Shemini – Fires, Foreign and Domestic

Nadav and Avihu were the crown princes of the Jewish nation. These two sons were slated to succeed Moshe and Aaron. Moshe declared, without hyperbole, that his two nephews, Nadav and Avihu, were greater than he and Aaron. These two sons of Aaron were without peer. Yet they acted in an inexplicable manner: On the eighth day of the inauguration of the Tabernacle, Nadav and Avihu brought an unauthorized offering and died in shocking fashion. What possessed these two exemplars to behave in the way that they did? What do we make of the multiplicity of reasons offered by our Sages for their errant behavior? In this special edition of the Parsha Podcast we offer a novel explanation of what motivated Nadav and Avihu that neatly explains what we know about this shocking and tragic episode.

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