Acharei Mot – After death, life
This Shabbat coincides with Yom Kippur and as such we read parts of parashat Acharei Mot which means “after death”. But after the death of who? It is the death of Aaron’s two sons due to some misguided worshipping decisions they made. It then goes on to describe the correct way both Aaron (and subsequent High Priests) and the people of Israel should embody holiness and show repentance correctly through behaviour and ritual. What unfolds is an extremely detailed description that outlines some of the more unusual rituals including bestowing on a goat all the sins of Israel and casting that goat into the wilderness! This is where we get the concept of a scapegoat, rather ironic that the people who gave rise to this concept become the ultimate scapegoat for humanity’s ills throughout time. But that’s not what I want to hold onto here.
Basically, Acharei Mot lays out clear dos and don’ts regarding eating meat and having sex (a weird combination, I know), as well as finely choreographed rituals of repentance. All this is to ensure our access to the Tabernacle and thus to God.
At first glance the words seem archaic to me, and far removed from our life today. But as I dwell on the portion I am struck by the timeless genius of this sacred text, how the parasha we read seems to perfectly align with the current moment in which we find ourselves. The Torah does this to me all the time and yet, I am endlessly surprised! Maybe this is the divinity inherent within it.
The first thing that stirs me is the name. Acharei Mot. After Death. This year, Acharei Mot is the first piece of Torah we read after marking one year since October 7.
After death.
After massacre.
After pogrom.
After oceans of tears shed.
After funeral after funeral after funeral.
We know, like our grandparents liberated from the camps of Europe knew before us, what it is to exist Acharei Mot, to exist after death, for this past year has felt like one long Acharei Mot. And like the parasha itself, throughout the year we have devised ways to cope, to hold on to hope, to metaphorically return to the Tabernacle and maybe not so metaphorically return to God. And, just as the parasha contains the carefully crafted choreography of what comes after, we the Jewish people have created rituals for what comes after, to cope with the reality we find ourselves in after October 7, Acharei Mot. We don our dog tags engraved with the words “our hearts are in Gaza”. We pin yellow ribbons to our shirts. We gather and hug and pray and cry together as ceremonies begin to take on a familiar shape. We know that the venues will only be announced right before the event. We know we will chant “bring them home now”. We know we will stand and sing Hatikvah together at the end of each tekes, and we will make the walls shake as our collective voice rises and swells. We know that some will be wrapped in Israeli flags and we will smile at them as they embody the courage we may not have ourselves. We are a nation living after death, living Acharei Mot, just as we were in Sinai thousands of years ago, just as we were when liberated from Dachau and Bergen Belsen 90 years ago, redirecting ourselves towards our common soul, steeped in ritual and underpinned by ideas and questions of sanctity, morality, and ultimately, life.
Afterall, Yom Kippur is the OG of redirection; a turning and returning to ourselves, our truth, our mission as individuals and as a nation. This year, Yom Kippur has a resonance like no other as we are a people born anew. We may be exhausted, we may be hurt and angry and betrayed, but we are also renewed. This past year has lit a fire in the Jewish consciousness. Many of us have rekindled traditional practices or have embraced our story with more focus, pride and love. Some of us have learned more about Judaism and Jewish history in order to advocate for the legitimacy of our very existence. Perhaps this past year has been all about turning and returning. A year-long teshuva so-to-speak, giving so many of us access to our beliefs, our story and our traditions that we may have felt estranged from for too long. In our collective pain we have breathed new life into our culture and peoplehood. So, while, Adorno declared that “There can be no poetry after Auschwitz”, after death, Acharei Mot, there can be, indeed there must be, life.
As I write this, only a week ago hundreds of missiles rained down on Israel and 8 innocent people were murdered in a terror attack in Jaffa. This horror unfolded immediately after the incredible precision pager-attack on Hezbollah terrorists and the assassination of terror leader Nasrallah and the upper echelons of Hezbollah. We seem to be perpetually in a cycle of Acharei Mot and I am viscerally aware that this is plunging real people into real grief and mourning right now whilst I sit on the other side of the world from the safety of the dining table upon which I type, pontificating on Torah, God, and peoplehood. I guess we exist inside the liminal space, the space within and between hard hitting reality and the never-ending search for the transcendent, for meaning, for God. Maybe this is what wrestling with God looks like. This is Israel, who we were, who we are and who we are always becoming.