Theodore (Teddy) Howard McDarrah, was born in St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in 1994. He was named for the 26th President of the United States, T.R., as well as the many other accomplished Theodores, including Theodor (Dr. Seuss) Geisel and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Teddy has spent most of his life on the Upper West Side and Washington Heights, but he has also lived in East Hampton, Brooklyn, and Minnesota. He loves traveling and has been to Italy, Mexico, and 15 states; his goal is to one day visit Australia. Teddy is now a seventh-grader at the Delta Program at MS 54, where his favorite subjects are humanities and math. Outside of school, his passions are the Mets, the Mets, playing Hudson Cliffs baseball and Safe Haven basketball, watching movies with his friends, and the Mets. Teddy also appreciates dinners in Chinatown, water parks, and family road trips. For his Mitzvah project, he was member of his school’s community service club and math peer tutoring program. When Teddy was in elementary school at PS 87, he did stand-up comedy and won the Most Creative Idea “Oscar” for an iMovie he wrote and directed about a-day-in-the-life of a rock. He hopes to pursue a career in either medicine or comedy.

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           In Parashat Sh'mini, the action centers on Moses, Aaron, Aaron's sons, and God's direct instructions to them and the Israelites. The important themes are purity and holiness in the Jewish tradition, living up to your responsibilities and punishment fitting the crime. Later, I will try to explain all of that, particularly about crime and punishment. First, let me summarize the parashah for you.

The parashah begins with Moses giving instructions to Aaron for a very important sacrifice. The instructions are divided into two parts. The high priest, Aaron needs to sacrifice a calf and a perfect ram. For the people, Aaron must offer a he-goat, a yearling calf and a lamb, an ox, and grain with oil. The sacrifices are meant to purify all the people for their wrongdoings and to honor the day God will appear to the Israelites.

Being a good brother and high priest, Aaron does exactly what Moses says. He takes all of the offerings to the Tent of Meeting. First, he slaughters the animals for the high priest. Then he does the sacrifices on behalf of the people. Lastly, he makes the purification, burnt and well-being offerings.

After Moses and Aaron go inside the Tent of Meeting alone, they come out and bless all of the people. Then the presence of God appears as a fire, which burns all the offerings. The people are in awe, and shout and fall on their faces -- a sign of respect.

Next, two of Aaron’s four sons, Nadab and Abihu, perform an incense offering. It is described as "an alien fire," since God did not ask for this offering. One sentence later, Nadab and Abihu die in flames. Why? The Torah says: "They died at the instance of the Lord."

Is this severe punishment fair? I’ll get to that later. But Moses’ explanation is that Nadab and Abihu did not do what God asked for and performed an unauthorized offering. Since they were priests and didn’t follow the rules, they disrespected God, even more than if regular Israelites didn’t do what God expected of them. Moses tells Aaron that that’s what God meant when God said: "THROUGH THOSE NEAR TO ME I SHOW MYSELF HOLY, AND GAIN GLORY BEFORE ALL THE PEOPLE."

The bodies of Nadab and Abihu are carried from the sanctuary to a place outside the camp. Aaron and his two remaining sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, cannot mourn or be angry because God was the one that killed them. Only the people of Israel are allowed to mourn.

Next, God gives another law to Aaron and his sons, saying priests for all time cannot enter the Tent of Meeting drunk by wine or other intoxicants. The reason is very simple: To separate the pure from the impure. It is the priests' job to act holy. Alcohol can make anyone, even a priest act irresponsibly.

Moses then tells Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar that they must eat the Lord’s gifts from the sacrifice. But they don't. That makes Moses angry. Why don’t they eat the sin offering? Because a high priest in mourning is not allowed to. Aaron explains this to Moses, asking that if this day is to be pure -- which it was, since God had appeared -- and they had eaten the purification while in mourning, would God have approved? Moses agrees that Aaron is right and he was wrong.

The final part of the parashah is all about keeping or eating kosher. First we hear from God a very clear list of what the Israelites can eat: Anything with true hooves and that chews the cud. Yes to cows and goats. But to camels, hares and swine: No. You also cannot eat animals that walk on paws. Good thing for my two cats! You are allowed to eat anything in the water with scales and fins, but anything that is in a stream or the sea that does not have scales or fins you can not eat. Yes to flounder and tuna. No to lobster and clams.

