For the many you shall make their estate large

 and for the few you shall make their estate small

(bemidbar 33:54)

From the many you shall give much

And from the few you shall give less

(Bemidbar 35:8)

…And I have already explained in Parashat

Pinchas that lots would determine in which district and which vicinity each

tribe should receive, and after that it was up to the distributors to assign to

each tribe a large portion or a small portion according to the size of the

population, and this is the meaning of "and you shall settle the land by

lot according to your clans", that is to say that through the lot each

family will ascertain, meaning, which tribe will take its portion in which

vicinity, and after that "for the many you shall make their estate large"

this will be by hand of the distributors without [casting] the lot, only

he was to set a condition for the recipient that the recipient's portion must

be within the area assigned by lot, meaning that "for the many you shall

make their estate large" may not be at the expense of a different tribe, but

only within the area assigned by lot to this tribe, and the meaning of "By

the tribes of your fathers you shall settle" is that each tribe will

receive its estate within particular boundaries.

(Malbim, Bemidbar 33:54)

"Each according to his ability, each according to his needs"

Cooperative consumption, which is the outstanding feature of the

kibbutz way of life, severs the tie between the contribution of individual to

the collective and the obligation of the collective to supply his needs. This

obligation is unconditional and is made possible by the anticipation that each

member of the collective will give of all his ability to the group, as his

needs are fully supplied. This is an optimistic perception of human nature. In

contrast to Marx – who delayed realization of the principle to a utopian era of

unlimited abundance – the kibbutz decided to live according to live by the

dictates of the principle even under conditions of harsh shortage.

(From "The

Kibbutz Lexicon")

Cities of refuge:

Protection, method of punishment, atonement,

Or rehabilitation therapy?

Chana

Manne

In memory of my father and mentor, David ben Yitzchak v'Chana,

who

passed away on 8 Tamuz 5772 at a ripe old age.

"Grey hair is a crown of glory; it is attained by righteousness" (Proverbs 16:31)

This week's parasha is the

first mention of the command to establish cities of refuge to which

unintentional murderers must flee. In the words of the Sefer

Hachinuch: "Beth Din is commanded to extract the

accidental killer from his town and to settle him the cities of refuge and [it

is incumbent] upon the killer himself to go there."

Before relating to the reasons for the commandment, it

is necessary to define the "inadvertent killer" – "rotseach bishegagah".

Our sages differentiated between different levels of inadvertence. At one end

of the spectrum is "inadvertence verging on accidental". A modern

example would be: A man drives his car carefully, and someone shoots onto the

road and is killed. The driver is in no way responsible, and there is no cause

for prosecution. Such a person is not to be sent to a city of refuge. At the

other end of the spectrum is: "inadvertence verging on with intent".

A modern example: One who drives an out-of-order car, or drives while

intoxicated, looses control while driving and another is killed. The driver did

not intend to kill, but he was not sufficiently careful and endangered human

life. His act is criminal and his sin is too serious to justify the protection

of a city of refuge. He is condemned to forever flee the blood redeemer; he

will live in perpetual exile, like Cain, a wanderer. The unintentional killer

who is sentenced to live in a city of refuge differs from the above examples.

He had no intent to kill, and his action was not likely to endanger life. Yet

he was not sufficiently careful, and as a result a fatal accident occurred. The

example given by the Torah is of a man chopping trees, and while someone was

passing, the axe slipped from his hands and the passerby was hit and killed.

Were the woodchopper to have stopped for a moment and waited until the victim

passed and left the area, the accident would have been averted. It seems that

today no end of traffic, work and army training accidents fall into this

category.

Many explanations have been suggested for sending

unintentional killers of the third category to the cities of refuge.

1. The repeated use of the verb "lanuss" – "to flee" – seems to

indicate that the primary consideration is protection from an avenger.

2. The sentence to dwell in cities of refuge is a punishment.

The Torah emphasizes (Bemidbar 35:32) "And you shall not take ransom in lieu of

death of the high priest". The Sefer Hachinuch elaborates on this idea and views exile to the

city of asylum as an educational punishment, which facilitates tikkun – rehabilitation – in the killer's

soul: " Since murder is most severe because it involves the destruction

must dwell all his life with strangers.

The educational aspect of the punishment is also

reflected in the fact that instead of passing his days in a jail, surrounded by

criminals, the inadvertent killer is sent to a city of the Levites and receives

free lodgings (as our sages understood from the passage in the Book of Joshua: "And

they shall give him a place and he shall dwell among them") There, surrounded

by the teachers and sages of the           nation,

he learns how one should behave and which means of caution should be employed

in order to fulfill his responsibilities as a useful member of society.

