By Sam Edelman
to perform on behalf of the entire people, as we see in these verses (Lev. 9:5,7, 23-24) (emphasis mine):
5And they took what Moses had commanded, to the front of the Tent of Meeting, and the entire community approached and stood before the Lord.
7And Moses said to Aaron, "Approach the altar and perform your sin offering and your burnt offering, atoning for yourself and for the people, and perform the people's sacrifice, atoning for them, as the Lord has commanded.
23And Moses and Aaron went into the Tent of Meeting. Then they came out and blessed the people, and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.
24And fire went forth from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fats upon the altar, and all the people saw, sang praises, and fell upon their faces.
Maybe the crucial difference between Aaron’s successful offering and Nadav and Avihu’s disastrous one is that the former is done with the whole community in mind, in accordance with the commandments the community agreed to follow, and the latter ignores the community. By making their own, uncalled for offering after G-d had just accepted the communal offering, Nadav and Avihu could be seen as trying to place themselves ahead of the community and gain more favor with G-d or even as trying to hijack the divine presence that had been invoked by the community and use it for their own selfish purposes. But if we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, we can assume that they didn’t mean to imply that they were better than anyone else, they just got caught up in the moment and wanted to express themselves with an additional offering but forgot to consider how it would affect or be perceived by those around them.
I think this possibility speaks to a very real tension that exists in the movement between individual and communal needs. Many of us have felt that tension, whether
as chanichim who are pushed a bit outside of our comfort zones for the sake of a kvutzah bonding exercise or as tzevet members who need to balance the responsibilities of our tafkidim with taking care of our own physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. As a movement, we need to be able to find a balance between the challenges and demands we place on each other, which is the source of our strength (but don’t tell anyone because it’s a secret), and shivyon erech haadam, which requires us to attend to each individual’s needs and abilities. I don’t have any answers in terms of how to always make sure we are achieving that balance, but I’ll take it as a good sign that we have yet to be consumed by divine fire.