May God avenge his blood

Well, Rabbi, welcome back and Chodesh Tov.

It is Elul, when Elul comes, you know, the High Holidays are not far away.

That is for sure right, but we have a good, this year, we have a whole month of September, where we’re going to be able to do fun things, so that’s exciting.

Yeah.

So, as I said in the intro, this week, we were all torn apart.

On the one hand, there was a Israeli Bedouin hostage who escaped and then of course, there was the tragic murder of the six hostages in the tunnel, possibly when the IDF was approaching.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the pictures of where that tunnel started, but it started in a child’s room with Disney figurines and carriages.

It’s just so, so tragic that they were alive this long and now they are lost.

And one of the things that struck me as I started to see the WhatsApp groups that I’m part of an acronym that I had never really focused on before.

And it was after the names of those of the hostages that were killed.

And it was the Hebrew letters, Hei Yud Daled, which I said in the intro is Hashem Yakum D’amo, that God should avenge his blood.

And I had to actually look up what the acronym stood for.

And I guess we’re all more used to Zichrona Levracha, or Zecher Tzadik Lbracha.

So it was a new acronym that I decided it was appropriate to look into.

And it does talk about avenging.

And I will say, Rabbi, in the intro, you were saying how you watched the funeral of Hersh Goldberg Polin.

And I didn’t see the whole thing.

But one thing that was absolutely missing was any reference to revenge, actually any reference to the perpetrators of the crime.

It was, I wouldn’t say, a celebration, but it was all about the young man who was lost.

And I haven’t had the opportunity to be at all of the funerals that have occurred since October 7th.

I’m sure there is an element of anger and revenge.

But my gut feeling is that the emphasis has been on celebrating those that were lost.

And I must say, even the mother at one point was thankful that her son was free and out of the tunnels, even though he was obviously…

That was kind of spooky, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But anyway, I mean, you obviously have known what Hey yud Dalit stood for.

But to me, it was new, and it does tie in to the parshah.

But let me just stop here for your impressions.

So if you notice, Hey yud Dalit is always used for people who are killed in a terrorist attack.

And your point is a very strong point.

And that is Nikamah, which means revenge, is something that we don’t like to focus on.

But if somebody’s killed in a terrorist attack, it seems to be that we give space for Nikamah.

And in the show notes, which are on Sefaria, I do have an image of the WhatsApp post on not one of the hostages, but actually a policeman who was killed.

He was ambushed and his daughter had been killed on the morning of October 7th.

So this is a real tragedy for the family.

But there twice I saw this, even in the English, H-Y-D.

So that triggered it.

And then I have some pictures of tombstones that I took from Wikipedia that have this H-Y-D on tombstones, one is pre-state, but it was a terrorist attack.

I’m curious to know, Rabbi, whether this acronym precedes Israel and this is something that you might find on a grave in Iraq or in Eastern Europe.

Yeah, I don’t know.

That’s a super interesting question.

I don’t know the answer.

But in any case, as I said, it does tie into the portion.

So we are in Parshat Shoftim, Deuteronomy 16, and the name is Shoftim, and that means judges.

And it says, Judges and officers thou shalt make thee, and thou of thy gates throughout thy tribes, and they shall judge the people.

So that’s the broad stroke subject matter of the portion.

But then it goes on in Deuteronomy 17, and it starts talking about the need for witnesses.

In other words, against vigilantism.

The parsha is, at the end of the day, an argument for a judicial system, and not taking the law into your own hands, or as we said in last week’s parsha, (Deuteronomy 12: 8 אִ֖ישׁ כׇּל־הַיָּשָׁ֥ר בְּעֵינָֽיו every man whatever is right in his own eyes.)   doing what you want to do, whether it comes to religion or law.

And it says, The hands of witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hands of all the people, so thou shalt put the evil away from among you.

So, it’s interesting that it is a legal system, but it’s clear that it is adopting this sense, this emotive sense of the witnesses who saw the event are the first to transfer.

You almost feel a sense of transference.

The guilt that is in the world onto that person who perpetrated it, the rest of the community joins, and the objective is not so much punishment as it is, thou shall put evil away from among you.

And then it goes on and talks about if you have a case that can’t be judged locally, that thou shalt come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge that shall be in those days.

So here all of a sudden we see that a role of the Cohanim and Levites, the priests, was to act not so much as spiritual leaders in this case, but as judges, in the centralized judges.

And then it goes in Deuteronomy 19, it talks about the subject matter that we’re going to dwell on.

When your God has cut down the nations whose land your God is assigning to you and have dispossessed them and settled in their towns and homes, you shall set aside three cities in the land that your God is giving you to possess.

