July 17, 2009 - OUR PERSONAL CITIES OF REFUGE: PARASHA MAS’EY

Thank God, none of us will ever be in the situation of or be subject to the anxiety of having to run away from a blood avenger. In Torah times, those who took life inadvertently, whom Plaut’s Torah calls “man-slayers,” found themselves suddenly with two choices. They could run to cities of refuge and, in the face of those who would take their lives to avenge the one they had killed, remain in that secure sanctuary and, thereby, be safe from being killed; or they could attempt to defend themselves from a never ending line of blood avengers who were sworn to their deaths.

Given the fact that our society handles manslaughter in an entirely different way, this passage in this final portion in the Book of Numbers, Mas’ey , has lost its relevance, at least as it applies to the taking of life. However, given the proximity of the High Holidays to which my attentions are increasingly drawn at this time of year, I would suggest that the concept of places of refuge, ideal or real, isn’t altogether meaningless.

Certainly, there are things we do and say for which we are sorry afterwards. Our refuge sometimes is that we try permanently to flee the people we have offended, but more often, we offer apologies in order to reset the record of our relationships, and repair the social damage we have done. You could say that our current president is engaged in just such behavior as he globe-trots, explaining that America’s age of self centered action and gross arrogance is now ended. This country once again recognizes its inter-dependent-ness with the other nations of the world. In an attempt to do penance, he has been apologizing to those whose sensitivities we have trod upon, whose friendship and outreach we ignored, and whose dignities we have offended. You might say that America is in a process of eating some crow for 1) having stepped off into engagements and entered into conflicts without regard for the advice and counsel of our allies and 2) having unilaterally name-called or outright aggressed in the face, it must be said, of devastating provocation.

As justified as we may have felt as we formulated and implemented our reactions to 9/11, we nonetheless found ourselves not wishing to be seen as a pariah state, isolated in our own self righteousness. While we were and are certainly entitled to defend ourselves and our way of life, what we have realized that we must not do is give our adversaries more fodder for hating us and our friends, more reasons to mistrust or resent us.

Still and all, the novel idea of creating six cities of refuge must have been an attempt to remove from the aggrieved family the burden of having to right the wrong of the accidental killing of one of its members. Putting the perpetrator in a semi-permanent state of exile---that is, until the death of the High Priest occurred---also served to put him out of harm’s way; but nonetheless imposed on him both a separation from his former society and the troublesome changes necessary for him to create a new life for himself in a different locale.

When we offend, when we say or do things that hurt others, we usually retreat to self justifications and excuses. But when our better selves accuse us or exhort us to realize that we are wrong and that what we are doing is simply defending ourselves from having to make those self effacing, sometimes embarrassing repairs we know are purely ours to make, we know that we must emerge from our personal, self created cities of refuge and make amends. God knows, this isn’t easy to do. It is more comfortable just to remain self isolated…to avoid contact and having to say that we are sorry for whatever damage we have done.

We can tell ourselves over and over again the reasons why so-and-so deserved what we did. But in our heart of hearts, we come to understand that what we did or said is our fault. We made a bad choice and we must repair it.

Over the course of thinking about this sermon, I have tried to remember instances of Biblical characters who engaged in apologies. Aside from Jacob and Esau making up in a tenuous, somewhat shaky and untrusting way; much the same way as Jacob left his father-in-law, Laban, I can’t think of instances where someone was wronged and then made some sort of emotional restitution or act of contrition. There are the times such as when Tamar shames Judah into keeping his promises to her or when Moses pleads with God to forgive the acts of the Israelites. God, after the flood, doesn’t so much apologize as promise a differing punishment the next time. But a story of offense and heart felt apology doesn’t readily come to mind to me. Can any of you think of one? ( Perhaps the people of Nineveh when they repented their misdeeds to God.) And yet, in our world, we need examples of such proverbial fence-mendings because they are the glue for living in our society and in our world.

In the midst of this brief investigation of our pre-holiday refuge-seeking through our “ownings up,” I do want to caution that there are certain relationships that truly fall outside repair. We sometimes come upon people with whom reconciliation is impossible however desirable it might be on a theoretical basis. After many attempts, it becomes apparent that the problem truly isn’t ours and is beyond any sort of reconciliation that we can offer. And it may well be that part of what any city-of-refuge idea contains for us today is that place of sought-after neutrality wherein the avenger has no ability to avenge, and the offender must also sacrifice certain freedoms in order to continue living. This stand-off spot, as it were, is the balance we sometimes reach when we know that there are certain things that simply are beyond remedy, that never are going to change no matter how much time and energy we might attempt to apply. There simply are some circumstances and some types of people with whom apologies will inevitably lead back again to situations of hurt and futility.

Be that as it may, and I believe such occurrences to be relatively few, the overwhelming number of times wherein it is better to seek peace and harmony over enmity and discord direct us to avoid psychological cities of refuge. Much more is to be gained from repairing our relationships and from not spending that enormous amount of energy, time, and effort in maintaining our defenses.

The Rabbis held up the figure of Aaron as the essential peace maker. Aaron would go to both aggrieved parties, cajoling and repairing, pleading and telling each one separately how much the other didn’t want that distance which sometimes grows between friends. As we think about the once important cities of refuge, let us be mindful of the role this important institution played in limiting violence among people, enabling the one who inadvertently killed some measure of maneuverability, and giving society a chance to heal a wrong in a peaceful way.