Spontaneity: Good or Bad?
Parashat Shemini tells the tragic story of how the inauguration of the Tabernacle, a day about which the sages say that God rejoiced as much as He had at the creation of the universe,1Megilla 10b. was overshadowed by the deaths of two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu:
Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu took their censers, put fire in them, and added incense; and they offered unauthorised fire before the Lord, which He had not instructed them [to offer]. Fire came forth from before the Lord, and it consumed them so that they died before the Lord. (Lev. 10:1–2)
In the previous essay we noted the many explanations given by the sages and later commentators as to what Nadav and Avihu’s sin was. But the simplest answer, given by the Torah itself here and elsewhere (Num. 3:4, 26:61), is that they acted on their own initiative. They did what they had not been commanded. They behaved spontaneously, evidently out of sheer enthusiasm in the mood of the moment, offering “unauthorised fire.” Evidently it is dangerous to act spontaneously in matters of the spirit.
But is it? Moses acted spontaneously in far more fraught circumstances when he shattered the tablets of stone on seeing the Israelites cavorting around the Golden Calf. The tablets – hewn and engraved by God Himself – were perhaps the holiest objects there have ever been. Yet Moses was not punished for his act. The sages say that though he acted of his own accord without first consulting God, God assented to his act.2Shabbat 87a.
Rashi refers to this moment in his very last comment on the Torah, whose final verse speaks about “all the strong hand, and all the great awe, which Moses performed before the eyes of all Israel”:
[This refers to when Moses] took the liberty of shattering the tablets before their eyes, as it is said, “I shattered them before your eyes.” The Holy One, Blessed Be He, consented to his opinion, as it is said, “which you shattered” – “Yishar Ko’aḥ for shattering them!”3Rashi, Commentary to Deuteronomy 34:12.
Why then was spontaneity wrong for Nadav and Avihu, yet right for Moses? The answer is that Nadav and Avihu were priests. Moses was a navi, a prophet. These are two different forms of religious leadership. They involve different tasks, different sensibilities, indeed, different approaches to time itself.
The priest serves God in a way that never changes over time (except, of course, when the Temple was destroyed and its service, presided over by the priests, came to an end). The prophet serves God in a way that is constantly changing over time. When people are at ease, the prophet warns of forthcoming catastrophe. When they suffer catastrophe and are in the depths of despair, the prophet brings consolation and hope.
The words said by the priest are always the same. The priestly blessing uses the same words today as it did in the days of Moses and Aaron. But the words used by a prophet are never the same. “No two prophets use the same style.”4Sanhedrin 89a.
So for a prophet, spontaneity is of the essence. But for the priest engaged in divine service, it is completely out of place.
Why the difference? After all, the priest and the prophet were serving the same God. The Torah uses a kind of device we have only recently re-invented in a somewhat different form. Stereophonic sound – sound coming from two different speakers – was developed in the 1930s to give the impression of audible perspective. In the 1950s, 3D film was developed to do for sight what stereo had done for sound.
From the pioneering work of Pierre Broca in the 1860s to today, using MRI and PET scans, neuroscientists have striven to understand how our bicameral brain allows us to respond more intelligently to our environment than would otherwise have been possible. Twin perspectives are needed to fully experience reality.
The twin perspectives of the priest and prophet correspond to the twin perspectives on creation represented respectively by Genesis 1:1–2:3, spoken in the priestly voice, with an emphasis on order, structure, divisions and boundaries, and Genesis 2:4–3:24, spoken in the prophetic voice, with an emphasis on the nuances and dynamics of interpersonal relationships.
There is another area in which there was an ongoing argument between structure and spontaneity, namely tefilla, prayer, specifically the Amida. After the destruction of the Temple, Rabban Gamliel and his court at Yavneh established a standard text for the weekday Amida, comprising eighteen (or later, nineteen) blessings in a precise order.5Mishna Berakhot 4:3.
Not everyone, however, agreed. R. Yehoshua held that individuals could say an abridged form of the Amida. According to some interpretations, R. Eliezer was opposed to a fixed text altogether and held that one should, each day, say something new.6Y. Berakhot 4.
This disagreement is precisely parallel to another one about the source of the daily prayers:
It has been stated: R. Yose son of R. Ḥanina said: The prayers were instituted by the patriarchs. R. Yehoshua b. Levi said: The prayers were instituted to replace the daily sacrifices.7Berakhot 26b.
According to R. Yose son of R. Ḥanina, Shaḥarit was established by Abraham, Minḥa by Isaac, and Maariv by Jacob. According to R. Yehoshua b. Levi, Shaḥarit corresponds to the daily morning sacrifice, Minḥa to the afternoon sacrifice. On the face of it, the disagreement has no practical consequences, but in fact, it does.
If the prayers were instituted by the patriarchs, then their origin is prophetic. If they were established to replace the sacrifices, then their provenance is priestly. Priests were forbidden to act spontaneously, but prophets did so as a matter of course. Someone who saw prayer as priestly would, like Rabban Gamliel, emphasise the importance of a precise text. One who saw it as prophetic would, like R. Eliezer as understood by the Talmud Yerushalmi, value spontaneity and each day try to say something new.
Tradition eventually resolved the matter in a most remarkable way. We say each Amida twice, once privately and silently in the tradition of the prophets, then a second time publicly and collectively by the sheliaḥ tzibbur, the “reader’s repetition,” in the tradition of a priest offering a sacrifice at the Temple. (There is no reader’s repetition in the Maariv service because there was no sacrifice at nighttime). During the silent Amida we are permitted to add extra words of our own. During the repetition we are not. That is because prophets acted spontaneously, but priests did not.
The tragedy of Nadav and Avihu is that they made the mistake of acting like prophets when they were, in fact, priests. But we have inherited both traditions. For without structure, Judaism would have no continuity, but without spontaneity, it would have no fresh life. The challenge is to maintain the balance without ever confusing the place of each.