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Acharei Mot 5781

Is there such a thing as too much God? This may seem something of a strange question. As a , I encourage people to bring God into their lives. But we all know the expression that it’s possible to have “too much of a good thing.” Is it possible to have too much God? In several places the either tells us or shows us that God is enormously powerful, dangerously powerful, so powerful that coming too close is fatal. In this ’s Torah portion, Aharei Mot, God tells to pass on a warning to his brother : Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the over the cover. This comes after the opening verse in our Torah portion, which tells us this is happening after the death of Aaron’s sons. The say that the death of Aaron’s sons was mentioned to emphasize the point made to Aaron, that you could die. Just as you might listen to your doctor’s orders more carefully if he says, “You need to quit smoking, or you could die the same way Joe died.” The death of Aaron’s sons, of course, shows us how powerful God’s presence could be; they died in the presence of God, when they offered “strange fire that the Lord had not commanded.” The rabbis don’t simply accept that as an explanation for why they died. Some rabbis say they were killed because they were too full of themselves, wanting Moses and Aaron to die off already so they could take over. Other rabbis, connecting their death with a warning that follows for the Kohanim not to enter if they’ve been drinking, say they were drunk and that’s why they were killed. But perhaps something God told Moses provides a simpler explanation. In Exodus chapter 33, after the whole episode with the , God becomes reconciled with the people. In a very intimate moment, Moses says 2 to God, hareini na et kvodecha, “Please show me Your glory!” God responds that He will make his goodness pass before Moses, and will proclaim His name, but – “you cannot see My face, for man may not see Me and live.” There are a number of different ways the rabbis try to understand this mysterious statement, that people cannot see God’s face and live. says it doesn’t mean that you could actually see God, and then die; rather it means before a person could even grasp the sight, they’d be dead. Or Hachaim explains that “you cannot see My face and live” means that God was not intentionally withholding that vision from Moses. It means that it’s just a fact, a law of nature, that a human being composed of flesh and spirit could not remain alive after truly seeing God, and God wanted Moses alive, so God refused to grant Moses’ wish. Now if you know your Bible, you might argue that there are passages where people see God and don’t die. In Isaiah chapter 6, the says, “I have seen God seated on a throne.” Chizkuni tells us that this was not seeing with a clear vision, but at best something like a reflection from a mirror. So Isaiah did not actually see God’s face. The rabbis in the also warn against “too much God.” There’s a famous story of four rabbis who went on a mystical journey and entered the heavenly realms. Of the four, one went mad, one died, one became a heretic, and only entered in peace and left in peace. None of the rabbis have an explanation for WHY we can’t see God’s face and live. Maybe there’s a limit to how much God we can handle. Maybe there’s such a thing as a “lethal dose” of God. In the pharmaceutical world they speak of the LD50, the “median lethal dose” for drugs. Even substances that we think of as healthy, or benign, can be fatal in high enough doses. Everyone knows alcohol can be fatal; the LD50 for alcohol has been calculated at 13 shots of a distilled beverage such as whisky. 13 shots 3 downed all at the same time, one right after another, would kill half the people who did it. Somewhat more surprising is that there’s an LD50 for . The LD50 for water is 6 liters. If you drink 6 liters of water too quickly you can flush the electrolytes out of your bloodstream, resulting in hyponatremia, excessively low sodium levels in your , which can kill you. Endurance athletes have died from drinking too much water trying to rehydrate after a competition. People have died drinking too much water after consuming the drug ecstasy which dehydrates people. One poor woman died after drinking too much water in a foolish contest sponsored by a California radio station. Maybe there’s an LD50 for God. Is God like alcohol, damaging even in small quantities and fatal in large quantities? Or like water, life giving and essential in the right amount, and only lethal in a very rare excessive exposure? I like to think that God is like water – life giving and essential, even to the people who aren’t aware of God’s existence and nurturing to the souls of those that seek God. I feel comfortable saying that none of us here is in danger from exposure to an excessive amount of God. In fact, the opposite is likelier to be true for your average person – we suffer from an insufficient amount of God in our lives. Knowing that God is so powerful that too big a dose can be fatal serves to remind us of how far away from God most of us are most of the time. We don’t feel that power most of the time. May God strengthen us in our efforts to draw close; if we start getting too close for safety, I’m sure we will be practically overwhelmed by the power of God’s presence before it becomes dangerous.