3. The Rambam (Guide for the Perplexed, Part

III, Chap. 40) offers a psychological

explanation involving the relatives of the smitten party who are likely to

harbor difficult feelings towards the killer (fear, anger, revenge, etc.) and

will find it difficult to return to routine as long the killer is in their midst.

"Even though he killed inadvertently, he goes into exile to calm the soul

of the blood avenger, so that the one responsible for the mishaps be out of

sight".

4. The Rambam adds another

reason – "tikkun olam" – rehabilitation of the world",

in the sense of breaking the cycle of hatred and violence in the world: "And

in addition there is tikkun olam in this commandment, as Scripture clarifies, that

he be saved from the hands of the avenger, lest the latter kill him even though

his hands are clean, for, after all, he killed unintentionally".

It should be noted that the Torah returns to describe

the laws concerning murderers, both intentional and accidental, in Parashat Shoftim, which deals

mostly with wars and conquering the Land. There the laws regarding protection

of the accidental killer appear in an interesting context (Devarim

18:9-10):

When you keep all this command which I charge you today

to do it, to love the Lord your God and to go in His ways for all time, you

shall add for yourself another three towns to these three. And innocent blood

will not be shed in the midst of your land that the Lord your God is about to

give to you in estate, and there would be bloodguilt upon you.

The Torah creates a tie between love of God and

observance of the commandments and the concern for the inadvertent killers,

that they not be harmed. Protected of the inadvertent killer is included in the

rules of war detailed in Parashat Shoftim.

The message is clear: Do not shed innocent blood even while engaging in

warfare, conquest and spoils.

5. ShaDal relates to

the two participants in the drama, the blood-avenger and the inadvertent

killer, and offers a psychological-sociological reason against an historical backdrop.

He reads the Torah's words regarding towns of asylum as a concession to a specific

historic and cultural situation, on the assumption the Torah was given in

specific circumstances, in a particular period, and in certain cases it

recognized a need to        make do with

mitigation of the situation rather than with its uprooting. Similarly in the case

of servitude:

In ancient times, before nations achieved order under

king and ministers, and judges and police, every family took its vengeance

upon another family, and the relative most closely related to the victim

was expected to avenge his death. The Torah set up judges and police, took

vengeance out of private hands, and gave it over to the entire congregation.

When the murder was perpetrated intentionally, it was possible to pacify the

avenger, saying: Let the judges investigate the matter, and if indeed he is

deserving of death, they will execute him; but if the killing was

unintentional, it was not possible to pacify the avenger, to force him to see

his father's murderer go free of punishment, for it then seem to him and his

acquaintances as though he did not love his father     and his brother, not having avenged them.

This understanding could not be uprooted at once, so

yet another family would be punished by death for having avenging his brother; and it is not unrealistic to imagine that when the

avenger is led to his execution – the populace will rise up against the judges,

and public malfunction would increase. So what did the Torah do? It left the

avenger the right to avenge the death of his relative, but also designated

places of refuge to where the murderer could flee, and the avenger could not

come there to kill him.

6. RaShar Hirsch,

pointing out important details in the laws, sees in the inadvertent killer's

stay in the town of asylum a spiritual/moral process – 'kaparat

avone" – atonement for sin. In

his opinion, were the purpose of the cities of refuge punishment, all the laws

would be superfluous. These laws are detailed by the Rambam

in his Mishneh Torah (Laws of Murder and Protecting Life, Chaps, 7, 8)

and relate to the cultural, spiritual and

physical welfare of the exile, for example:

         Cities

of asylum…, are settled only at locations of markets and water sources; and

if there is no water there, water is imported. And they are only settled in

populated locations. And if the number of residents decreases, priests, Levites

and Israelites are brought in. Should a student be exiled to cities of refuge,

his mentor is exiled along with him: as is written "and he shall live"

(Devarim 4:42; ibid 19:4; ibid. 19:5) – Do what is necessary for him to live, and a

scholar without study is considered dead. Likewise, should a master be exiled,

his academy is exiled along with him.

7. The laws of exile for the inadvertent killer

and his stay in the city of asylum can also be seen as a system of

rehabilitation therapy.¹

The inadvertent killer undergoes a difficult emotional

experience, in many respects post-traumatic, even though he is not the victim

but the killer. A driver who caused the death of pedestrian who jumped onto a

dark road in front of his vehicle, or a soldier who shot another soldier in

circumstances which prevented him from identifying his victim, will be

acquitted by the court. But for all that, he is liable to experience shame and

guilt, a decline in his self-respect and his self-image, and a feeling that his

life has been irreversibly changed, to the point where he replays the incident and

again, with flashbacks and dissociative experiences. As a rule, the environment

tries to support the inadvertent killer, to quiet his guilt feelings with the

claim that he did not intended to hurt and that the circumstances of the

incident were not under his control. Paradoxically, however, such a supportive

response is not only ineffective, but may even intensify the post-traumatic

symptoms, since the killer feels that others do not understand him and that

they fail to make room for the difficult experiences which he is undergoing. They

tell him that he is a moral person, someone with values, while he sees himself

as a criminal. This makes it difficult for him to work through his experiences

and to form an integrative self-identity. This is in direct contrast to the

complex and integrative attitude of the Torah to the inadvertent killer – not

guilty, but nevertheless responsible.

