Road Trip to the City of Refuge

Rabbi Joel Fleekop

August 6, 2005

Ramses to Succoth and from Succoth to Etham. After Etham they encamped at Marah and from there to Elim with the 12 springs and 70 palm trees. Our Torah portion continues with more detail but I think most of you would appreciate if I stopped.

Most people aren’t big fans of when the Torah recounts the journey through the desert, but I sort of like it. I like it because reading through the list of small towns and stops along Israel’s road reminds me of the cross-country childhood road trip I took with my family.

It was great. We saw 23 states and 2 national parks. We saw our nation’s largest river, stayed every night in a hotel with a pool, and I came home with t-shirts from four different Hard Rock Cafes.

It was a wonderful trip, but my parents tend to remember it a bit differently. They remember the endless hours of driving through corn fields, the pain of loading and unloading the luggage at each stop, and of course the struggle to keep me and my three siblings from killing each other.

They tried their hardest but we still fought. I broke my twin brother’s finger in Houston and after an exchange of words in Indiana we didn’t speak to my sister for most of the Midwest. No matter how hard my parents tried, no matter how much we all really loved each other, spending the summer packed into the family van, it was inevitable that we would fight.

Our Torah portion, Parshat Masey, seems aware of this inevitability. It recognizes that if people are going to live together and spend much of their lives together, they are also going to fight and possibly hurt each other. The only question is what happens next.

It used to be that when one person or family harmed another, whether intentionally or by accident, they would respond by striking back, creating a cycle of violence like the fabled feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.

But our Torah portion creates an alternative, ending the practice of vengeance by establishing a system of justice. Part of this system of justice is to differentiate between intentional murder and accidental manslaughter. While mandating the harshest of punishments for those who intentionally hurt other people, Parshat Masey commands cities of refuge, arei miklat, be created for those who commit manslaughter.

But what were these cities of refuge? What was their purpose?

In his work Sefer Ha-Hinuch, Aharon Halevi, a medieval commentator explains that cities of refuge served as prisons for those who commit manslaughter. This idea is echoed by Rabbi Gunther Plaut who teaches that the arei miklat serve three purposes, to protect unintentional murderers from the passions’ of avengers, to punish them, and to contain and isolate the sin that had been committed.”

Halevi and Plaut both make strong arguments but their opinion is preserved as that of the minority. The dominant voice of Jewish tradition argues that the cities of refuge served a very different purpose.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch teaches that the cities were not places of punishment, but rather nourishment and rebirth. Maimonides mandates that the arei miklat be established in areas with an abundance of water and commerce, places where life can prosper. And in Numbers Rabbah the Rabbis teach that it is incumbent on all of us to help people find their way to a city of refuge because arrival in one of these cities offers not only protection from an act of vengeance but also the chance to learn a better way to live. For those who accidentally hurt other people the cities of refuge were places to start again, places of learning, compassion, and forgiveness.

By ending the cycle of violence, by helping people learn from their mistakes, the cities of refuge played an important role in sanctifying the nation, the family of Israel. Although the 6 cities described in parshat masey vanished long ago, cities of refuge continue to play an important role in sanctifying our families.

Reading about the need for their creation we are reminded that people make mistakes. As I learned during that childhood road trip, as we all have learned during our journeys through life, the more time we spend with people the more of their mistakes we are going to witness, the more of their mistakes are going to offend and hurt us. What determines whether we will remain friends, whether we will be able to live in peace and holiness as a family is what happens next.

Our Torah portion and its discussion of cities of refuge instruct us that when people we know and love hurt us it is not alright to strike back in vengeance. It is not even alright to punish them by ignoring them. Rather, our tradition teaches that it is incumbent on all of us to help them learn a better way. To help them see what mistakes they made. To help them understand how they can avoid making the same mistakes again.

Ramses to Succoth and from Succoth to Etham. From Cheyenne to Omaha and from Omaha to Chicago. From birth to the first day of school to bar mitzvah. We are all on a road trip journeying from one stop to the next. We will see some interesting places but what makes the trip truly special is with whom we share the journey. Let us follow the guidance of this week’s Torah reading so that we journey in friendship and love.