One of the most significant moments in Parashat Hukat is the story of Aharon’s death. The Torah relates that Aharon’s death is part of the punishment for the act that took place at Mei Merivah. Moshe is commanded to climb up Hor HaHar together with Aharon, where he is to pass the responsibility of the High Priesthood to Elazar. Well aware that this is Aharon’s final mile, Moshe fulfills the heavenly command. The Torah relates:
Moses stripped Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar, and Aaron died there on the summit of the mountain (Bemidbar 20:28).
Following Aharon’s passing, Moshe comes down the mountain together with Elazar. Aharon’s absence serves as a clear message to the people that he will not return. Their reaction to this bitter news appears in a single verse:
When Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain, the whole community knew that Aaron had breathed his last. All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days (Bemidbar 20:29).
We find quite a few eulogies in the Bible, even though we are not always informed of their contents. After Sarah’s death, the Torah relates that Avraham came “to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her” (Bereishit 23:2); regarding Yaakov we are told: “they held there a very great and solemn lamentation” (Bereishit 50:10); on the occasion of Shmuel’s passing, the navi tells us that “all Israel gathered and made lament for him” (1 Shmuel 25:1). On occasion we have slightly more detailed descriptions of eulogies, like the eulogy offered by King David on his son, Avshalom, which includes a single sentence of lament: “My son Absalom! O my son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 19:1), or the cry offered by Elisha upon Eliyahu’s disappearance: “Oh, father, father! Israel’s chariots and horsemen!” (2 Melakhim 2:12). A more detailed eulogy can be found at the beginning of 2 Shmuel, where David laments the death of his friend, Yonatan, and his adversary, King Shaul:“I grieve for you, My brother Jonathan, You were most dear to me. Your love was wonderful to me More than the love of women.” “Shaul and Jonathan, Beloved and cherished, Never parted In life or in death! They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions!”
In our case, however, the Torah makes no mention of a eulogy for Aharon, rather it relates a prolonged thirty-day period of mourning. The midrashim attempt to fill this void, by placing words in the mouths of the mourning Israelites and suggesting reasons for the extended mourning. Some midrashim argue that Ahron’s reputation as someone who loved peace and pursued it made his absence very noticeable to the people. He was so beloved by all parts of the community, that his popularity eclipsed that of his brother, Moshe. Other midrashim point out that among the people there were those who could not believe that Aharon had truly died, for in their eyes Aharon represented someone who could evade the Angel of Death. After all, wasn’t it Aharon who had brought an end to the plague, standing tall between the living and the dead (see Bemidbar 17:9-15)!?
Targum Yonatan goes so far as to insert a eulogy, that Moshe was alleged to have made about his brother, filling the lacuna of the biblical verses:
…And once Aharon had died, the Clouds of Glory dissipated, on the first day of the month of Av.
The entire people of Israel saw that Moshe descended from the mountain, crying and saying: “Woe to me over you, my brother, Aharon, who served as the pillar of prayer for the Israelite nation!”
And the people – both men and women – followed his lead in crying, continuing for thirty days.
The midrashim, including Targum Yonatan, try to explain the emotions felt by the people at that time, or else attempt to recreate what was said at Aharon’s eulogy. In doing so they attempt to fill in what is missing in the biblical text, which remains silent and does not offer a eulogy. What role did Aharon play amongst the people? What did they lose when he died? By adding these elements of his personality, the midrashim effectively write the missing eulogy.
The importance of a eulogy is that it offers an opportunity to respond to the real human need to tell this person’s story. Most often, the true measure of a person can only be taken after he is no longer with us. While someone is alive, we have too much information, too many details, too many interactions, to be able to accurately portray an individual. For this reason, the intimate collection of particulars that we have learned about Aharon throughout the Torah do not suffice. We await the Torah’s “bottom line” on Aharon’s life and his unique contributions – but the Torah chooses to remain silent.
The obvious gap that exists between the midrashim and what the Torah chooses to write clarifies for us the difficulty to express in words: “What is a man,” or “Who was this person.”
There are deep insights that cannot be transmitted through direct and structured speech.
There is a point when a person can no longer speak, and then he rises from speech to melody.
Then there is a point when the melody is not enough, and it becomes a single sound, and even a soft, murmuring silence.
This is the moment when the person himself becomes a sound that is not heard, when there is nothingness.
But this is the most sensitive of insights.
What is absorbed from man is the nothingness that is in him.
That place where you cannot say anything about him.
Rav Yair Dreyfuss, Negi’ot bi-sefat ha-lev, p. 212.
Here we find Rav Dreyfuss describing the gap that exists between a person’s teaching and his written works; between his Torah and the written words where they are consigned. But this is also true about the person, himself. Coming to know a person means becoming familiar with the totality of their personality, and in doing so there is a recognition of many levels of their identity. It involves an understanding of the heart that goes far beyond what can be expressed in words. Any attempt to formulate this knowledge in a framework of concrete words, involves the loss of the broad spiritual implications expressed by the vitality of reality. When the prophet Yeshayahu instructs: “And your eyes shall see your teacher” (30:20), he is saying that it is not enough for a student to read his teacher’s writings or to read his biography. The unmediated encounter with the uniqueness and specialness that every individual brings to the world cannot be replaced.
The prolonged weeping of the nation of Israel attests more than anything else to the magnitude of Aharon’s personality – one that could not be expressed in words.
