Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Julia Chasen Bat Mitzvah
Shabbat Masay
August 6, 2005
Cities of Refuge – Then and Even Now
On this Shabbat in synagogues throughout the world, we Jews are completing our study of the Book of Numbers, the fourth of the five Books of Moses. Numbers gets its name because it begins with a census, a count of all of the members of the community. What I believe this final Torah portion tells us in a way we may not have realized as Julia chanted and read so beautifully, is that every one counts – each unique human being counts. Let me explain.
If a law appears not once but three times in the Torah, it is very important. Hebrew is a succinct language and the authors of our Torah tended to be concise. So even if a word is repeated, commentators throughout the generations have looked for its special significance. Here is basically the same law given in three different Torah portions. The Israelites are told that when they cross into the Promised Land they should establish six cities of refuge – three on the east side of the Jordan River and three on the west side.
These aray miklat, cities of refuge, are to be places of sanctuary, asylums for those who kill someone by accident. A manslayer may flee there and take shelter from the angry family of the person killed. In other words, the accidental killer will be free of the blood avenger. The Torah instructs that these refugees from revenge must remain in the City of Refuge for the rest of their lives, or until the Kohen Gadol – the High Priest – dies.
In the past, I have taught that this law contributed to civilization developing an important distinction between intentional, premeditated, cold-blooded homicide and accidental deaths. But now I understand that there is even more involved here. Unfortunately, we frequently read about people of all ages being killed accidentally. But I did not make their connection with cities of refuge, which have not existed for more than 2,000 years in Jewish life, until I read a very interesting commentary by Rabbi Jack Riemer.
First, let’s understand the Torah’s example of a person who must go to a City of Refuge. Someone is chopping wood in the forest. The head of his ax accidentally flies off and hits a person who happens to be standing nearby and kills him. Now, who do you know that chops wood nowadays? And what are the odds if you or I were chopping wood in a forest that the head of the ax we are using would fly off and, God forbid, kill someone? So I considered this law significant to the historic development of jurisprudence but remote, outdated, irrelevant to the world in which we live, until Rabbi Riemer pointed out an incident which happened exactly two years ago – July 16, 2003.
That was the day when an old man named George Weller was driving in Santa Monica, California. There was a street fair that day, so the Farmer’s Market was blocked off – but George Weller did not notice the wooden sawhorse which the police had put up to keep traffic out. Consequently he drove through it. When Mr. Weller saw people strolling on the street, he should have stopped; maybe he wanted to stop, tried to stop. But, in his confusion, he stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake. Weller killed ten people and injured more than 60. A year later, George Weller was put on trial, charged with ten counts of vehicular manslaughter and gross negligence.
My friends, if you were on the jury in this case, would you send a man who is 87 years old to jail? If we believe that prisons are supposed to be for rehabilitation, what good would that do? How long is George Weller going to live? On the other hand, would you say that a man who killed ten people and injured more than 60 others should simply go free? Where’s the justice there? I confess I am not sure how I would vote if I were on such a jury. Sending a man that age to jail makes little sense to me; but, letting a man who has killed ten people go scot-free – even if he did it accidentally – does not make me very comfortable either.
You know the story of the jury that comes in after many days of deliberation. The judge says: ""Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?" And the foreman says: "Yes, Your Honor, we have. We have examined all the facts in this case, we have listened to both sides, and we have decided we would rather not get involved."
I feel a little bit like the members of that jury when I think about the Weller Case. At the very least, shouldn’t we take away this man’s drivers license? Anyone who is so old and so confused that they step on the accelerator instead of the brake should never be allowed to drive again. Anyone who drives while on medication – that he says confused him – should not be allowed to drive again. And I think we should take away Mr. Weller’s car as well, for there are many people who continue to drive even after their license has been revoked. We have to make sure that this does not happen.
And if Mr. Weller has money, I think it should be distributed among the families of his victims. While all the money in the world will not assuage the pain that these people must feel over the loss of their loved ones, still it would be at least a gesture of restitution.
But a case can be made that Mr. Weller is not entirely at fault. Don’t the police in Santa Monica bear a measure of responsibility for having put up just a wooden sawhorse to keep out cars? Shouldn’t they have put up a stronger blockade? Doesn’t part of the blame for what happened go to them for not having done so?
And what about the City of Santa Monica and the County of Los Angeles? They have created a major metropolitan area that has a terribly inadequate public transportation system – no subways or streetcars, insufficient bus service. So practically anyone who wishes to travel, no matter what their age and whatever their ability, has to drive in order to get anywhere in Los Angeles. Is that right?
But I have to tell you, friends, this case raises for me even a larger question. Whether Weller goes to jail or not, whether his license is taken away, his car is taken away, or not; his possessions sold, or not – I wonder, how will this man live with himself for the rest of his life, knowing that he killed ten people and injured 63?
And, of course, George Weller is not the only person who will have to live for the rest of his life with this kind of guilt. He now belongs to a large and very unhappy club composed of people who have done the same thing. Do you realize that Laura Bush, our First Lady, is a member of this club? She killed someone in a driving accident many years ago. The actor Matthew Broderick, former South Dakota Senator William Janklow, former Bishop of Arizona Thomas O’Brien, former Oklahoma United States Representative Wes Watkins – each of these people, at some time in their lives, killed someone during a vehicular accident. And they are not the only ones. Just last week, at 42nd and Lewis, in the dark, a woman hit a pedestrian who may have been jay-walking; he died. What should we do with these people, who meant no harm, but who killed a fellow human being? Perhaps a child who darted out into the street and whom the driver was unable to see, or who did it so quickly the driver didn’t have time to hit the brakes? What these drivers did was surely not murder, friends; it may not even have been involuntary manslaughter. It may not have been any fault of their own – and yet these people, more than 120,000 of them every year – will have to live the rest of their lives with the knowledge that they killed or seriously maimed another human being.