You shall survey the distances and divide into three parts the territory that is allotted to you so that a man who has killed someone may have a place to flee.

Now, here, and I think we’re going to see, and you’ll probably agree with me, there’s a little bit of an evolution in these rules, but clearly in rabbinic tradition and even in the text that we’re going to read, that this has everything to do with unintended manslaughter and not intended murder.

But here it says someone who has killed someone will have a place to flee.

Now, this is the case of the killer who may flee there and live, one who has slain another unwittingly without having been an enemy in the past.

For instance, a man who goes with another fellow into a grove to cut wood, as his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, the axe head flies off in the middle and strikes the others.

That man shall flee to one of these cities and live.

Otherwise, when the distance is great, the blood-avenger pursuing the killer in hot anger may overtake him and strike him down.

So it seems to say that either it’s condoning or it is acknowledging that there is a pre-existent tradition where if someone kills someone in your family or tribe, you have the right to avenge that murder, even if it was manslaughter, not intentional.

yet he did not incur the death penalty, since he had never been the other’s enemy. (7) That is why I command you: set aside three cities.

So first of all, the interesting thing is we have cities.

Up until now, we’ve been in the desert.

There are tribes.

We’re talking about distances.

And it all ties into the last few weeks, Parshiyot, where Judaism became centralized.

They were told to take down all of these local holy sites, and everything was centralized in Jerusalem, which is very nice when it comes to pilgrimage festivals.

But for everyday stuff, you have to have these refuges.

And we’ll see later that if there was a tradition of fleeing to a holy space like a temple, that now that there were no holy spaces distributed around the country, again, pushed one to have to have these cities of refuge.

But we always talk about what’s unique in the Torah.

This is a unique institution, and it’s an institution, I think, as we go along, that was created to address the situation of the blood revenge and blood killings, where, again, the fact that someone in your tribe or family was killed required you to avenge it.

Yeah, so, I mean, we know that from other cultures as well.

This wasn’t only a Jewish thing.

In the ancient world, you had, you had revenge killings.

There’s a phrase for it.

It’s called revenge killings.

Yeah, and we’ll see a little bit that, and I said this in the introduction, it was something very strong in the Sinai Peninsula, and Bedouin tribes today are still struggling with it.

And in Arab countries, I won’t say Muslim countries, because actually, Islam, we’ll see, came out against it, but it was pre-existent even to Islam.

It was a very strong tradition.

And so we’re not even talking about honor killings, which has a whole other element to it.

So in Deuteronomy 19, it continues going on.

And again, it talks about a premeditated murder that occurs, (11) If, however, a man who is the enemy of another lies in wait and sets upon [the victim] and strikes a fatal blow and then flees to one of these towns, (12) the elders of his town shall have him brought back from there and shall hand him over to the blood-avenger to be put to death;

So inside of our document, you have both the cure to blood avenging and participation in it.

(13) you must show him no pity. Thus you will purge Israel of the blood of the innocent, and it will go well with you.

I would suggest that if you read the laws in Sanhedrin, there is no giving it over to the blood avenger.

You bring witnesses, you go to court, but here we are at a stage in the development of the law where for murder, there was an acceptance of this pre-existent institution.

Would you agree?

Yeah, that is right.

Correct.

That’s interesting.

There clearly was an acceptance of it.

And that’s what’s so interesting in the Torah.

And you know, the commentaries, you know, the Jewish commentaries don’t focus on it.

But it’s like it’s the peshat (simple meaning) in the Torah.

It’s the literal explanation in the Torah, which I think doesn’t get enough Jewish focus.

Probably not.

But that’s what Madlik is here for, right?

That’s it.

That’s perfect.

Yeah, this is great.

So and Deuteronomy 19 ends, and it is no longer talking about the premeditated murder, but it does bring in the Lex talionis.

It says, In 19: 21, nor must you show pity, life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

This is important because we will see in Islamic law, and then in the way they fixed this blood revenge was monetary compensation.

And so here too, we have normally, we are used to eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

You pay the monetary substitute for the value that an eye or a limb might have.

Here, we also have life for life.

So we have all of these kind of concepts mixed in.

In Numbers, because Deuteronomy is not the only place that we talk about this, it gives us a little bit more flavor.

And there, in Numbers 35, it says in 31, you may not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of capital crime.

He must be put to death.

So already, it did have this concept of ransom, Kofir le-Nefesh.

And this was one of the tools in the toolkit.

And you were not to accept it for a premeditated murder, which would imply that you could accept it for an unintentional manslaughter.

