Sh'mini 5774

The mishkan is up and running, having been duly consecrated.  Now, Moses tells Aaron and his sons, “today the Eternal will appear to you.”  It’s all systems go.

What a horror, then, when two of Aaron’s sons are incinerated by God after they offer “alien fire” on the altar.  “And fire came forth from the Eternal and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the Eternal” (Parshat Sh’mini, Leviticus 10:2).

The episode is shocking on many levels, and it also can also teach us spiritually.  The rabbinic commentators have argued for centuries about what “strange fire” actually means, but I notice that the sons are devoured by the same force they promoted  –  fire.  Isn’t it the case that the world gives us what we look for?

I have observed that …

• Angry people find reason to be angry.
• Fearful people have lots of opportunities to fear.
• Negative people experience a negative world.
• Joyful people experience joy throughout the day.
   

To be clear, I do not believe in phony philosophies that hold that one’s mere thoughts create their reality.  Thoughts turn to mindsets, and mindsets shape the way we see and react to the world.  They do not, I am certain, summon good, evil, joy, or pain into our lives.  There’s plenty of all these to go around.

Rather, I think that our mindset shapes what we see – so that we notice the good, evil, joy, or pain in our lives when that’s what we expect to find.  It’s not that what we put into the world comes back to us.  Instead, we see in the world what we expect to see.