“Bring on the Strange Fire” Rabbi Jacobson’s 4/10/26 Qabbalat Shabbat Sermon

Rabbi Suzie Jacobson
Qabbalat Shabbat, April 10, 2026
Temple Israel of Boston 

Shabbat Shalom!

I love being a rabbi, but even more I love being a teacher. In my weekly Talmud class, Introduction to Judaism, in my Israeli-Palestinian conflict course, in Torah Study and on this bimah. I love teaching teenagers, children, grownups—anyone who is excited to learn.

And while it’s fun to nerd out and share the varied Jewish wisdom crammed into my brain, what I love most isn’t what I offer. I love your questions. Is there a God? What happens when we die? Why don’t Ashkenazi Jews eat rice on Passover? How can we make Shabbat matter in our lives? Do Jews believe in salvation?

Inside every question is the echo of a story—childhood memories, profound doubt, experiences of connection and joy, or conversely, experiences of rejection and dismissal. If you listen carefully, you can hear a person’s longing for community, their desire to build a strong spiritual and moral foundation for the next generation. You can hear curiosity, the spark of a new idea, and you can hear a person’s fears. It is truly profound. When we ask questions, we create a foundation of shared inquiry and exploration rooted in our common humanity.

I find myself wishing that the kind of question-sharing we experience in synagogue were more normative in our world. Our former senior rabbi, Ronne Friedman, taught us that the question mark is the holiest symbol in Judaism—but how do we ritualize, honor, preserve, and develop this culture of curiosity?

The art and spiritual practice of asking hard questions is especially important for Reform Jews. Reform Judaism does not dictate exactly what you should believe, nor how you should practice. Our slogan is “choice through knowledge,” but that can be hard. Sometimes it’s easier if your rabbi could tell you precisely what to do! I have worked with several conversion students who grew up Catholic. While they appreciate my openness, I’ve found that many are baffled by my refusal to tell them what to do. To be a Reform Jew is to discover, explore, experiment, and innovate until you find a Jewish life that is meaningful to you. When we ask hard questions and explore many possible answers, we enter a space rich with possibility, but it’s also fraught—and it takes work.

In Shemini, our Torah portion this week, we are reminded that the religion we practice today was not born fully formed on Mt. Sinai.

We read about the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, two of Aaron’s four sons. Nadav and Avihu, along with their brothers and father, have just been ordained as the first priests and are ready for action. Then, in a brief two-verse episode, Nadav and Avihu offer “strange fire”—eish zara—before God. Though the ritual mirrors other sacrificial rites, their sacrifice is deemed unauthorized. God responds with divine fire, consuming them on the spot. Yeesh.

The Rabbinic commentators are puzzled, but most agree that if God killed them, it must have been for a great sin. They offer their own takes: Rashi suggests they were drunk; Abarbanel argues their timing was offensive; Talmud Yoma says they mishandled the incense; Rashbam thinks they entered the holy of holies; and the Midrash Tanhuma argues they were punished for disrespecting their teacher Moses by performing a ritual not yet properly explained.

By the majority view of our rabbinic ancestors, Nadav and Avihu deserved what came to them. Pretty harsh. Yet there have always been different readings.

Philo of Alexandria suggests their deaths are not punishment. Instead, their religious fervor is met by God’s own — they are consumed in the flames of holiness as a kind of consensual spiritual ecstasy gone awry. 

Rabbi Jonathan Saks teaches that their zeal was to blame. Saks—a revered Orthodox rabbi—reminds us that the Torah has 613 mitzvot and countless rules designed to keep us on the path of piety; without law, he says, people can lose their way. For Saks, to find our place in God’s holiness, we must walk the straight and narrow, not go wild with our creative religious zeal. 

In Reform Judaism, meaning and innovation are essential. It’s not the constraints of the past that define us, but our creativity—the ability to ask questions, engage with our Jewish heritage, and work together in the present moment to discover and craft a Jewish life that is meaningful. If we clung to the rules and restrictions of our ancestors, I wouldn’t be on this bimah. And I fear that the many wise, challenging questions of our children, teenagers, adults, and elders would fall on deaf ears—or worse, would never be uttered.

I’m not surprised by Nadav and Avihu’s demise—this is the priestly author of our Torah, the one who writes the laws and seeks to shepherd the Israelite community into obedience to the ritual cult they control. What does surprise me is that, in more than 2,000 years of commentary, I could not find a single Jew willing to question the rightness of their deaths until the late 20th century.

I choose to read Nadav and Avihu as heroic, inventive, brave, and emotionally present. I see them as creating paths to the Divine from genuine spiritual longing. Their fire was strange because it was new—and the God understood by the ancient authors and orators was not interested in such creativity or honesty. I’m not sure we have a different God from our ancestors, but I do believe we have different ways of understanding the Divine. Today, that same “strange fire”—newness, creativity—forms the bedrock of our evolving spiritual practice.

I am honored to be on this Jewish adventure with you all—with your questions and ideas, your spirit and longing—as we discover how our tradition changes and grows in every generation. As we each bring our strange fire into the mix as we seek a Judaism for our lives and world.

To be a student is to be a seeker; to be a Reform Jew is to be an innovator. May we each join this journey and seek fellow travelers on this holy road. This Jewish journey is available to us all—through worship and education, justice and community. There is no single course or path. It unfolds through life and love, heartache and hope. And many, many interesting questions.