Unless they are made of stone, can you imagine the trauma these people must feel? The weight of guilt they must carry inside of them for the rest of their lives? How can we help these people bear the burden of guilt that weighs them down? Well-meaning friends may tell them to put the experience behind them and move on with their lives – but can they? Could you? Could I? Could we ever get behind the wheel of a car again without trembling? An experience like this – taking the life of an adult or, God forbid, taking the life of a young child – has to have an effect on the soul of the person who does it. And that is not easy to get over. What should we do for these people who will be in pain for the rest of their lives?
There are no self-help books and there are no support groups which I know of for them. Police and social work agencies have been given no training in how to respond to their distress or how to help them with the long-term effects of this trauma. Well-meaning people turn away from them when they try to talk about their feelings, and so they learn to keep their pain and their shame bottled up inside. Lawyers advise them not to talk about the accident, and never, never to apologize because, if they do, it may seem to be an admission of liability. And so these people live with their traumas – alone, isolated, torn-up on the inside, feeling responsible in their consciences, even if they are not found liable by the courts.
Now do you see why the idea of a City of Refuge makes sense? It is not such an outmoded, irrelevant concept as we might have thought at first. Marianne Gray, a Los Angeles therapist who is herself a person who once killed an eight-year-old child who dashed in front of her car with no warning, says that those who are involved in such accidents are permanent reminders of human fallibility and of the capriciousness of fate. Some of these people may have been negligent; others are simply unfortunate enough to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of them were driving 60 miles an hour when they should not have been, but others were driving 10 or 20 miles an hour when a child dashed out in front of their car and was hit when there was no human way of stopping that car in time.
And all of them are deeply wounded spiritually; all of them need counseling and therapy. Even the most careless among them never intended to cause harm. Even good people can sometimes make terrible mistakes, and every person who ever gets behind the wheel of a car has to know that he or she runs the risk of destroying a life. That is one of the lessons we need to impress upon every one of our young people as they learn to drive, and that we need to remind ourselves of regularly. A car is not just a instrument of transportation; it is a potentially lethal weapon.
Therefore, the idea of the City of Refuge makes sense in our time as well as in days of old. Today it makes sense not primarily because we are afraid that the families of the victims will go after them and seek revenge – though that is always a possibility. It makes sense because the people who are involved in such accidents are spiritually wounded individuals who need help. The accidental killer was not absolved of all responsibility for what he or she did in biblical times. These people had to go into exile because, even though they did not intend to do harm, nevertheless they did take a life and that is no small thing. They were required to stay in the City of Refuge until the death of the High Priest, which atoned for the accidental death. And in that City of Refuge they would confront, on a daily basis, questions about the meaning and sanctity of life.
The community, by establishing and maintaining these cities, showed that they too had a share of responsibility for what happened. If the community had put up more substantial blockades instead of wooden sawhorses at the Santa Monica Market Fair, that accident might not have taken place. And if the community had educated people to be more careful and more respectful of life, there might not have been such an accident in the time of the Torah or now.
And so Ms. Gray, the therapist, says: "I wish there were cities of refuge to which George Weller could be sent. I wish he could be sentenced to attend to a Kohen Gadol, to some spiritual leader who would bring him a measure of comfort and healing after the trauma he is undoubtedly suffering through. I wish the members of the City Council of Santa Monica could go to a City of Refuge, too, so that they could meditate there on their failures as a community, such as their failure to provide transportation alternatives to having to drive for the elderly."
The citiy of refuge in days of old served several purposes. Exile was a way to punish someone who had caused the death of another human being. It was a way of protecting that person from the anger of the bereaved. It was a way of teaching the community that every single human life is sacred and that it can never be taken, even accidentally, without consequences. And it was a way for a person to atone, a way for a person to adjust to living with the guilt that any civilized person who has taken a life – whether deliberately or accidentally – has to feel.
Can we have cities of refuge today? I do not know. It would take a lot of education to persuade our lawmakers in Washington to create such a system. Perhaps if they realize we are talking about more than 120,000 people a year who are involved in accidental, involuntary manslaughter or serious injury, they might consider the idea. But until they do, let me make a radical suggestion, friends. Let us become cities of refuge to those whom we know are going through this trauma. As Marianne Gray says – a hug, a note, a sympathetic ear even when a person repeats the same story over and over again, a get-together or perhaps, more formally, a support group in which there is no blaming, no excusing, but only caring. These can be havens of refuge to those of our community who are going through this dreadful experience.
I was wrong when I naively thought that the law of the Ir miklat – the City of Refuge – was antiquated and irrelevant in our day, even though it is found in our Torah three times. Now I understand, thanks to Rabbi Riemer, that the way we respond to accidental killers says a great deal about our own values and our own humanity. If we say to them, "forget about it", as if nothing has happened, we demonstrate our own insensitivity to the sacredness of human life, to the tragedy of what they have done and to the pain with which they are living. And if we say to them, "how could you do such a thing?", and if we turn away from them and leave them to live with their pain and their shame and their guilt, we demonstrate our own callousness, our own self-righteousness, our own lack of awareness that what happened with their cars could – God forbid – happen with ours too.
What we should do instead is care for them and support them in their pain and in their guilt, hear them and help heal them as they struggle to find some way of atoning and some way of living with what they have done. Friends, with our help, may all our cities become cities of refuge. Amen
I am deeply grateful to Rabbi Jack Riemer whose efforts form the basis of this sermon.
