Parashat Mattot-Mas’ei
Torah: Numbers 30:2 – 36:13 (Chazak!)
Haftarah: Jeremiah 2:4-28; 3:4 (Second Shabbat of Admonition)
Av 2, 5782 / July 29-30, 2022
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This d'var torah is offered for a refuah shleimah for Chanah Bella bat Kreina, Feigel bat Kreina, and Devorah bat Feigel.
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Lunch and Learn meets Tuesdays at 12:30 PM on Zoom and Facebook Live. We're continuing to read and discuss the Midrashic collection Ein Ya'akov. On August 2 we'll be at BT Shabbat 3(b) - page 105 of Ein Ya'akov Volume 1. Ein Ya'akov is available for on-line reading or as a downloadable PDF at:
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Rabbi Van Leeuwen has a blog which you should read at:
https://rebjasonblog.wordpress.com/blog/
https://rebjasonblog.wordpress.com/blog/
Dr. Steve Pearlman writes up the "Midrashim of the Week", which you should read at:
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CITY OF REFUGE, SHINING ON A HILL?
“You shall provide yourselves with places to serve as cities of refuge to which a manslayer that has killed a person unintentionally may flee.” Numbers 35:11
According to the Torah, the purpose of a city of refuge (ir miklat) was to protect someone who was not guilty of intentional murder from the blood avengers of the victim’s family. For example, when an axe-head separated from the handle and struck another person, the one chopping wood was a manslayer, not a murderer, and was granted refuge. But, as is our way with Torah, we can find far deeper and relevant meanings.
Cities of Refuge - Providence Lithograph Company, 1901
In his farewell address to our nation, January 11, 1989, President Reagan said the following: “I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.”
I’ve always admired this inspiring vision, however unfulfilled it might be. Sadly, it seems that our country is further from that vision than we have been in many decades – we are letting it slip away. Today, we are too often refusing refuge to people who are actually fleeing real murder and mayhem and oppression – because of their language, their skin color, their national origin, their religion. Rather than an ir miklat, a city of refuge, the United States has become an ir siruv, a city of refusal, a city of denial. And it's not just refugees. It's immigrants in general. And, we seem to be finding it increasingly difficult to live with each other in harmony and peace - racism, anti-semitism, LGBTQ-phobia, mad conspiracy theories, and general distrust of different political views have greatly diminished discourse and civility.
Next Shabbat is Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of the Vision of Isaiah – the last Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, the date commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem, the original Shining City on a Hill – lost, according to tradition, because of the hypocrisy and hatred in the city. Isaiah 1:1-27 is worth reading now – don’t wait until next Shabbat. The prophet gives this instruction: “Learn to do good; devote yourselves to justice; aid those who have been wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow.” (1:17)
This is how we create a city of refuge – this is how we create an American shining city on a hill.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Richard A. Flom - Rabbi Emeritus
Temple B'nai Hayim
Blogging at: http://rav-rich.blogspot.com/
Visit me on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RabbiRichardFlom
"שתיקה כהודאה דמיא"
"Silence in the face of wrongdoing is consent.”
BT Yevamot 88a
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"שתיקה כהודאה דמיא"
"Silence in the face of wrongdoing is consent.”
BT Yevamot 88a
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My weekly divrei torah are also available through free subscription to the Cyber Torah e-mail list. No salesman will call!
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