The World’s Oldest Book Club: The Queer Art of Failure

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Have you ever put your heart and soul into something only to have it blow up in your face?

Have you ever taken a big risk in love or in a spiritual adventure or in a creative endeavor, giving it your all, and then it all goes horribly wrong?

What lesson do we learn when our passion leads to disaster?

In this week’s edition of the world’s oldest book club, the reading of the weekly Torah portion, the ancestors RV temple is ready for opening day. Moshah* instructs Aharona, the high priest, to offer a kick-off sacrifice. Aharona, assisted by her priestly daughters, follows Moshah’s intricate instructions.

Then God appears! She shoots out a fire that consumes the animal pieces lying on the altar! The crowd goes wild! Everyone shouts and falls on their faces.

Inspired, Aharona’s two oldest daughters grab their priestly fire pans, put fire and incense in them, and, the text says:

“They offered before God aish zarah–strange fire– which hadn’t been commanded of them.”

God responds by shooting out a fire of Her own that swallows up Aharona’s two oldest daughters, burning them to death.

The simple reading of the text is that Aharona’s daughters were killed as a punishment. The fire they offered was “strange” and their offering ad hoc. It hadn’t been asked of them. They were killed because they took initiative, or because they insulted God by offering Her fire when She could clearly create Her own damn fire.

God doesn’t come out looking too great here. It reads like a Bridezilla tantrum, God lashing out at some loving folks who dare to not do things exactly as She wanted on Her big day.

The lesson some teachers draw from this story is this: Obey. Don’t act out of passion. Only do what you’re told.

And maybe that’s the lesson we sometimes take when we try something new, when we play with our own “aish zara,” our own strange fire, and get burned. We think: Shit. That was dumb. Never going to do that again. I’m going back to playing by the safe rules.

But the mystical Jewish tradition isn’t having it. In Kabbalah, the story is flipped inside out. The mystics say Aharona’s daughters were not killed because they sinned. The opposite! The mystics say that Aharona’s daughters offered their total passion and God consumed them as a reward! The 18th century mystic Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar says that Aharona’s death by Divine immolation was “death by Divine kiss” – what might be called in other traditions nirvana or a release from samsara.

According to the mystics, Aharona’s daughters offering their passion and ultimately themselves to God, was the very act that actually sanctified the Temple’s grand opening day.

This mystical read makes me think of Jack Halberstam’s book, the Queer Art of Failure. Halberstam writes:

“The queer art of failure turns on the impossible, the improbable, the unlikely, and the unremarkable. It quietly loses, and in losing it imagines other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being.”

Perhaps Aharona’s daughters offer us queer goals for our lives. Perhaps they are the very embodiment of Rumi’s exhortation to Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.

Moshah is up there bossing all the people around, micromanaging Aharona as she does her job, and Aharona’s daughters say:

No thanks. We’re not going to do it your way. We’re going to break the rules and lose your game. We’re going to imagine other goals for life.

And then they are rewarded with Divine union.

What do you think? Is there something to admire in the legend of Aharona’s daughters? Is there something to celebrate in what looks like a tragedy? Is this legend actually a metaphor for young brave people who escape norms to exist in another dimension beyond that which their rule-bound families are capable of appreciating?

Perhaps this is the lesson of Aharona’s daughters: When your heart says the moment is right, play with strange fire. Yeah, you might get burned. But in that burning, you might become something you never thought possible.

In some ways, this is the story of my own life. I played with strange fire that got me kicked out of my ultra-Orthodox family. I got burned, bad, but I also got set free. My agenda is probably obvious: I will always be the one out there championing strange fire. I will always be the one quoting Rumi:

The time has come to turn your heart into a temple of fire. Your essence is gold hidden in dust. To reveal its splendor you need to burn in the fire of love.

May we be brave enough for passion.

May we be brave enough to fail gloriously.

May we be brave enough to turn our stories inside out, to throw ourselves into Life, to become versions of ourselves we never imagined.

Ken Teheye Ritzona

May it be Her will

*I’m using the female Toratah lens here instead of the male Toratoh lens. More at beittoratah.org

Photo by Leonardo Gonzalez via pexels