(Leviticus 16:1-18:30)
The Two Temples
The very beginning of the reading for this Shabbat ought to appear somewhat surprising. Following the death of Aaron’s two sons, Nadab and Abihu, in the wilderness sanctuary (mishkan), God says to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron not to enter the Holy of Holies at any time… lest he die.”
This of course doesn’t mean that Aaron is never to enter the Holy of Holies: the passage goes on to describe how Aaron himself, and all the High Priests who will follow him in history, are in fact required to enter the Holy of Holies—but only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. The words “not to enter at any time” thus really mean “not to enter at any time that he might choose.”
But understood in this fashion, the statement is hardly less surprising. After all, the High Priest (kohen gadol) was the holiest individual in Israel; in this sense, he was the human being who came closest to God. Yet what this verse is saying is that he really wasn’t all that close. He couldn’t decide to walk into the most sacred part of the sanctuary, where God is deemed to be present. Even in a time of great crisis, the High Priest was required, according to this passage, to keep his distance; he had no right to intrude into God’s space and stand before Him (as it were) face to face. In fact, the mention of the death of Aaron’s two sons in the first verse of today’s reading might be understood as a subtle hint to Aaron and all future High Priests: “Don’t forget what happened to these two when they overstepped their limits in the sanctuary.”
But then where did this leave the rest of the people? If the High Priest himself was allowed to stand directly before God only once a year, and all the other kohanim (priests) in the sanctuary were not allowed even that, while ordinary Israelites were kept at a still greater distance, unable even to come close to where the priests and Levites stood… then ordinary Israelites were, at best, spectators, three jumps away from God’s real presence. Was the mishkan (the tabernacle and its later equivalent, the Jerusalem temple) thus basically the province of the priesthood alone?
It seems that, from the very beginning, the Torah had presented an alternate form of proximity to God—one might even say, an alternate sanctuary. When, following the exodus from Egypt, God first approached the people of Israel at Mount Sinai (in Exodus chapter 19), He made them an extraordinary offer: If you obey Me and keep the conditions of My covenant—that is, the laws that I am about to promulgate—then you will be My treasured possession, my ‘am segullah, from among all peoples. The text then adds: “And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Scholars have wrestled with the meaning of this last sentence. Is a “kingdom of priests” a kingdom in which the kings have to also be priests? This seems unlikely on the face of it. In fact, even the words “you will be to Me a kingdom of priests” seem to undercut such a notion. God is saying that you won’t actually be priests—there will still be real priests to offer sacrifices on the altar—but to Me you will be like priests, that is, “a holy nation,” as Exod 19:6 goes on to say. How will this come about? The verse itself says this will happen “if you obey Me and keep the conditions of My covenant.”
This verse thus describes a kind of alternate sanctuary, a space consisting of human prayers and divine commandments (mitzvot). Keep My commandments and you will enter this other kind of sanctuary, in fact, you will stand directly before Me whenever you do what I command. And this went on to become one of the most basic tenets of Judaism. The words that Jews recite before carrying out one of those mitzvot always start off, “Blessed are You…who have made us holy through Your commandments”—as holy as priests in a sanctuary.
The big difference between the sanctuary of the High Priest and the sanctuary of all Israel, that is, the sanctuary of mitzvot, has to do with accessibility. Not even the High Priest can stand in God’s presence anytime he chooses; he gets to do that only once a year. But the ordinary Israelite can enter the sanctuary of mitzvot anytime he or she likes: it is right there, “in your mouth and in your heart to do it” (Deut 30:14).