So again, we have these these different ingredients that we shall see that come up in the general context of the Middle East, which is, there are holy places that you might go to.

There are monetary compensations that you can use, all designed so that you don’t have this kind of vigilante tribal revenge killing.

The interesting thing that is mentioned is that the person has to stay in the city of refuge until the priest, the Cohen HaGadol, dies.

(25) The assembly shall protect the killer from the blood-avenger, and the assembly shall restore him to the city of refuge to which he fled, and there he shall remain until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the sacred oil.

Yeah, that’s super interesting, isn’t it?

And that’s one of the questions you would, if I was giving my Bar Mitzvah drasha on this subject, that’s what I would ask.

Why is that?

And maybe we’ll come across something that has an answer to it, but again, we did have the sense of the Cohen and Levi as the judge, a few verses ago.

And so, we kind of see, and we do have this sense of putting the hands on the guilty person.

So, let’s see a little bit how this plays out.

And I should say that in Exodus 21, it says, When one party schemes against another and kills through treachery, you shall take that person from my very altar to be put to death.

Me’im mizbechi tikechenu l’amut.

So, here too, we have that ingredient that I referenced before.

The ingredient that most of us are familiar.

You run into the church, and you grab the altar, and you’re safe.

But the idea is, for premeditated murder, you can’t do that.

But the possibility exists that for man-slaughter, it existed.

But because in the last parsha or two, we took away decentralized holy spaces, we needed this.

So again, it’s unintended consequences.

It’s the development of the law.

So in pre-Islamic tradition, and I found an amazing article that is called Blood Revenge in Arabia and Israel.

It’s by a Walter Patton, and it’s dated 1901.

So what’s nice about that is, on the one hand, you might assume that maybe the research is dated, although I have done a little bit of research, and Wikipedia is still saying the same thing, and so are some scholarly articles and recent newspaper articles. (see Sefaria notes)

But it’s, you know, it’s, there was a great golden age of Jewish scholarship into, and biblical scholarship into Islam and pre-Islam, that now is not, maybe not so possible anymore.

But in this, he talks about the sense that even amongst the Bedouin, there is a statement, “I will have my revenge if I should cast into hell for it.”

So there was this idea that this transcended law, that this was something that was above law, that if there was a killing in your family or your tribe, it was imperative on you to redeem that.

And we saw that sense of the necessary idea of purging the land, purging people from this death.

And so he writes that when Islam came, the main modification introduced was that all Muslims were obliged to avenge a Muslim who was slain.

So he argues that Islam actually also came out against these revenge killings.

He says, This is as striking at the very root of the tribal principle and social organization would have brought a great change in blood revenge.

But despite Islam, the tribal principle has been preserved almost unmodified in the desert, and with it the ancient usage in blood feuds.

And what is fascinating, and this gives us insight into our own tradition, is the word that it uses for this future from the law is jâr.

In English, it’s J with a little tent at the top of it, jâr

And in the Hebrew, this scholar says that’s ger (גר)

And so we have looked at ger from many different perspectives.

You look at a ger as a convert, others look at them as a stranger in your midst.

But the idea of a fugitive, we all are aware of Bedouin hospitality.

At its most basic level, hospitality didn’t mean just taking care of the stranger, feeding him and providing a roof over his head that came into your house.

It meant granting them protection against anyone.

If you think back to Lot and Sodom, when the crowd forms outside of the home and says, throw out this stranger, that was the most basic responsibility of a community. (See Genesis 19: 4-10)

To protect those who had sought refuge within them.

It must be borne in mind, he writes, that the belief was that all protection is related to the god of the tribe.

So there is an element here of not only honoring your tribe and that you have a responsibility to protect this fugitive, but it’s under the protection of your god as well.

We certainly have that sense in Judaism that we’ll see in a second.

There’s a lot of information in the Sefaria notes, but I think what the most fascinating source that he brings is back in Genesis, and it is Cain and Abel, our old friends.

And in Cain and Abel 4.7, after the sacrifice has been rejected, it says, and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him.

God said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel?

And he said, I do not know.

I am I, my brother’s keeper.

Pretty famous.

And as we know, what happened then was that Cain said to God, My punishment is too great to bear.

He was made a fugitive.

Since you have banished me this day from the soil, and I must avoid your presence and become a restless ranger on earth.

Anyone who meets me may kill me.

So when we’re looking at it from this sense of the fugitive from the law of murder of the Ir Miklat, these cities of refuge, here is Cain in the early part of Genesis who needs a city of refuge.

God said to him, I promise if anyone kills Cain, sevenfold vengeance shall be exacted.

And God put a mark on Cain, lest anyone who met him should kill him.

