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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,
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
flight to his town of asylum to let him go back to dwell in the land, until the
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
of the world ... so therefore it is proper that one who has killed even
inadvertently - because such a great a misfortune has been caused by it - that
he should suffer the sorrow of exile, which is almost paramount to the sorrow
of death, as man is separated from his loved ones and from his birthplace and
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
the divine wisdom foresaw that should the avenger receive capital punishment
for having avenged his murdered brother who was killed inadvertently, this
would not deter all the avengers (or even most of them) from avenging their
relative, and thus would the number persons killed for no good reason would be
multiplied, and the anguish and damage to a single family would increase, for
after suffering the misfortune that one of its member was inadvertently killed,
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 20th
century commentators concerning ethical aspects of the subject.
Rabbi Yissachar Yaakobson, who arrived in Eretz Yisrael from
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
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
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,
Chana Mann is a clinical
psychologist residing in Kiryat Shemonah
But why was the second
Seeing that in its time they were occupying
themselves with
Torah, mitzvoth, and the practice of charity?
Because therein prevailed hatred without
cause.
(Bavli, Yoma 9b)
If we were destroyed, and the world with us,
Through hatred without cause,
We shall be rebuilt, and the world with us,
Through love without cause.
(Rav kook, orot hakodesh, 3:324)
Following the initiative of our dear member, Prof.
Gerald Cromer z"l,
This year, too, we shall go up to
The grave of Yitzchak Rabin, z"l,
On Tish'a B'Av Eve, Motsei Shabbat
28/7/12, at 21:00
Authorized entry from the military cemetery
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