The list goes on to describe birds. No to any predators or scavengers, such as falcons, vultures’ ands owls. You may also not eat most insects, called winged, swarming things. The only insects you may eat are crickets, locusts and grasshoppers. Everything that dwells underneath the earth, such as moles, mice, and great lizards, are a no.

Finally, we deal with death. You cannot eat or even touch an animal that died from natural causes, like old age or disease. If you do touch it, you have to wash your clothes and you’re considered unclean until sundown. If a dead animal’s body touches anything, like a stove or piece of wood, it has to be put in water until sundown to clean it. If it touches a vessel made of clay, it has to be broken. It’s interesting that impurities from touching a dead body last only until sun down, but eating a lobster roll or bacon has no clock on being forbidden. You just can’t do it. Period.

Again, we ask: Why? Why keep kosher? And again, the answer sounds just like what Moses told Aaron when his son’s died. God says, "I AM HOLY, SO YOU SHALL BE HOLY."

            I've already asked "why?" several times. Why is purity so important in Jewish tradition? Why is living up to your responsibilities important? And why is it important, or not, for punishments fit the crime?

As we've seen this presidential election season, in politics, no answer is straight. And for Jews, no answer is short. But I will try.

First, purity. According to Maimonides, the medieval physician and great Torah commentator, the distinctions between holy and profane, the ritually pure and ritually impure, come from our concrete behavior. To be pure and holy isn't about thinking, it's about doing. It’s the doing that defines our relationship to God.

Let's look at what God has asked Moses, the priests and Israelites to do. In the beginning of Parahsat Shemini Moses asks Aaron and his sons to sacrifice animals and grains in order to purify the Israelites before the presence of God appears. In the middle are instructions from Moses to the high priests not to drink intoxicants before entering the Tent of Meeting. The final section deals with telling the Israelites about kosher foods versus foods unfit for eating, and what to do if anything may have been contaminated by coming into contact with the dead.

The rabbis teach us that there are two different kinds of holiness laws. The first are what I like to call the "duh-laws" or laws that make sense, such as honor thy father and mother, don't murder and don't be drunk when you pray. The other laws are things that God wants us to do just because God said so, such as sacrificing -- that is, murdering animals and spilling their blood at the base of the alter -- or eating kosher. Sure, lots of religions back in Biblical times sacrificed animals. It was a good way to show God -- and everyone else -- how obedient you were. But, really, it doesn't make any sense. As for eating kosher, okay, pigs are dirty and lobsters are bottom feeders. But today high quality, organically fed farm animals and fish today are, supposedly, safe. But some of us keep kosher anyway, just because God told us to.

The result of following both kinds of laws, however, means the same thing: It demonstrates our will to be and act pure and holy. As Jews, we try to do what God has commanded us because as God says, " YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY." God makes it clear that we should live and act as pure as God. Or at least try.

     The story of the two sons of Aaron bringing an alien fire before God and then getting killed brings me to the next important topic: Living up to your responsibilites. These two men decided on their own to make incense offerings to God. Not smart. It reminds me of another fire earlier in the parasha, when God appeared. In the first fire, the people were in awe and fell on their faces. This time, though, Nadab and Abihu fall down dead from the flames. It is written in the Torah: "AND A FIRE CAME FORTH FROM BEFORE GOD AND CONSUMED THEM…"

     The great rabbis have many explanations why they were killed. Rashi says that it's because they were arrogant. They decided themselves what to offer, how to bring the offering, and when to offer it. For disregarding what God said, and failing to consult with Moses and Aaron, the two brothers were punished. The Rashbam says the brothers took the law into their own hands. And if there's one thing that Leviticus is all about, it's following God's law.

I suppose many Israelites in the Bible did the same thing. That is, take the law into their own hands or show arrogance, but what’s important here is that Nadab and Abihu were not just ordinary Israelites. They were priests. Leaders have to set an example for the community. As the Hebrew National commercial for hot dogs says, "They answered to a higher power." Or, at least, to a higher standard.

