Sermon, Parashat Shmini, April 10, 2026

This week, we enter the sacred—and unsettling—terrain of the Book of Leviticus, Parashat Sh’mini. A moment that begins in radiance—Aaron and his sons inaugurating the priestly service—quickly turns to heartbreak. Nadav and Avihu, Aaron’s sons, bring what the Torah calls esh zarah, a “strange fire,” and in an instant, they are gone.

The Torah’s response is spare, almost unbearably so:

Vayidom Aharon — “And Aaron was silent.” (Leviticus 10:3)

No eulogy. No tearing of garments. No public mourning rituals. In fact, Moses instructs Aaron and his remaining sons, Elazar and Itamar, not to mourn in the usual ways. The communal need for order, for continuity, overrides the personal need for grief. And we are left with a question that is as ancient as this text and as immediate as this very week:

What do we do when bad things happen to good people?

The truth is, most of us do not arrive at moments like this empty-handed. We arrive carrying emotional toolkits shaped long before we knew we were collecting them—formed in our families of origin. In The Relationship Cure, psychologist Dr. John Gottman describes four emotional cultures that shape how we respond to pain: Some of us were raised to dismiss emotion: “You’re fine. Keep going.” Some were taught to disapprove of emotion: “Don’t cry. Be strong.” Some experienced a kind of emotional permissiveness: feelings everywhere, but little guidance on what to do with them. And some—if we are fortunate—were raised with emotion coaching: where feelings are noticed, named, and held with care, even as boundaries are maintained.

Now imagine Aaron in that moment.

He has just lost two sons in a sudden, incomprehensible way. And instead of being surrounded with space to grieve, he is—perhaps—placed into something like an emotion dismissing or even emotion disapproving environment: “Do not let your hair grow wild. Do not rend your clothes… lest you die.” (Leviticus 10:6) Hold it together. Stay composed. The community needs you.

And Aaron?
He is silent.

Some read Aaron’s silence as strength. And perhaps it is.

But what if it is also something else?

You often hear me quote that grief is love that doesn’t know where to go. But, what happens when grief has nowhere to go? What if Aaron’s silence is not only spiritual acceptance, but also the echo of a system that cannot yet hold his pain?

The Torah does not tell us what Aaron feels. It only tells us what he does not do. And so we are invited to ask: What do we do—with our own grief, and with the grief of those around us?

Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, wrote from his own place of profound loss. And he offered a reframing that has comforted generations:

The question is not “Why did this happen?”
The question is: “Now that this has happened, what will we do for one another?”

Kushner teaches that we may not always find satisfying answers to suffering. But we can become the kind of people who respond to suffering with presence, compassion, and care.

If Aaron’s world limited his grief, perhaps our task is to build a different kind of world. A world shaped not by dismissal or disapproval, but by what Dr. Gottman calls emotion coaching—and what our tradition might call chesed (lovingkindness) guided by gevurah (wise boundaries). What might that look like?

It might look like:

Noticing
Paying attention to the subtle signals of pain. Not waiting until someone is falling apart to see that they are struggling.

Naming
Giving language to what is hard: “This is grief.” “This is fear.” “This is anger.” As the Psalms teach us, there is holiness in honest naming.

Validating
Resisting the urge to fix or minimize. 

Not “It will be okay,” but “Of course this hurts.”

Holding boundaries with compassion

All feelings are welcome—but not all behaviors are helpful. We can help each other move through pain without being consumed by it.

Showing up
Perhaps most importantly: presence. Sitting beside someone in their sorrow, even when we have no words.

Aaron’s silence lingers in our tradition. It is powerful. It is haunting. But our tradition does not end there. We are a people who learned, over generations, how to build structures of care and to use our tradition and rituals to ensure that this wisdom lives throughout the generations:

Shiva, where we do not leave mourners alone.

Nichum aveilim, comforting the bereaved.

Prayers that give voice to grief when words fail.

We learned—perhaps because of moments like Aaron’s—that no one should have to hold sorrow in silence forever.

When bad things happen to good people—and they will—we stand at a crossroads.

We can repeat the emotional patterns we inherited: minimizing, silencing, avoiding.

Or we can choose something different. We can become a space for one another that notices. That names. That sits beside. That makes room for grief—and for healing. Because while we may not be able to answer why, we can always answer how. How we show up. How we care. How we love.

May we be a community that refuses to let anyone grieve alone. And may we help transform silence—not into suppression, but into a sacred space where presence itself becomes prayer.

Shabbat Shalom.