Because the Way Is Long
There’s a shower in the lounge by the Z gates. I used it a few minutes ago. And I can happily report that it gets you a good part of the way back to feeling human.
We’re going back to the US. A family thing. The minor-ish sort that still makes you get on a plane. Once we’re there we’ll likely stay through the book tour. Which means the High Holidays happen in our own shul this year — which at least gives me something to look forward to.
Getting there is one of the very most annoying bits. Tel Aviv to Europe on one carrier (because you really can’t trust the others), then a different one to the west coast. I could have flown more direct if I wanted to pay twenty thousand dollars rather than just 700.
This morning we went through passport control twice. On the way in. And passport control on the way out. Fingerprints both times. Same continent, same morning, a few hours between them. Nobody involved seemed to find this odd. Though the bundespolizei officer grabbing the phone while inspecting our passports gave me a small blood pressure spike. In the end, it doesn’t matter, of course. Airports are full of tedium.
At the far end of this trek, there’s my husband’s family’s house. And we land with just a few hours before Shabbat starts. A few hours is a real buffer. It isn’t a restful one. And we woke up in Kiryat Shmona 28 hours ago, and this day is thousands of miles and many hours from done.
This week’s parsha is Shoftim, and in the middle of it the Torah starts worrying about a road.
The subject is the cities of refuge. A man accidentally kills someone and the dead man’s angry family may lawfully come after him. Though there are towns set aside to which he can run where they can’t touch him. Moshe had already set aside three of them across the Jordan. Here he commands three more, and then he says something you would not expect a legal code to bother with.
תָּכִ֣ין לְךָ֮ הַדֶּ֒רֶךְ֒ וְשִׁלַּשְׁתָּ֙ אֶת־גְּב֣וּל אַרְצְךָ֔ אֲשֶׁ֥ר יַנְחִֽילְךָ֖ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ וְהָיָ֕ה לָנ֥וּס שָׁ֖מָּה כׇּל־רֹצֵֽחַ׃
You shall survey the distances, and divide into three parts the territory of the country that the ETERNAL your God has allotted to you, so that any manslayer may have a place to flee to.
Prepare the road. Rashi, on those two words, passes on a detail from the Gemara in Makkot. At every junction there was a sign, and the sign had one word on it, written twice. Miklat, miklat. Refuge, refuge. We aren’t running for refuge — though we will feel it with Shabbat — but it’s easy to see the parallel it gives us for our own last minute journey.
A man running for his life did not also have to stand at a fork in the road working out which way to go. Two words on a board at a crossroads, and some one was always answerable for keeping them legible.
He also makes note of the spacing. From the border to the first city, the same distance as from the first to the second. Second to third the same again, and the same from the third city out to the far border. Measured, so that nobody in the country was appreciably further from a refuge than anybody else was.
Then the reason, a few verses on.
פֶּן־יִרְדֹּף֩ גֹּאֵ֨ל הַדָּ֜ם אַחֲרֵ֣י הָרֹצֵ֗חַ כִּי־יֵחַם֮ לְבָבוֹ֒ וְהִשִּׂיג֛וֹ כִּֽי־יִרְבֶּ֥ה הַדֶּ֖רֶךְ וְהִכָּ֣הוּ נָ֑פֶשׁ וְלוֹ֙ אֵ֣ין מִשְׁפַּט־מָ֔וֶת כִּ֠י לֹ֣א שֹׂנֵ֥א ה֛וּא ל֖וֹ מִתְּמ֥וֹל שִׁלְשֽׁוֹם׃
Otherwise, when the distance is great, the blood-avenger, pursuing the manslayer in hot anger, may overtake him and strike him down; yet he did not incur the death penalty, since he had never been the other’s enemy.
Ki yirbeh haderech. Because the way is long.
The man has no death sentence coming. The Torah says so twice over — no capital case against him, and no history of hatred between the two of them. He is going to be found innocent, at least of a sort. And the worry here is that he won’t get there in time, because the trip is too far and there’s a furious man behind him.
So the commandment turns out to be road maintenance. The law was already on his side. What gets added is signage and mileage.
A code that spends chapters on judges and witnesses stops to specify that the roads be surveyed and the junctions marked. Because the difference between a just outcome and a reachable one is in that space. Halacha does this constantly. Somebody always goes on to ask how a person is actually supposed to get from here to there.
Today is the first of Elul. From this morning the shofar goes every weekday until Rosh Hashanah. A month of in-your-face reminders before the accounting starts. Elul is the prepared road. There’s a sign up at the junction.
I’ve got another flight, more than a single continent, and a house full of my husband’s family at the end of it. Then candles. See you next week.
Shabbat shalom.
— Uriel ben Avraham