Shemini
Eighth — שמיני
Regular readings above are often interrupted with special readings on Jewish holidays, special Sabbaths, and Rosh Chodesh. Refer to the current Torah Portion Schedule for all these variations, and special portions.
Portion Summary
Shemini is the twenty-sixth reading from the Torah and third reading from the book of Leviticus. The word shemini (שמיני) means "eighth," and it comes from the first words of Exodus 9:1, which says, "Now it came about on the eighth day that Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel" (Leviticus 9:1). The text goes on to describe the events of the eight day after setting up the Tabernacle, a phenomenal worship service followed by a tragic incident. The reading concludes with the biblical dietary laws regarding animals fit for consumption and prohibitions regarding those that are unfit.
Portion Outline
- Torah
- Leviticus 9:1 | Aaron's Priesthood Inaugurated
- Leviticus 10:1 | Nadab and Abihu
- Leviticus 11:1 | Clean and Unclean Foods
- Leviticus 11:24 | Unclean Animals
- Prophets
- 2 Samuel 6:1 | David Brings the Ark to Jerusalem
- 2 Samuel 7:1 | God's Covenant with David
Spiritual Fire
Don't be a spiritual thrill seeker. The quality and sincerity of true worship is not manifest in emotional highs and ecstatic exuberance.
On the other hand, the fire of the LORD did not blaze forth in that manner on a daily basis. The priests continued to serve and bring the offerings every day after that first miraculous worship service. They kept the divine fire alive by feeding the flames of the altar, but the amazing glory of the LORD did not blaze out again.
There were probably some Israelites who felt as if something was amiss. "Why has this Tabernacle become so spiritually dry?" they might have wondered. Perhaps they went looking for other tabernacles where God's Spirit was "really moving." Some people are always looking for spiritual fire. They are in constant pursuit of emotional highs and pneumatic dazzlement. They judge the quality of a worship service and the sincerity of other worshippers by means of their own internal, emotional barometer, and they equate the mundane and routine with spiritual lifelessness.
Other people are more like the priests. They may have had experiences with spiritual fire, but they do not live their lives in pursuit of experiences. Instead of demanding fresh fire from heaven every week, they are diligently keeping the spiritual flame alive as they go through the seemingly mundane routines of serving the Almighty according to His instructions. Sometimes there is fresh fire, but the mature man of faith serves steadfastly in all seasons.
Which of the above two types of people would you prefer to be married to? Would you want the person who is always looking for romantic and physical thrills, even to the point of abandoning the relationship if he feels it has dried up? Or would you prefer the person who is willing to stay steadfastly committed in both good times and bad? Which kind of worshipper do you think God is seeking?
The divine fire did appear again from time to time: at the announcement of the birth of Samson in Judges 13, when Solomon dedicated the first Temple in 2 Chronicles 7 and when Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. The divine fire signified that both the sacrifice and the sacrificer had found favor in God's eyes. In Acts 2, the flames of God's glory appeared among the believers, signifying the bestowal of the Holy Spirit upon them. It happened during the feast of Pentecost while the people of Israel were worshipping at the Temple and offering the prescribed festival sacrifices. We are still keeping that Pentecost flame alive today.
At the very center of the Torah are the words “Search, search!” The same words can be understood to mean, “Study, study!”
Light coming from the center of a book. Concept of wisdom through study. (Image © Bigstock/Michal Bednarek)
The same word applies to the study of Torah. For example, a short teaching on Torah is sometimes called a derashah, and a traditional interpretation of Torah is called a midrash (מדרש). Midrash comes from the same word—“to search.” Studying Torah requires searching the Scriptures.
The Torah actually commands us to study the Torah. Deuteronomy 6:7 says, “You shall teach the commandments of the Torah diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” The sages explain that this commands us to study Torah because to teach the Torah one must study it first. A person should search the Torah, study it, and discuss it, at home and on the way, evening and morning.
The Master repeats this commandment to search the Torah when He rebukes the Pharisees in John 5:39, saying, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.” The Greek of John 5:39 can also be read in the imperative sense: “Search the Scriptures diligently. In them you have eternal life because it is these that testify about Me.” As we diligently search the Torah, we encounter Messiah.
Most printed editions of the Torah contain a masoretic note on Leviticus 10:16 stating that these two Hebrew words—darosh, darash--are the exact halfway mark of all the words of the Torah. That is to say that if one person started with the last Hebrew word of the Torah and started counting backward, one word at a time, and another person simultaneously started with the first Hebrew word and started counting forward, they would meet at the exact center, in Leviticus 10:16, where it says, “darosh, darash.” Right at the very center of the Torah are the words “Search, search!” The same words can be understood to mean, “Study, study!”
These two words are the exact halfway mark of the words of the Torah. This is to teach us that the entire Torah revolves around constant inquiry. One must never stop studying and seeking ever deeper and broader understanding of the Torah. (Degel Machaneh Ephraim)
I would certainly eat that delicious bacon, but My Father in heaven has forbidden me to eat of it, so I will not.
