There is a mitzvah to create arei miklat, “cities of refuge,” where accidental killers can flee in order to avoid the vengeance of the go’el hadam, the victim’s relatives (Deuteronomy 19:1-8). We are often in desperate need of such asylum – a place to be held as we are – in the face of our imperfections and the world’s chasing judgment. How do we create such places of refuge inside us?
The Context of the Accidental Killer
The Torah’s example here of an accidental killer is of someone who goes to the forest with a friend and, in the act of chopping a tree for firewood, their arm slips and either the metal of the axe or a piece of wood goes flying off and kills the friend. Such a person runs to the city of refuge.
If we step into the mood here, we find that the forest is dark and overgrown, and the light dim; there is a sense of confusion and lostness; and we can’t quite find our way. Feeling slightly off center, your arm slips; it is one of those days when you feel overwhelmed and not quite in control, so you easily “fly off the handle” and the impact hits those around you. You seem to be chipping away at the Etz, the tree, that is your life force, chipping away at yourself in a way that is koret – destroying – the tree (Deut 19:5). As it says later in this parsha, ki ha’adam etz hasadeh, a person is a tree, and at this moment, you are not grounded in your own treeness, at this moment, there is harshness in you, like the metal of the axe, that is chipping away at the grounded tree life force inside you. And so it doesn’t surprise you when something you say or do has this terrible impact on a friend or a loved one. It is a symptom of a larger spiritual malaise, something essential off inside. You need help, and perhaps this act of your hand – to slip and make the axe fly off like that – this act of your hand was a cry for help. Only now you have the added weight of guilt and regret and sadness over unintentional harm to others. In our mess, maybe we also want to throw ourselves out in some way, to be like an outcast, a nidheh, the word used here for the slippage of the arm, nidheh yado (Deut 19:5), a word which also means exile or outcast; that’s how we feel sometimes, unmoored, no longer worthy of being part of the tree, a nidheh, an outcast.
Our Desire For This Other Place
We are sorry, so very sorry, that this is the way we are sometimes. We wish to do better. There is an element of teshuva here, of needing to return to ground, to home. But how do we find our way home? Where is the place that can hold us in all our imperfections and let us heal and recover and be forgiven, become whole again? Where is our ir miklat, our city of refuge? See if you can sense your own yearning for such a place, for a place of grace, where you could forgive yourself and forgive others, where you could be held in love as you are without having to do things right, where it is ok to make mistakes, where you are never an outcast, but always still a part of the tree of belonging. Sense how much you want that.
The desire for this place of refuge is a trailhead that points you in its direction. According to tradition there were signs all over the country that said miklat, miklat, showing the way towards the cities of refuge (Rashi on Deut 19:3). Perhaps our own brokenness and imperfection, and our deep desire to be held in it, to be held despite it, to return to home and be a part of the tree again, perhaps this desire is itself such a signpost that we can follow to get there. Ahat sha’alti me’et Hashem (Ps 27:4), we say this time of year – “one thing I desire from God” – and that one thing is to dwell in God’s house, to feel myself sheltered beseter ohalo (Ps 27:5), in the hidden places of God’s tent, to come home to God inside me and dwell there, in that inner city of refuge.. Ahat sha’alti – it is my desire that leads me there.
Maybe you can touch in to your desire for a place that can hold you in your mess and yet still help you feel a sense of wholeness, sensing the deep yearning for forgiveness, for atonement, for grace, for holding, for shelter amidst the fierce internal and external winds of judgment, tapping in to that yearning for home, for a place where you always belong and are rooted, like a tree, sensing the strength of that ache, that bakashah, that request. Please, may I find my way home, show me the way to the sheltering overhang of home.
This ache will gradually lead you home. Part of the mitzvah of ir miklat is to prepare and maintain the roads that lead to these cities. Your desire to get there can pave the road before you and smooth out any obstacles – the doubt, unease, and distraction, the voices of internal and external critics, like the avenging relative, shouting out their judgment behind you – your desire is a steady force that keeps you, staying strong, on this path home.
