Corrected: Acharei Mot /How Can We Atone for the Killing of Children?

Torah at the Intersection/Call to Action

Acharei Mot, meaning, “After Death,” begins the way the Passover night began, with a retelling of horrifying killing of children. Both retellings bring us deeply into the world we live in today where we are silently witnessing the burning of children. 

On the story level,  Acharei Mot refers to the killing of Moses' nephews, Aaron's sons, who were burnt alive by the God they were instructed to worship at the altar as young priests.

This is Torah's second telling of this brutal death of two young sons killed in service to inherited narratives and beliefs. And Torah immediately shifts to detailing spiritual laws and practices, for Yom Kippur and beyond, to emphasize that it is the entire people, led by their spiritual leaders, who must atone for whatever it is that has led to the killing of children. It’s all horrifying, prescient and instructive, of what we are witnessing today.

Yom Kippur/the Day of Atonement

“And this shall be to you a law for all time: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall practice self-denial; and you shall do no manner of work, neither the citizen nor the foreigner who resides among you.

כִּֽי־בַיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּ֛ה יְכַפֵּ֥ר עֲלֵיכֶ֖ם לְטַהֵ֣ר אֶתְכֶ֑ם מִכֹּל֙ חַטֹּ֣אתֵיכֶ֔ם לִפְנֵ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה תִּטְהָֽרוּ׃

For on this day atonement shall be made for you to purify you of all your sins; you shall be pure before יהוה.

שַׁבַּ֨ת שַׁבָּת֥וֹן הִיא֙ לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם חֻקַּ֖ת עוֹלָֽם׃

It shall be a sabbath of complete rest for you, and you shall practice self-denial; it is a law for all time.” Leviticus 16:29ff

How Can We Atone for the Killing of Children?

Torah continues with details for rituals and daily living that suggest that the killing of the sons can be atoned for by ascetic spiritual practices.  How inadequate, even offensive and cruel, many of the enumerated rituals and daily practices seem to us in the modern day. Especially when we realize how teachings from the Abrahamic traditions are actually being used to justify the killing of children. We live in a time when religious leaders freely suggest that endowing them, their structures and followers with higher powers could somehow atone for the killing, imprisoning, deporting, and starving of children.

There is another way. We know it because another way lives in every compassionate instinct that arises in our own bodies when we see images of suffering children. We know it because every day we and everyone around us are doing acts of kindness and care that show reverence and protection for life. And still, as Torah suggests, we must do more. It's time we reclaimed spiritual leadership of the religions that have brought us this world of violence. We must ask ourselves, what would inspire me to take to the streets as Israelis and Palestinians have bravely done, at the risk of being burnt alive by the holders of power in Israel and Palestine? A book I've been reading that I recommend as a starting point for redirecting my own ancestral religion of Judaism to be in service of the way of compassion and nonviolence is Peter Beinart's, Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza, a Reckoning.

As I write this thousands of Israelis are preparing for the grassroots People’s Peace Summit in Jerusalem that will take place this weekend.

On June 14, millions of Americans will once again take to the streets declaring a “No Kings” Day.

Jewish synagogues across the US are daring to host the conversations we need to atone and re-orient.

When I feel too overwhelmed or discouraged to participate, I ask myself, what would it be like to live in the world where no one was organizing and protesting what's going on? Could I bear to live in that world? My answer is, no, that is not a world in which I want to live. I can always find ways to support peacemakers and activists if I don't have capacity to join them in the streets or in speaking out. Finding ways to supporting speaking truth to power is always available.

Jewish tradition instructs us to understand the return to the Passover story as a calling to find our voices at our tables, in our synagogues and communities. Throughout the Jewish tradition, the exile in metaphorical Egypt is spoken about as the exile of the word. Egypt is the place where children are slaughtered, first the Hebrew slave children, then the Egyptian children. And the main practice of Passover is to come out of Egypt, to experience coming out of Egypt ourselves. This means coming out of our muteness as a community, within our families, in the world, and speaking out in our own names for the life sustaining values that we hold dear. Many Israeli Jews are doing this in Israel and in New York City where I currently live. We have to find ways of helping people break through trauma to come back to the present moment so we can actually affect what's happening now.

So now we ask, doesn't coming out of slavery mean coming out of the place where we huddle in the dark, hearing the screams of children being burnt alive and we neither do nor say anything to stop it?

Where we come out of the place where we were mute and couldn’t find our voices because the word itself was in exile?

And yet, for the second time, Torah leads with the story of Aaron's two sons and what their death by god's fire wrought in its aftermath. 

With very little about how it affected-- or should affect-- the survivors and witnesses.

Why is this story told twice? Perhaps so we receive an instruction that we are to retell this story too. Not just the story of the liberation moment when we huddled and Egyptian babies were burning. Maybe we're also supposed to retell this moment, when the highest level freed Hebrew children of ancient times- the sons of the priests, anointed sons – also were burned and we said nothing. In fact the first instruction, to their father Aaron,  was to say nothing.

Were we supposed to say something? Was God looking for a partner like Abraham, Sarah or Moses,  who questioned and didn't fear showing their own vulnerability and lack of capacity to meet the moment? Is this our failure or theirs?

And/or are we receiving a lesson about mourning. The importance of staying silent ( that was the instruction to Aaron who witnessed the burning up of his children) , so that we don't spill out our grief and shame and anger. So that we metabolize what happened? Is that the new twist that this week's retelling of the story of Aaron's two sons offers?

What is it that we do in silence in the face of children burning alive? 

Far from staying silent, the Torah portion sets out detailed heightened awareness to every action and word. How the priests who witness are to dress, who they are to include in rituals, how the rituals proceed,  their meaning and  remembering and replicating them year after year after year, generation after generation.

And the meaning of the rituals that follow the death of children? 

Atonement. From God to Moses to Aaron to Torah to us, we receive the instructions about how to atone when we have not known a healing way to stop or encounter the death of children. We all are to atone. 

What could possibly be an atonement for standing idly by, not speaking out when children are burned alive? First is a recognition that this is not what we're supposed to do if we're following the path of choosing Life. So even though we did stand idly by 2000 years ago or yesterday,  the first way we atone is to stop the killing that's happening right now. That includes stopping the killing in our thoughts. The instruction to Aaron is for those who come after him, so they know how to serve without getting killed. So they know how to carry on their ancestral traditions without carrying on the trauma of burning. This is a generational healing that includes transforming the thinking that says there's something worth letting children burn. Atonement is a return to at -one -ment. Every child that is killed, it is as if it was our own child.

Previous writings from Torah at the Intersection On Acharei Mot:

Acharei Mot: Who Dies?

https://torahattheintersection.com/acharei-mot-who-dies/

Including Video: