Aharon ha-Kohen Dies on Mount Hor; the Clouds of Glory Depart the Camp

Aharon ha-Kohen died on the summit of Mount Hor on the first of Av. He was 123 years old, three years older than his brother Moshe. According to the account in Bamidbar, Moshe led him up the mountain in full view of the camp, removed the eight vestments of the High Priest one by one, and dressed his son Elazar in them. Aharon lay down and died.

The people looked up and understood only when the light changed. For forty years, since the Exodus from Egypt, seven clouds had traveled with the camp — one clearing the road ahead, one gathering the stragglers behind, one shading them from the desert sun. The Talmud teaches that those clouds were given in Aharon's merit. When he died, they thinned and lifted, and the sun came through hard.

Aharon's public life had begun as Moshe's voice before Pharaoh, when his younger brother was too reluctant to speak. It ended as the model of a priest the country did not want to lose. He had once stopped a plague in the camp by running into the middle of it with a pan of incense, standing between the dying and the living. He was known above all as a mediator: the tradition in Avot de-Rabbi Natan describes him going quietly from one estranged neighbor to another, telling each that the other regretted the quarrel, until the two met in the street and embraced.

Bamidbar records that the entire house of Israel wept for him for thirty days — men and women both. The Sages read the detail about the women as a quiet tribute to the marriages he had held together without anyone knowing.

The consequences were immediate. A local king, no longer deterred by the sight of the sheltering clouds, attacked from the south. The Sages count Aharon's death as the beginning of a wound the calendar itself would open every year: the month of Av begins in mourning. A great shelter had been taken away, and from now on, everything that would happen in this month would happen in the open.