Arriving at the Tree on the Outskirts of the City
The first thing you see when you get there, to this city of refuge, are the overhanging branches of a tree. In the Rambam’s’ laws concerning this mitzvah (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Murderer and Preservation of Life, 8:11), he explains that once a person reaches the outskirts of such a city, they are already safe, and included in the outskirts, he says, is a tree along with its overhanging branches, so that just reaching the branches is enough to be safe. All we need to do is get to the very edge of the city, to get even a tiny glimpse, to see just the overhanging branches of the tree standing on the city’s outermost perimeter.
Maybe you can see that tree on the edge of the city, a marker of life, and allow yourself to enter under its shade. Maybe it is 100 degrees out or maybe it is storming all around or maybe the harsh words of the critic are running after you like the avenger, saying what a terrible person you are, how you don’t deserve forgiveness, it’s all your own fault anyway, all of that is happening on the outside, but then you step under the shade of this tree, under the shelter of its large canopy, and you feel something shift. It is cool and quiet here, as if you are in another realm. The voices of judgment have ceased, and there is quiet soothing music playing through the leaves on the breeze. You sit down under the tree and rest. You are yoshev beseter elyon, sitting in the shelter of the Most High (Psalm 91:1). The canopy above you is nothing less than kanfei shekhinah, the wings of the divine presence (or perhaps angels’ wings), spread out above you like a canopy of peace, a sukat shalom. Breathe in the calm and quiet and rest here for a moment.
Returning to our Life Force
As you sit, you also become aware of the roots under you and the trunk against your back. This is an etz hayim, a tree of life and you feel yourself a part of it, a part of the larger life force of the universe, that you are not a nidheh, an outcast, but one who belongs here, another branch of the tree. You had cut yourself off, but now you feel yourself returning, sensing your own roots in the ground, your own life force pulsing through you; you are a part of the vast landscape of living beings. The Torah says again and again that what happens to this accidental murderer who runs to the city of refuge, what happens to us in the city of refuge is vehai – we live, we come back to life, to hayim. We are returned to our tree of life. We were chipping away at that tree, at our groundedness, our centeredness, getting further and further away, and then something happened, a crisis, we got thrown completely off kilter, and that turned out to be an opportunity for return. You can come home now. Rest your body against the trunk of the tree and let yourself feel its life force and your own, both pulsing in the same rhythm.
Held in Our Imperfections
You came with the weight of all the ways you hurt other people and yourself, all the weight of the mistakes and imperfections of your humanity. This place of refuge is not a place of judgment or perfection, but a place to be held in the mess of your own life with love and forgiveness, held like a little baby or like someone with an illness in need of tenderness in order to heal and recover. In this space we are treated with kindness until we are healed, vehai, until our own life force returns to strength. It may take some time, and it is an indeterminate amount of time. The accidental killer was released when the High Priest, died; it could be a day or it could be 40 years. We don’t know how long our healing will take, but this is a place of patience, great great patience, erekh apayim, the long steadiness of God’s patience. We can sit and lean against the tree and let ourselves relax and heal and slowly, at our own pace, return to life.
Strengthening the Neural Pathways
Takhin likha haderekh, the Torah says here of the cities of refuge. Prepare the roads to get there. This is our work today and always, preparing and expanding and strengthening the inner roads, the neural pathways that lead to places of refuge inside us so that we can find our way to them when we need them. So maybe you can mark for yourself now, again with a little signpost that says miklat, miklat, marking this place for yourself so you can return here, to this divine shelter inside you.
Gathering in all the Outcasts
We say that in the end of time God will gather home all of the nidahim, all of the outcasts wherever they are (Isaiah 27:13). We can invite into this space we create inside us all of our own outcasts, as well as all the far flung parts of the world that need this refuge, this holding, this forgiveness, this healing, leaving the gates open and the tree waiting to welcome them. We can begin that process of redemption now, inside us.
Photo by Rachel Anisfeld
