In the past six months, I learned, as I’m sure many you have, as well, about units in the IDF that I never knew existed. I learned about the IDF’s Unit 669, one of its most elite units, trained to enter into combat zones and evacuate wounded soldiers by helicopter, who have saved hundreds of lives since October 7. I also learned about another unit, which is comprised not of elite soldiers, but rather of mothers in their fifties and sixties.
In the past decade or so, the IDF rabbinate recognized that as more and more young women were joining combat units, a special team would be needed to serve as the Chevre Kadisha for female soldiers. However, the members of the IDF Women’s Casualty Treatment Unit, all of whom are volunteers, never expected to encounter what they did in the days following שמחת תורה. Dozens of remains were brought into a huge warehouse where they had to work diligently and gently to identify young women murdered by Hamas and then carefully prepare them for burial. In some cases, there was little left beyond ashes or partial remains.
After completing their work, the women of this unit brought the remains into a separate room where they would simply pray quietly, trying to show love and care for these women, to give כבוד to the bodies of people who had been dehumanized in their final moments. Having heard or read interviews with several members of the group, such as Noa Lewis, Sharon Laufer, and Shari Mendes, I have been stunned by the kindness, fortitude, patience, and intentionality with which these women, many of whom had their own children serving in Gaza, handled an unimaginably painful situation. The precedent for how to respond to such an incredible tragedy is found in the story of אהרן’s sons we read this morning.
The משכן was complete, אהרן and his four sons spent an entire week right outside, waiting for their opportunity to perform the Temple services, which until then had been restricted to משה רבינו alone. אהרן brings special קרבנות and blesses the Jewish People. Somehow, unbeknown to him, his two eldest sons were jumping the gun, rushing into the משכן to bring a fire offering. The תורה says that as they made this אש זרה, this foreign fire, they were consumed, burned by the fire, killed in the משכן on the very first day they were eligible to serve inside.
We have discussed various explanations of what נדב and אביהו were doing, whether and why it was problematic, how they could behave inappropriately at such a high-stakes moment, and why they died. Whatever the cause, however, this moment was obviously tragic, both for אהרן and his surviving sons, אלעזר and איתמר, and also for משה and the rest of the Jewish People. During a national celebration, a holiday of sorts, fire suddenly engulfs two of the Jewish People’s most prominent leaders, children of the first כהן גדול, the future heirs to the priesthood.
And in that moment, at the height of national and personal calamity, משה responds in two ways. He first tries to console אהרן, perhaps unsuccessfully, by invoking the idea that אהרן’s children died על קידוש ה׳, sanctifying G-d’s name:
וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־אַהֲרֹן הוּא אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר ה׳ לֵאמֹר בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל־פְּנֵי כָל־הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד וַיִּדֹּם אַהֲרֹן׃
Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.” But Aaron was silent.
Knowing that one’s child died על קידוש ה׳ might be a source of comfort for some, while providing no relief for others. I recently heard an interview with Hannah Wacholder Katsman, mother of Hayim Katsman, who was killed on October 7. The interviewer asked her whether it gave her any comfort to know that in his last moments, Hayim helped save a young woman’s life. Hannah Katsman explained that though she is glad the woman is alive, it unfortunately does not help her in her grief. Perhaps אהרן felt similarly and that is why he was silent.
The second action משה takes is to ensure the proper burial of his nephews, which could not be done by their father or brothers, who were in the midst of being anointed as the first כהנים. משה assigns this job to his cousins, מישאל and אליצפן, instead:
וַיִּקְרָא מֹשֶׁה אֶל־מִישָׁאֵל וְאֶל אֶלְצָפָן בְּנֵי עֻזִּיאֵל דֹּד אַהֲרֹן וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם קִרְבוּ שְׂאוּ אֶת־אֲחֵיכֶם מֵאֵת פְּנֵי־הַקֹּדֶשׁ אֶל־מִחוּץ לַמַּחֲנֶה׃
Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, “Come forward and carry your brethren away from before the sanctuary to outside the camp.”
Strangely, the תורה tells us not only the names of these two men, not only their father’s name, but also that they are אהרן’s cousins. Why does the תורה bother to tell us all this information? Moreover, the תורה already told us in פרשת שמות that לוי’s son קהת had four sons, among them עמרם and עוזיאל. It also tells us that עמרם’s children included משה and אהרן and that עוזיאל’s children included מישאל and אליצפן. So why repeat that lineage information here again?
Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky suggests that there is a technical explanation for all of this. The מדרש in תורת כהנים says that משה’s appointment of מישאל and אליצפן to bury נדב and אביהו implies that כהנים are not allowed to become טמא, impure, from contact with a corpse even for relatives. The problem with this is that it contradicts an explicit verse later in פרשת אמור that requires כהנים, other than the כהן גדול, to become impure for their closest relatives. The commentators solve this by saying that either אלעזר and איתמר were unique as the first generation of כהנים and were not allowed to become impure or that משה decreed a הוראת שעה, a temporary ban on אלעזר and איתמר becoming impure so that they could finish the inauguration of the משכן. Either way, says Rav Kamenetsky, if the immediate family couldn’t be the ones to bury נדב and אביהו, then משה determined it should be the closest relatives available, which were מישאל and אליצפן. That’s why the תורה highlights their relationship to אהרן, rather than relying on the earlier פסוק in פרשת שמות.
But רבינו בחיי and the נצי״ב in העמק דבר offers another interpretation. He says that מישאל and אליצפן were not just closely related to אהרן; they also imitated his personal characteristics. The משנה in מסכת אבות tells us to be like אהרן, who was known to be a peacemaker, who sought reconciliation and love between all people. Moreover, says the נצי״ב, there are other signs of the unique greatness of these two men. אלצפן’s name is sometimes spelled missing the י and מישאל accepted his younger brother being appointed as leader. Since אהרן himself could not bury his sons, משה felt that the men taking care of the burial had to emulate his values of empathy and kindness and humility.
According to the גמרא in סוכה, this is not the only time that מישאל and אליצפן play a significant role in Jewish history. At the beginning of ספר במדבר, the תורה tells us that a number of people approached משה to complain that they were missing their opportunity to bring the first קרבן פסח in the Wilderness because they were טמאים, they were impure. As a result, משה approaches the רבש״ע, who then institutes the concept of the פסח שני, a second opportunity to bring the קרבן פסח one month after Passover for someone who had been טמא or too far away.
The גמרא in מסכת סוכה wonders who these people were. The פני יהושע, the תורה refers to them as “אֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר הָיוּ טְמֵאִים לְנֶפֶשׁ אָדָם”, implying that they’re people we should already know. Also, as רב אליהו מזרחי points out in his commentary on רש״י that no one died between מתן תורה and the inauguration of the משכן nearly a year later. רבי יוסי הגלילי says that they are the men who were carrying the coffin of יוסף הצדיק, which משה retrieved while they were leaving Egypt. But רבי עקיבא makes a fascinating suggestion He says that these men were, in fact, מישאל and אליצפן, who recovered the bodies of נדב and אביהו from the משכן and buried them. רבי יצחק questions this and says that they should have been able to purify themselves in time for פסח and the commentators point out that רבי עקיבא must have understood that the burial was on the 8th of ניסן, which was too close to פסח for them to finish the purification process.
The question is, why does רבי עקיבא insist that the תורה must be referring to מישאל and אליצפן? Furthermore, the מדרש תנחומא asserts that what pushed קרח to stage his rebellion against משה and אהרן’s leadership was the fact that אליצפן was appointed to be the leader of the קהת clan within שבט לוי. קרח protested that אליצפן is the son of עוזיאל, the youngest of קהת’s sons, while קרח is the son of יצהר, the second to eldest. Why was אליצפן appointed over him if not due to some kind of favoritism or nepotism?
The answer to both קרח’s question and to our question about why רבי עקיבא was so sure who the impure men were is the same. קרח sought power and complained to משה, not to solve the problem, but to lead an uprising against him. In contrast, מישאל and אליצפן stepped up in a moment of unfathomable tragedy, despite the trauma of the scene. תוספות ask why מישאל and אליצפן were טמא, according to רבי עקיבא, as they were totally burned into ashes, which do not convey טומאה. They answer that נדב and אביהו’s bodies may have been burned to almost ash but they retained their human form, making their bodies still capable of spreading טומאה. The מדרש also discusses whether מישאל and אליצפן had to use hooks to remove the bodies from inside the משכן or whether the explosion from the fire threw the bodies out of the משכן, such that מישאל and אליצפן could reach them.
One could only imagine how traumatized they might have been from these horrific sights. And yet, they not only rose above this, but didn’t even use it as an excuse to avoid bringing the קרבן פסח. They insisted that this tragedy not prevent them from being part of the rest of כלל ישראל. Until they complained, they would have been exempt from פסח altogether, required not to eat חמץ, but unable to sit at a סדר and eat. But once they complained, they made anyone who doesn’t bring a קרבן פסח שני liable for כרת if they fail to bring it on purpose. מישאל and אליצפן’s unique qualities of humility and incredible dedication explain why משה chose them to bury נדב and אביהו and why אליצפן was made a leader, even though קרח was technically more senior.
In fact, there are two historical figures that share מישאל’s name. There was a מישאל that was among the three Jewish officials who refused to bow before נבוכדנצר and were thrown into a furnace, only to be miraculously save from being burned. And there was a מישאל who stood beside עזרא הסופר as he taught תורה to the Jewish People upon their return to ארץ ישראל. One can speculate whether they were named after the original מישאל and shared his personality traits of humility, dedication, and leadership.
Yossi Klein Halevi, the Israeli journalist, recently said that he is deeply disappointed in our current leadership. At the same time, he was also extremely impressed, even blown away, by this young generation of Israelis who have stepped up to display incredible dedication, self-sacrifice, and humility in the days after October 7 and throughout the war. The loss of 1200 Jews can never be explained or justified and we can continue to feel like אהרן, silent in the face of their loss על קידוש ה׳.
But perhaps there is also a silver lining, a glimmer of hope in the darkness and tragedy of the war in Gaza, the daily deaths of soldiers and civilians, the suffering of the hostages and hungry children, and the threat from Iran. We now have a generation of emerging leaders, מישאל and אליצפןs, who know how to put their head down and do the work, who have had to gather the ashes of their brethren and bury them, who have been thrown into the furnace, hoping to emerge safely on the other side. May הקב״ה help those deserving Jewish leaders emerge from this moment of darkness and loss and ash. May He help them guide us to another time of renewal where we can stand beside this generation’s עזרא reading the תורה. And may we soon have the opportunity to ourselves participate in פסח in an ideal way in a fully rebuilt and renewed ירושלים.
דורש לנפשי 