Feeding brown-throated three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus), Cahuita National Park, Costa Rica. (Image: CC Wikimedia/Christian Mehlführer)
Why does God say that some animals are clean (ritually fit) while others are unclean (ritually unfit)? Surely God, in His wisdom, knew what foods would be good for His people and what foods would be harmful for them. But there is more to it than simply good health. The kosher laws are not God's version of a health food diet.
The laws of what is clean and what is unclean have to do with being able to participate in the Levitical worship system. Things that make a person ritually unfit include death, leprosy, mildew, and human mortality. Some of the animals designated as "unfit" are predators or scavengers that feed on carrion. Some of them carry associations with ritual contamination. Perhaps the Almighty designated some animals as unfit because of their associations with ritual uncleanness. God desires His people to be a kingdom of priests, and that requires implementing ritual concern in daily life.
These are just guesses. We really do not know the reason some animals are called fit and others are not. The rabbis explain that the kosher laws belong to a category of commandment that has no rational explanation. Asking why a buffalo is kosher while a giant sloth is not kosher is like asking why the Sabbath is on the seventh day of the week and not the first day of the week or why the sun rises in the east instead of the west. Some things we have to accept simply because God says so. Who are we to question God? He decided that certain creatures are not food for His people Israel. That is completely within His prerogative.
If we obey God only when it makes good sense to us or when we happen to have a similar inclination, that is not really obedience. This can be compared to a child whose father insisted on an eight o'clock bedtime. On the first night, the child felt drowsy around seven thirty, so he obeyed his father. "How wise my father is to send me to bed at eight," the child thought. The next night, however, he did not feel tired. He could think of no rational reason for going to bed so early. The eight o'clock bedtime mandate seemed arbitrary and unnecessary, so he chose to ignore it. It is not obedience if we only obey when it suits us to do so.
Though we may not be able to deduce why God designated some animals as clean and others as unclean, we do know why He imposed the dietary laws on His people Israel. The Torah tells us that it is a matter of holiness:
You shall not make yourselves unclean with them so that you become unclean. For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy. (Leviticus 11:43-45)
God gave Israel the dietary laws to make them holy. The word holy does not necessarily refer to a moral or ethical quality. It means to be set apart for the LORD. The distinctive requirements of the Torah's dietary laws accomplish that by forcing the Jewish people to cluster together in communities while limiting their potential interactions with other communities.
Do the prohibtions on eating unclean animals apply to Gentile believers? The dietary laws for God-fearing Gentile believers forbid them from food contaminated by idols, from blood, and from the meat of incorrectly slaughtered animals. Although the dietary laws of Leviticus 11 do not pertain directly to non-Jewish believers, many God-fearing Gentile believers abide by them in keeping with the spirit of the law and in honor of their position as strangers among the Jewish people and servants of the Jewish king.
The Temple belongs to the world in which Hashem will wipe away every tear from their eyes and in which there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain.
Then Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, "Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, so that you will not die and that He will not become wrathful against all the congregation. But your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which the LORD has brought about." (Leviticus 10:6)
On his first day of service in the priesthood, Aaron lost his two oldest sons in a tragic accident. Nadab and Abihu inadvertently transgressed God's sanctity, and they died in a supernatural conflagration.
Moses did not allow Aaron and his sons to mourn the deaths of Nadab and Abihu. As priests serving in the Tabernacle on behalf of all Israel, they had to set aside their personal feelings for the duration of their shift of duty.
Mourning was not allowed in the Tabernacle because the Tabernacle represented God's dwelling place, where one day He "will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain" (Revelation 21:4). Aaron and his surviving sons had to stifle their personal pain and continue the service. It is difficult to imagine.
Therapists encourage people to let their feelings out and to avoid bottling up emotions. This may be a good policy while in the therapist's office, but it is not a good way to conduct life. Of course we should be honest about our feelings, but it is not always appropriate in every situation. A person who wears his heart on his sleeve is ultimately demonstrating selfishness. Because he feels pain, he wants others to feel it too. An angry person disregards the feelings of others as he gives vent to his emotions. A person in love forces his attentions on the unwilling target of his affection. It's not a proper way to behave.
Aaron and his remaining sons held their grief in abeyance while they finished the day's sacrificial duties. Nevertheless, Aaron did not feel it was appropriate to eat the meat of the sin offering while his heart was so heavy, so he had the goat burned. Moses rebuked him, but Aaron explained, "When things like these happened to me, if I had eaten a sin offering today, would it have been good in the sight of the LORD?" (Leviticus 10:19). The offerings were to be eaten with rejoicing. Aaron was willing to do his duty in the Tabernacle, but he was not willing to fake a spirit of religious joy before the LORD.
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