Signs That Say Refuge

The Hook

This week we read Lech Lecha, and Avraham crosses the land of Canaan building altars and calling out in the name of God to anyone who will listen. By next week he will be sitting at the opening of his tent, running in the heat of the day to feed three strangers, and then walking them partway down the road. The father of the Jewish people is a host. The first Jewish home is a place where a traveler can eat and be accompanied on his way.

Today’s three chapters of the Rambam seem to be about something else entirely. Two of them are about the decapitated calf, the strange ritual performed when a murdered man is found lying in a field and no one knows who killed him. One is about the cities of refuge and the roads that lead to them.

But listen to what the elders of the nearest town say when they stand at the river and wash their hands over the calf: “Our hands did not shed this blood.” And the Rambam explains what they mean. Not that they didn’t murder him; nobody suspects the elders. They mean: he did not come into our town and leave without food for the road. We did not see him go and let him walk out alone.

An unsolved murder, and the question the Torah asks the leaders of the community is whether they fed him and walked him to the edge of town. What does hospitality have to do with bloodshed?

Rotze’ach 8

Make the Road Easy

Chapter eight begins with a mitzvah to set aside cities of refuge (8:1). There were six: three that Moshe designated across the Jordan, and three that Yehoshua designated in the land. And the Rambam notes that none of them protected anyone until all six existed. So why did Moshe bother setting aside his three, knowing they would not function in his lifetime? Because, he said, a mitzvah came to my hand, and I will do it.

That small line is a whole philosophy. You do not wait until the system works before you do your part. If it is in your hand, you do it.

Then come the roads, and here the Rambam becomes almost obsessive. The court must build roads to the cities of refuge and keep them wide and clear. Not one obstacle may be left. No hill, no valley, no river: a bridge must be built so nothing slows down a man running for his life. The road must be at least thirty-two cubits wide. At every intersection there must be a sign: Refuge, Refuge. Every year on the fifteenth of Adar the court sends out inspectors to repair whatever has broken. And a court that neglects the roads, the Rambam says, is considered as if it shed blood.

The cities themselves must be the right kind of place: not huge cities and not tiny villages, but towns of middle size, near water, near markets, in populated areas. If the population shrinks, priests, Levites and Israelites are brought to live there. No snares or rope traps may be set in them, so the blood redeemer will have no excuse to come visiting.

And the protection is generous. All forty-eight Levite cities give refuge, though the six designated ones protect a person even if he wandered in without meaning to, and give him lodging without rent. A tree standing inside the boundary whose branches reach outside: once he is under its leaves, he is safe.

The Torah does not just permit a refuge. It wants the refuge found, and found fast, by a man in a panic who is not thinking clearly. It puts up signs for him.

Rotze’ach 9

Our Hands Did Not Shed This Blood

Chapter nine turns to the body in the field. When a slain person is found and the killer is unknown, five elders of the Great Court in Jerusalem come out and measure from the body to the surrounding cities (9:1). Even if one city is obviously closest, they measure; it is a mitzvah. They measure from the nose. They measure only to a city with a court of twenty-three, and never to Jerusalem, which belonged to no tribe.

And then a surprising rule. If a farther city has more people than a closer one, the more populous city brings the calf. Number carries more weight than proximity. The responsibility follows the community, not the map.

The city’s court brings a calf to a strongly flowing river, and it is decapitated from behind. The judges and elders of that city, even if there are a hundred of them, wash their hands there and say, “Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see.” The priests say, “Atone for Your people Israel.” And God forgives the blood.

The details tell you what kind of case this is for. The body must be lying exposed on the ground, not buried in a heap, not hanging from a tree, not floating in water. And the killer must be unknown. If even one witness, even a servant or a woman or someone otherwise disqualified, saw who did it, there is no calf. The Rambam adds a sad historical note: late in the Second Temple period, when murderers became so many that they killed openly, the ritual of the calf was abolished. A ritual of shock only works in a society that is still shocked.

