).

Then the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu each took his censer and put in it fire. They put on it incense, then brought near strange fire before the Lord which he did not command them. Fire then came out before the Lord and consumed them so they died before the Lord. Moses said to Aaron: this is what the Lord said as follows: In my drawing near I will sanctify and over the face of all the people, I will honor. And Aaron was silent.

The rest of the Leviticus 10 then gives the aftermath of this tragedy and a prohibiton aginst priests making sacrifices while intoxicated. We end with the laws of prohibited and permitted animals for eating, the basis of the kosher laws.

I had a classmate in my Biblical Hebrew class for a while who worked for a government regulatory agency. As part of the training sessions he gave those he regulated, he would regularly start his session with the story of Nadab and Abihu, calling it “the first recorded industrial accident.” As I’ve commented on this portion a few years ago, Nadab and Abihu might have been heroes. One of the safeguards, the incense had been forgotten in these sacrifices, and they rushed to replace it before it was too late, though sacrificing their lives by coming up with a homebrew solution.

As a regulator of sorts myself, though usually internal to a company, I’ve run into homebrew solutions more than once, and I’m usually not happy with them. As a food safety inspector, one of the issues that comes up frequently is the issue of whether equipment is commercially approved or not. I’ve more than once run across a restaurant who had bought a home toaster or refrigerator. I’ve also watched as that toaster from some discount store has changed color once a week as they break in succession, or in one case seen the smoked and brunt wall when one caught on fire. I’ve seen those cheap dormitory refrigerators used for milk and coffee condiments in restaurants frost up so badly that there is no room for a pint container, let alone the temperature inside the unit is the same as outside the unit. Homebrew might work in a pinch, but it never does the job completely.

Very often, it’s the stuff we can’t see that is the problem, such as bacteria and viruses which are hiding, or have the potential to hide in a home brew solution. We know Nadab and Abihu used the wrong king of fire to light their censers. Interestingly, this small story punctuates a major change in the content of the book of Leviticus. For the next few parshiot, we change in topic from procedures for conducting a sacrifice to a comprehensive public health policy, all based on one concept and word which continually shows up in these passages: tamei. While many translations have a meaning of unclean I usually translate as contaminated. In food safety, we are concerned with three types of contaminants: biological agents like bacteria, chemical agents like rat poison, and physical objects such as glass. And while there a many parallels in Leviticus 10 through 15 to one of these three, I tend to talk of tamei as a fourth type of contamination, spiritual contamination.

One of the many issues I lecture on to public Health Departments is this issue of spiritual contamination. In many faith-based food facilities there may be sources of contamination that the inspector doesn’t know about or doesn’t care about, yet those who eat the food may be upset about. These sources may be of important concern to the people making the food or people eating the food. Islamic Halal, Kosher, and Hindu Vegetarianism fall into this category. In each of these cases, the theology changes. Therefore, how and where one finds this spiritual contamination changes greatly. For Hindus for example, one reason for vegetarianism is the issue of transmigration of the soul, that one might be eating one’s long deceased grandma. Yet from 16th century mystical thought on transmigration, the kosher prepared fish and meat for Shabbat, when eaten, moves the Jewish soul trapped in the animal to a higher level than a cow or fish. In short, what is or is not contaminated spiritually is completely determinate on belief. So an unaware health inspector who walks in the door and stats poking kosher or Halal beef with his thermometer he’s used on pulled pork is going to get himself in trouble with a lot of people.

In this light, it is interesting to note the prohibitions of Leviticus 11, which defines inherently spiritually contaminated species. We are allowed to eat land animals which have both split hooves and chews its cud. We are allowed seafood which has both fins and scales only. We are prohibited many species of birds, which by interpretation permits only chicken, domestic duck, and goose. No insects rodents or other creepy crawlies please. Animals must be alive healthy and intact at the time of slaughter. I don’t, like others assign rhyme or reason to these, nor do I substantiate my own diet to these biblical prohibitions outside of the literal reading of the text. AS far as I’m concerned they are Huquim, mitzvot without human reasons, though there are parallels to healthy eating. Maimonides was the first to claim that Kosher was healthy eating, and pig was very bad for you but living in a Islamic world, nobody except the occasional Christian ate pig, which allowed Maimonides to declare “everybody know this.” I do follow this list of prohibited and permitted species, not because it is healthy eating, but as many of Maimonides critics pointed out, but because it makes me more Jewish. I know some like to force their political or personal “homebrew” viewpoint of diet on others be they liberal or conservative saying “the bible says so.” I’m always uncomfortable with that. From Glatt to Vegan, what ones decides to eat I believe is a personal choice. Only two people it needs to substantiated with: God and oneself. Anything else is egotism: validating one’s own point of view by forcing another to observe it. It is why I rarely state my own dietary observances to anyone, which while more observant than most, are far from completely observant. It’s between me and God. Only those who might prepare food for me and respect what I believe have some idea. And their reactions are ones of understanding and compassion. Some might warn me to stay way from some dishes, others might make something special for me, and others might just not take offense if I refuse to eat something. At a gathering like the Passover Seder, there are many such issues, and each must be addressed with sensitivity and compassion. At my family seders, where ther are several such issues, it usually is, but all too often I see otherwise.

The death of Nadab and Abihu may have been an industrial accident where unapproved sources of fire were used for a procedure, and that source carried a form of contamination which killed them. Yet spiritual contamination may also be the way we determine what is holy and what is not, or in short what defines us as Jews. The number of stories about what happened with Nadab and Abihu are a beginning of a debate which continues today. What is clean and wholesome, what isn’t, and whose definition do we use?

I still have no idea for anyone but myself.

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