A thought on Parshas Shoftim
"...v'arfu sham es ha'egla...""...and they will strike the back of the calf's neck..." (21:4)
Should an unsolved murder occur in the Holy Land, the Torah prescribes an intervention for the community nearest the crime scene. One vivid feature of this ritual is when the elders bring forth a young calf and strike its neck from behind.
Rabbeinu Bachya offers a symbolic inference from this aspect of the egla arufa: Crime is horrible. The Jewish people are not supposed to engage in such heinous misconduct. We are expected to be far above such crimes, and should expect far better things from ourselves.
And especially in the Holy Land of Israel! How could such a person, who lived and thrived on sacred ground, who had access to the Holy Temple and who knew of the presence of the great Sanhedrin, act in a way which seemed oblivious to the presence of the very Shechina? How could a Jewish person perpetrate an attack against another Jew?
A cardinal crime is also a cardinal sin. It expresses a turning away from all that is sacred. It brings about a diminution of our collective sense of the Divine presence. It ends up feeling as if HaShem will distance Himself, kavayachol, from His people. Rather than our sensing that He orients towards us with Divine countenance (Panim which also means "facing us"), we instead feel that He would want to orient towards us "through turning away" (Oref which means "facing away from us".)`
At such a dreadful time, the community feels as if HaShem has indeed faced away from them r'l. This loss of a human life, and its spiritual repercussions, felt wasteful and destructive. It felt pointless. We were thus commanded to capture that mood with an action which was a mitzva and would also help demonstrate and model the waste, the destruction and the loss which the entire community now encountered.
The turning of the calf and the blow to its neck, a seemingly wasteful and destructive act, helped portray through its symbolism the spiritual tone of having lost our connection with HaShem. (Rabbeinu Bachya cites a midrash that once the calf was struck, it would pick up and trot down the road leading to the house of the person who committed the crime. This is how the elders might be able to catch the murderer! The blow to the neck of the calf was not such a destructive waste after all.)
Don't turn your back on me. Maybe. Good Shabbos. D Fox
Should an unsolved murder occur in the Holy Land, the Torah prescribes an intervention for the community nearest the crime scene. One vivid feature of this ritual is when the elders bring forth a young calf and strike its neck from behind.
Rabbeinu Bachya offers a symbolic inference from this aspect of the egla arufa: Crime is horrible. The Jewish people are not supposed to engage in such heinous misconduct. We are expected to be far above such crimes, and should expect far better things from ourselves.
And especially in the Holy Land of Israel! How could such a person, who lived and thrived on sacred ground, who had access to the Holy Temple and who knew of the presence of the great Sanhedrin, act in a way which seemed oblivious to the presence of the very Shechina? How could a Jewish person perpetrate an attack against another Jew?
A cardinal crime is also a cardinal sin. It expresses a turning away from all that is sacred. It brings about a diminution of our collective sense of the Divine presence. It ends up feeling as if HaShem will distance Himself, kavayachol, from His people. Rather than our sensing that He orients towards us with Divine countenance (Panim which also means "facing us"), we instead feel that He would want to orient towards us "through turning away" (Oref which means "facing away from us".)`
At such a dreadful time, the community feels as if HaShem has indeed faced away from them r'l. This loss of a human life, and its spiritual repercussions, felt wasteful and destructive. It felt pointless. We were thus commanded to capture that mood with an action which was a mitzva and would also help demonstrate and model the waste, the destruction and the loss which the entire community now encountered.
The turning of the calf and the blow to its neck, a seemingly wasteful and destructive act, helped portray through its symbolism the spiritual tone of having lost our connection with HaShem. (Rabbeinu Bachya cites a midrash that once the calf was struck, it would pick up and trot down the road leading to the house of the person who committed the crime. This is how the elders might be able to catch the murderer! The blow to the neck of the calf was not such a destructive waste after all.)
Don't turn your back on me. Maybe. Good Shabbos. D Fox
posted by Rabbi Dr. Fox at 9:48 PM
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