The Talmud says that whoever does not escort his guest is considered as if he shed blood. The elders at the river are answering exactly that charge. We did not leave him alone. We did not send him off hungry. A community is responsible not only for what its members do, but for the stranger who passes through and what happens to him after he leaves.

Rotze’ach 10

A Valley That Is Never Sown

Chapter ten gives the laws of the calf itself. It may be up to two years old. Blemishes do not disqualify it, but being a trefah does, because the verse speaks of atonement as it does of offerings. Any work disqualifies it, and a yoke disqualifies it even if it carried the yoke for a single handbreadth without pulling anything. It is decapitated only by day. Two calves may not be done together, because mitzvot are not performed in bundles.

Once it is brought down to the river, it becomes forbidden to benefit from it. If the murderer is found before the calf is killed, it goes back to the herd. If he is found after, the calf is buried anyway, because it already did what it came to do, atoning for a doubt. And the murderer is still executed.

Then the river valley where the calf died may never again be plowed or planted. Anyone who works its soil receives lashes. And if the city delayed and did not bring the calf, it is forced to bring it, even years later. Yom Kippur does not wipe away this obligation.

A valley that stays barren forever. A debt that does not expire. The Torah wants the death of one unknown man to leave a mark on the landscape, so no one can forget that this happened here.

The Unifying Principle

Put the three chapters side by side and one idea runs through them. A community is measured by what it does for the person who is most alone.

The accidental killer running for his life is alone, frightened, and possibly guilty. The Torah builds him roads, levels the hills, and paints signs at every crossroads. The stranger found dead in a field is alone, unknown, with no one to speak for him. The Torah sends the Great Court out to measure, makes the elders stand in a river, and leaves a valley unsown forever.

In both cases the responsibility does not belong only to the guilty. It belongs to everyone who could have made the road easier, could have handed him bread, could have walked him to the edge of town.

The Baal Shem Tov taught that a soul may descend to this world and live seventy or eighty years just to do a favor for another Jew, even a material favor. If that is true, then the bread the elders gave or failed to give, the escort they sent or failed to send, may have been the whole reason they were there. In the first book of the Tanya, chapter thirty-two, the Alter Rebbe explains why: at the root, all Jewish souls are one, children of one Father, and so they are truly brothers. A brother does not let his brother walk out of town alone.

Modern Application

We don’t have cities of refuge, and no one decapitates a calf today. But we all live in communities, and every community has people passing through it alone. A new family in shul who leaves after Kiddush without anyone learning their names. A colleague who just made a terrible mistake and has nowhere to go. A teenager who has drifted and is looking, without saying so, for the road back.

Ask the questions the elders had to answer. Did they leave with provisions? Did anyone walk them to the edge of town? Is the road to refuge wide and clear, or full of hills and valleys and rivers with no bridge? Is there a sign at the crossroads, or does a person in trouble have to already know the way?

The Rebbe Rayatz used to describe a chassid as a lamplighter, who goes from street to street with a flame at the end of a pole, lighting lamps that are waiting to be lit. That is the court’s inspector on the fifteenth of Adar, walking the road and fixing what is broken before the next person needs it. That is the sign that says Refuge, Refuge. You don’t wait for someone to come to you lost. You make the way easy before he starts running.

And remember Moshe. The system might not work yet. The other three cities might not exist. A mitzvah came to your hand. Do it.

The Closing

Avraham sat at the opening of his tent in the heat of the day, looking down the road for anyone who might pass. That is the posture the Torah asks of a whole community. Look down the road. Build it wide. Put up signs. Feed whoever comes, and walk him partway home.

Because when a stranger is found dead in a field, the first question is not who killed him. The first question is who let him leave alone.

A community is not judged by its strongest member but by its loneliest traveler: whether the road to safety was open, whether there was bread for the way, and whether someone walked beside him to the edge of town.