Cities of Refuge and Modern Vengeance

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, July 17, 2009

The Biblical passages about the accidental man-slaughterer found in this week’s Torah portion seem very remote from our lives. The whole concept of a goel hadam, a blood avenger, a family member with the responsibility of avenging his loved one’s death, is foreign to our society, where we expect the government to handle these matters through the police and the courts.

This spring I read an article in the New Yorker that made this whole matter much more vivid for me. Written by Jared Diamond, a MacArthur Genius Award Winner, it described the experience of a 22 year old man in New Guinea, Daniel Wemp, who took on the traditionally prescribed role of avenger for the death of his uncle, Soll. The article is now in the courts, as Wemp sued for character defamation, insisting, in the words of his friend and advisor that: “He has never killed anyone or raped a woman. He certainly has never stolen a pig.” As you might guess pigs play a large role in New Guinean communities, being the basic economic asset. However Wemp had previously repeated the essential aspects of his story to researchers from the Art Science Research lab, an organization that deals with media ethics, so I think it is fair to share it with you.

The New Guinea Highlands are a remote area that first came into contact with the rest of the world in the 1930’s when a traditional community of about a million people was discovered still using stone tools. In the 1960’s they remained still remote, divided into many warring tribes, and untouched by modern life, but more recently tin roofs and t-shirts have found their way to these villages. Still ancient customs have a strong hold and Wemp took very seriously the responsibility that had devolved on him since his uncle was killed leaving only a six year old son, too young to take on this responsibility. Wemp went to considerable expense, and dedicated three years of his life to building the alliances necessary to this revenge. He put himself in physical danger participating in several battles. Ultimately the man their community viewed as responsible for his uncle’s death, the organizer of the battle in which he died, was paralyzed when a bamboo arrow cut his spinal cord in a trick attack by one of Wemp’s allies. This was a satisfactory conclusion of the whole affair for Wemp. His enemy remaining alive but in constant suffering would remind people of the vengeance taken and ultimately of Wemp’s uncle. In that way his memory would continue to be perpetuated. Ironically, because of the current threat of more distant enemies, Wemp’s tribe and the tribe of the enemy, are now allies and fight together. Wemp even feels comfortable sleeping in his former enemy’s village, playing with them in intertribal basketball games, and expressing concern about his paralyzed former enemy whom he formerly did not relate to as a person.

War, murder and the demonization of the enemy are typical in traditional societies, and where there is no central power, constant skirmishes between tribal communities are the norm. In fact historians suggest that because of the endless cycles of vengeance killings, the percentage of the population that died violently was higher in traditional pre-state societies than it has been in modern times, even allowing for Poland during World War II and Cambodia under Pol Pot. Universalism and the love of all humanity is the exception in human history. Perhaps that is why it is so superficially embraced, quickly jettisoned in times of war when even modern people turn the enemy once more into “ a demumanized figure of hatred.”

The law of the city of refuge found in this week’s Torah portion attempted to prevent, at least in these limited set of circumstances, the normal endless cycle of revenge killings. It may have worked because it imposes a serious punishment on the accidental killer. He may not remain in his home, but is forced to leave the community and to remain away for a length of time out of his control, the lifetime of the high priest. Theologically this is because the death of the high priest will make atonement for the death of the innocent victim and remove the bloodguilt from the community. Sociologically, the passage of a generation may have been enough to allow feelings to become less heated and for there to be a sense that appropriate punishment was exacted for the taking of a life, however inadvertent.

The New Yorker article on New Guinea ends with the author ruminating on the meaning of revenge to modern people. He tells the story of his father-in-law Yosef Nabel, who passed up the opportunity to avenge a murder in his own family and came to regret it. When Poland was invaded by Russia, Nabel, a young Jewish man, ended up a prisoner in Siberia. Later when Germany attacked the USSR, the Soviets took these prisoners and turned them into a Polish unit in the Red Army. Returning to Poland as a soldier just after the war, Nabel discovered that most of his family had been killed by the Nazi’s but that his mother, sister and niece had been able to hide in the forest. Then he learned that while in hiding, they had been killed by a gang of thieves who were convinced that they as Jews had money hidden away. Nabel found and confronted the man who lead the gang that killed them, but he could not bring himself to shoot him in cold blood and decided instead to hand him over to the newly formed Polish government. He recalled thinking, “I’ve seen enough of people killing and behaving like animals. I’ve done enough killing myself. This man behaved like an animal, but I don’t want to become an animal myself by shooting him.” Later, Nabel learned that the man was released from prison after serving only one year. On his death bed, 60 years after the original incident, Nabel still felt guilty that he had let his mother’s killer go.

Perhaps the desire for vengeance is about something more than the passion of the moment. Perhaps it is also about a sense of putting right the original wrong, of balancing and thus cancelling out some evil. Nabel felt guilty because he felt that the punishment his mother’s killer received did not express the enormity of the crime he committed, and thus that the wrongness of taking his mother’s life and that of his sister and niece was not acknowledged.

As some of you know I am off on Monday for Germany. As Americans, very quickly after the war, we were in the position of Wemp, where new enemies turned old ones into allies. But as Jews it was more complex. The passage of time certainly played a role, in Jewish life being reestablished in Germany. As Ezekiel taught, son’s are not killed for their father’s crimes. It is also the case that unlike Poland and Austria, Germany has gone a long way in admitting and recognizing the enormity of the wrong done during World War II. Perhaps it is also significant that we as a Jewish community have found many ways to memorialize the dead that are not dependent on the revenge taken against their murderers.

Society has changed a great deal from that of Biblical times, and we live a different life than the New Guinea Highlanders, but perhaps at a basic human level, we are more similar than we would like to acknowledge.