THE EIGHTH DAY

Our parasha this week, Shemini, “the eighth day”, describes a stark scene. A community enjoying the simcha of the dedication of the Tabernacle, is suddenly plunged into tragedy with the death of Aaron’s elder two sons, Nadav and Avihu.

Our Jewish world, likewise, in the midst of its Pesach celebration has been plunged into tragedy. The brutal murder of Maia and Rina Dee, together with their mother, Lucy, despite heroic efforts from doctors to rescue her from her injuries sustained in the terrorist attack.

In paying tribute to his murdered wife and children, Rabbi Leo Dee went on to make an impassioned plea for people to distinguish between right and wrong and not to relativise victim and perpetrator.

The late Rabbi Lord Sacks pointed out that the capacity to make these moral choices lies at the heart of Shemini or the “the eighth day”.

To understand the significance of the eighth day we need to go back to creation itself. On the first day, G-d creates light and the rest of creation unfolds over the next six days. On day six, G-d creates man with the capacity to create and to make choices. Man sins that very day and is sentenced to exile. But G-d allows them a stay of sentence and they spend Shabbat in Eden. For the whole of that Shabbat, the sun did not set but as that day came to a close, and the world became dark, G-d inspired man how to make light.

According to the Sages, this is the reason we make a blessing on a Havdalah candle to inaugurate the working week.

Thus, the light of the first day is the light G-d created. The light of the eighth day is the light G-d taught us to create, in partnership with Him.

The Tabernacle was intended to be a miniature universe, a symbolic microcosmos, constructed by human beings. Just as God made the earth as a home for mankind, so the Israelites in the wilderness built the Tabernacle as a symbolic home for God. It was their act of creation. Just as Adam and Eve began their creative endeavour in the world on the eighth day, so their descendants inaugurated their Tabernacle on the eighth day.

The light we create on the eighth day is symbolic of the choices we make. We make Havdala, creating distinctions between darkness and light, holy and profane, Shabbat and weekday.

There can be no greater demonstration of such distinctions than the lives of Lucy Dee, and her daughters, Maia and Rina, and the terrorist who killed them. Bringing light and love to the world versus bringing darkness and hatred.

The world is a darker place having lost such luminous lives. May we rise up to our challenges and responsibilities to bring light and goodness to our world.