As priests, they were responsible not just to themselves, not just to their personal relationship with God, but as representatives from God to the rest of the Israelites. If they, as priests, could let their failure to follow God's instructions get the better of them, where would that leave the rest of the people? Their moral authority would be lost. And, says Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, when people, especially priests, change or break the law on their own, they disrupt community unity. As God says, THROUGH THOSE NEAR TO ME I SHOW MYSELF HOLY, AND GAIN GLORY BEFORE ALL THE PEOPLE.

But is that a reason for God to kill them? Did the punishment fit the crime? Moses thinks so, and tells Aaron. But Aaron appears unconvinced. His response to Moses' explanation for his sons' deaths? Silence. That’s one of the few times in the Torah where silence is written down as if it were words. His silence speaks loudly.

Nadab and Abihu's deaths are not the only time in the bible where God's punishment seems too severe for the crime. It starts right in the beginning: Genesis. The crime? Eve eats fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil, and convinces Adam to do the same. Peer pressure! And the punishment? Exile from the Garden of Eden. Sure they disobeyed God, just like most children disobey their parents, but most kids don’t get in trouble when they eat fruit.

Ten generations later comes the story of Noah's Ark. God decides to destroy all the world's creatures because of humankind's bad behavior. God saves only Noah's family and two animals from every species. God decided every creature on earth deserved to die because of humankind's bad behavior. Was that right? I don't think so, and I think God agreed, since God vowed never to do that again.

You even have to feel sorry for all the Egyptians who suffered through the 10 plagues. Regular Egyptians were swarmed by locusts, had their rivers turn to blood and, of course, their first born sons killed, just because Pharaoh wouldn't let Moses' people go. It worked, of course, but the way I see it is that God punished all the Egyptians for Pharaoh's crimes. And if there was anyone who knew that Pharaoh didn’t fairly or even really represent his people, it was God. Was that fair?

God did give a lot of laws. Six hundred and thirteen commandments to be exact. But God did not expect the Israelites to be perfect. As I like to tell my mom, no one is perfect. I believe the mitzvot, like the United States Constitution, is meant to bring together the people as one community with one destiny. It’s like the social compact Thomas Hobbes discussed; without laws we would be in a state of nature with every person out for him or her self Anarchy or a state of nature. The Jewish mitzvot are like the social compact, but they're different, too. Not only are we one people because we agree to be, but we are one people because we have one holy way of life. It's not only a decision by and for the people. It's also by and for God.

Now to crime and punishment. The Torah says that every person who is arrested and accused of a crime, regardless of how bad it was and what the evidence is, has a defense: We were all created in the image of God, so in a sense, we are all good. But if we are all god-like and good, why do we do commit crimes? The Torah says that every evil deed is really because of things that made us go against our true self. Maybe you are forced to steal because you’re poor. Or you break the law because you are mentally ill. If our nature is good, I think that sometimes our environment or brain chemistry is bad.

And, just as important, how do you figure out the proper punishment? In the Torah it's a written that if you kill someone, you should be killed. Pretty straight-forward. But Rabbi Harold Kushner points out that the Talmud is opposed to capital punishment. The rabbis believed that God punishes all murders, convicted or not. Murderers will always get a divinely inflicted death sentence through guilt and shame, so we don't have to do it ourselves.

But there are lots of crimes besides murder. As outlined in my section of Leviticus and those before and after, punishment should fit the crime. If you steal something, pay it back. If you lie, cheat, etc., you can atone by offering a sacrifice, admitting it publicly or getting a penalty of some sort. As one Hasidic rabbi commented, "The gates of repentance open for anyone who does wrong and then realizes it and seeks to make amends."

Judges, lawyers, the police and parents have to look at the evidence of a crime, but they should also pay attention to the evidence of a criminal's goodness in his or her life. Maybe you commit a crime, but are you a good child, parent, member of the community -- or a certain governor -- or two?  Because punishment for a crime should not really be about revenge or to set an example. The statistics show that it doesn’t really work. When the punishment really fits the crime it’s about making the accused criminal a better person. A person who will follow the mitzvot of the Torah. Which I sincerely intend to do. That, for me, is what it means to be a Bar Mitzvah.