Acharei Mot: Sacred Silence and Simple Linen

by Yehudit Mazur-Shlomi '27

Parshat Acharei Mot, or After the Death, begins with instructions given to Aaron after the tragic passing of his two sons, Nadav and Avihu.

The LORD said to Moses: 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 cloud over the cover (Leviticus 16:3).

One curious detail stands out. There is a noticeable gap in the narrative concerning the death of Aaron’s sons. Nearly two and a half parshiot—the remainder of Shemini and Tazria and Metzora—intervene, focusing instead on laws of kashrut and ritual purity, with no mention of the conditions under which a priest may enter the Tabernacle. Why does the Torah delay the direct response to their death and the crucial instructions for Aaron until Parshat Acharei Mot?

In order to address these questions, let us go back to the initial moment of the young mens’ death. When their father Aharon learns of their fate, we are told: “Va’yidom Aharon—And Aaron fell silent” (Leviticus 10:3). What was the nature of this silence? Unfortunately, I know it all too well.

When my sister was murdered over 28 years ago in Moscow, in the Former Soviet Union, my whole family was in shock. Of all of us, my mother fell silent. Like a robot on autopilot, she continued taking care of my sister's six-month-old baby while at the same time cooking for everyone, cleaning, calming her two older girls, meeting multiple people coming into the apartment, answering questions that the police had…but not venturing to say anything else. It took quite some time for her to speak again, to come back to her “normal” self, although one never fully can. 

Unlike my mother, who had all the rights to hate the murderers of her daughter, Aaron did not have even that small “luxury.” The ultimate responsibility for his sons’ death was in the hands of God. How could he be angry at the Divine, especially when he and his descendants after him were just given the honor of the highest degree, the eternal priesthood? He would need time to process his grief without outwardly mourning, it seems. Hence, the next two parshiot, often read together, give Aaron—and us as readers—a break, allowing for the processing of the traumatic event. Perhaps it also gives time to return to some kind of equilibrium to allow for the reception of the Divine once again. Ramban teaches, after all, that “the holy spirit does not rest upon man in moments of sadness” (Ramban on Leviticus 16:1). Perhaps that is why the story of Nadav and Avihu gets interrupted and is told over such a long span.

When God finally addresses Aharon again, He does so through an intermediary, Moshe. This “chain communication” was arguably an act of divine compassion, allowing Aaron time and space to process the information from Moshe, rather than from God, who, though always just, had acted harshly toward him. He is told:

He [Aharon] shall be dressed in a sacral linen tunic, with linen breeches next to his flesh, and be girt with a linen sash, and he shall wear a linen turban. They are sacral vestments; he shall bathe his body in water and then put them on (Leviticus 16:4).

Why is such an important role given to plain white linen clothing as opposed to the High Priest’s usual multi-layered and gold-plated garments?

At the funeral for my sister, we were all dressed in black, plain and simple, with no accessories to distract us from the magnitude of horror and awe. Horror at the finality of sheer evil that was just perpetrated. And awe in realizing how small and helpless a human being is in the vastness of the Divine that encompasses everything and defies understanding. At this moment, anything extra—any accessory, any hint of beauty—was unnecessary and unwelcome. Just like the garments worn by the High Priest on Yom Kippur were never to be used again (Rashi, based on Sifra), so we put aside our unadorned black clothes, never to be worn again. 

Aaron, who typically stood before the nation adorned in magnificent robes, approached God clothed only in simple linen garments, stripped of all grandeur, so that nothing might distract him from the awe of the Divine Presence he was about to encounter. Witnessing the death of someone so close to him, at the hand of the Almighty, forced Aaron to confront not only his own vulnerability but the fragility of all humankind. God is the source of everything—both what we can comprehend and what we cannot; both what we experience as “good” and what we may perceive as “evil.” The fullness of the human experience exists somewhere in between, and we may or may not come to understand the meaning or outcome of events as they unfold.

Aaron was to repeat the Yom Kippur service every year until his death. Each time, he would inevitably be drawn back to that first, searing experience, performed in the shadow of the tragic loss of his sons. The ritual of exchanging his golden priestly garments for plain, shroud-like linen robes served as a powerful reminder—not just to Aaron, but to all the High Priests who followed—of the ever-present reality of death, which can come at any moment, and of the Divine Eye that perceives far beyond what we are able to see. These moments are enshrined in our liturgy precisely because they highlight the striking contrast between the simplicity of the linen garments and the usual splendor of the golden ones—magnificent though they are, they remain insignificant before the all-encompassing Presence we seek to encounter on that sacred day.

In looking back at Aaron’s silence, the Torah’s narrative pause, and the stark symbolism of linen garments, one sees not just ritual but a deeply human response to loss and the sacred work of healing. Whether in the form of a grieving parent quietly holding a broken family together, or a High Priest performing the holiest service of the year in stripped-down simplicity, these moments teach us that sanctity doesn’t always reside in grandeur. It often emerges from quiet resilience, from the space between devastation and restoration. Like Aaron, we learn to continue—to show up, year after year, clothed not in gold, but in humble readiness to face the Divine, to remember what has been lost, and to walk forward carrying both pain and purpose.

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Born in the Soviet Union, Yehudit (Yuliya) Mazur-Shlomi started her Jewish learning in the Great Moscow Synagogue. She immigrated to the US and has been involved in the New York Russian-speaking Jewish community since her arrival. Today, she teaches Torah, Hebrew, and Jewish women’s history to those in her global Jewish community. For four years, she served as a co-author of the Global Limmud Chavruta book. In her free time, she is a kosher cooking enthusiast blogging about kosher food at https:/noshingacrossthenation.wordpress.com/.