The laws related to the inadvertent killer's stay in

the city of refuge may help him cope with his post-traumatic experiences, in

keeping with a number of treatment principles:

a. He is not alone, and his severance from his earlier

life is only partial. He is accompanied by support groups – teachers and family

– who can help him cope with the situation.    

b. The stay in the city of refuge with others in the

same situation gives him the feeling that others share his distress. In a

framework of acceptance and protection, peer groups of people in similar

circumstances may prove a significant support group.

c. Halacha demands that signposts

be erected throughout the land to direct people to the cities of refuge. The Rambam writes (ibid., chap. 8):

Bet Din is required to lay roads to the cities of

refuge, to maintain them and to widen them; and they are to remove any obstacle

and damage, and they are not to leave on the way neither mound, nor gorge nor

stream, but they are to construct bridges so as not to delay the escapee: as is

written "Prepare the way" (Devarim 19:3)…

and the word "refuge refuge" were posted at

crossroads, so that the killers should be know where to turn.

The signs were intended to facilitate the flight of

the killers to the cities of refuge, but they served an additional purpose – to

reduce the public stigma regarding inadvertent killers.

d. Halacha requires the

majority of the city's residents be healthy and moral people. In order to

undergo a rehabilitation treatment process, the inadvertent killers must be

absorbed into a normative society capable of supporting them. As the Rambam writes (Ibid., Chap 7):

A city consisting mostly of killers cannot absorb

others, as is written "And he shall plead his case in the hearing of the

elders of that city (Joshua 20:4). Their words are not

like his words. And similarly a city lacking elders cannot absorb killers, as

is written "the elders of the city."

We conclude with two remarks by 20^th

century commentators concerning ethical aspects of the subject.

Rabbi Yissachar Yaakobson, who arrived in Eretz Yisrael from Germany

in 1938, writes in his Torah essays, "Bina BeMikra": "We especially note the national

commandment to establish cities of refuge, which is of particular Importance in

this period of legislative renewal in Israel." His words of

summation are most relevant:

We conclude by emphasizing the contrast between a city

of refuge and a sanctuary. We know that the idolatrous sanctuary served as a

shelter for murderers, and whoever succeeded in fleeing there was protected.

Therefore the Torah says: And should a man scheme against his fellow man to

kill him by cunning, from My altar you shall take him

to die: (Shemot 21:14). The

sanctuary has no mystical-magical power to shield the criminals. But those who

serve in the Temple,

members of the tribe of Levi – into their hands and their towns are entrusted

all men who inadvertently killed; under the Levite's direction will he learn to

expiate his offense. And the children of Aharon "will

teach him to know the Lord".

In the words of Yeshaayahu Leibowitz, from his book "Hearoth

Leparshiyot Hashavua":

Among the many issues in the sidra

of "Masai" is a central and severe

warning against the spilling of blood. In this warning, which follows the

passage informing that spilt       blood

corrupts the land, it says: "And you shall not defile the land in which

you dwell, in the midst of which I abide, for I am the Lord, abiding in the

midst of the Israelites." The Lord does not abide in the Land, He abides in the midst of the Israelites. This is

what          imparts to the Land its

meaning when the children of Israel

are settled upon it. God abides in the midst of the Children of Israel only on

the condition that they host Him in their midst."

My father, of blessed memory, who celebrated his bar

mitzvah with this parasha, used to say that for him,

the prayer "return our judges as of yore" is the most important

prayer in the Amida; without righteousness and

justice, our society has no right to exist. Let us pray that we learn from the

laws of the cities of refuge to reduce violence and bloodshed, to strive for a

more ethical and value-oriented society and to treat victims of violence

effectively and with sensitivity.

1. This concept was developed by Dr. Judith Gedalya of the Center for Neuropsychology, Shaare Zedek Medical

Center, Jerusalem, in an essay: Accidental Death: a

New Look at an Ancient Model, Jewish Medical Ethics Journal of Machon Schlesinger at Shaare Zedek

Chana Mann is a clinical

psychologist residing in Kiryat Shemonah

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