And the powerful part of this story, and then I’m going to stop and get your impressions, is that God becomes the city of refuge.

We’ve talked about these cities, we’ve talked about holy places and altars, we’ve talked about tribes, but we’ve also said that at the end of the day, it’s the god of the tribe who offers the ultimate protection.

And so here you have it in its most, I think, essential way, that ultimately God becomes the Ir Miklat, God becomes the protector of the fugitive.

You know, the idea is that the Ir Miklat is really God’s protection for the person.

Because when you think about it, you know, just think about an ancient world where somebody kills somebody else, and then the brother of the person who’s killed goes out and kills the murderer.

And that’s accepted, right?

That’s considered to be reasonable and acceptable.

And then they go basically to this gated community, right?

It’s like you live in Connecticut in a gated community, and you know, and you’re not allowed through the gate anymore because this is a protective space.

But that’s really God protecting them.

Because what makes that protected space?

Why is that protected space special?

That protected space is special because God made it special.

So that’s the idea that God is really protecting.

The whole institution of an Ir Miklat, of a city of refuge, is kind of abracadabra, right?

Why should it make sense?

If I’m angry that my brother was killed, I’m going to kill you even within your gated community.

I’m going to figure out how to get there.

But no, that’s not allowed.

So I totally agree with you.

I love what you’ve said.

I think that in a sense that the Cohen and the Levi was the representative of God and the justice.

And so that maybe when the Cohen Gadol dies, the person is somehow released.

It doesn’t explain how the blood avenger now cannot come after him.

But the point is that all of our tradition seems to move.

There are two main elements, and those elements never go away.

The first element that we are in total synergy with pre-Islam, with Islam, with Judaism is that the blood pollutes.

In Numbers 35, you shall not pollute in the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land and the land can have no expiation for blood that is shed on it.

You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I myself abide, for I, God, abide among the Israelite people.

This sense that you have to purge the evil and it’s not, what lies at its source is not retribution, it’s not taking revenge, it’s getting rid of the pollution.

In Job 16, he says, Earth, do not cover my blood, let there be no resting place for my outcry. (see also Genesis 4: 10 about Abel: “the voice of thy brother’s blood cries to Me from the ground.”)

So this scholar that I mentioned before, he looks at these verses and he talks about the crying of the blood, is very similar to, again, pre-Islamic, pre-ancient Semitic tropes.

Then he talks even about the ancient sacredness of the tent.

I didn’t mention it, but God warns Cain, evil is waiting at the door [of the tent]. לַפֶּ֖תַח חַטָּ֣את רֹבֵ֑ץ “Sin couches at the door”

This idea of coming inside of the tent and getting sanctity.

And so, you know, if you look at the Torah through this lens, and we do this a lot, you read it totally different.

You look at it, Moses running away from Egypt and going into Jethro’s protection differently.

You look at Jacob running away from his brother and going to his family; Laban.

There are so many instances of this kind of issue driving the narrative in the Bible.

But the key difference is you look at Gerim kind of differently.

You know, many of the Gerim in Israel, doubtless, were refugees from justice in other nations.

We were, you know, a rebellious group.

In Judaism, asylum was under the law, he writes.

This is a vital difference, for there is no law over asylum to restrict or direct it in nomadic times.

In Judaism, asylum protection by the injustice and the immoral violence of tribal custom, but did not protect from law as it has done in the desert.

And you kind of get this sense that this, we say tribalism, but all of a sudden as we start reading Deuteronomy, we’re not talking about tribes and tribal territories, we’re talking about cities, villages, and distances.

You know, you would expect there should be 12 Cities of Refuge for each of the tribal states, so to speak.

But there is a breakdown in the old tribal system, and it’s becoming more than a nation.

The decline of blood revenge and the introduction of principles of social justice.

So where I want to end is that it seems to me that there’s no question when one says, HaShem ye’nakeim d’amo, that a God should avenge, ye’na keim, is that, how would you literally?

Ye’kom d’amoh.

The word is ye’kom, and the word ye’kom comes from the word nikamah, meaning revenge.

Okay.

So when you say that word, I’m not going to whitewash it, it means take revenge.

We have this human need to lash out at those who have hurt us.

But in the tradition that we have just studied, I will argue that it means something slightly more nuanced.

And what it means is that at the end of the day, the strong emphasis in our tradition is that God is our sanctuary.

So in Isaiah 8, for instance, (14) And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Yisra᾽el, for a trap and for a snare to the inhabitants of Yerushalayim.

Vahayalimikdash le’evin ne’ef le’tzur. וְהָיָ֖ה לְמִקְדָּ֑שׁ וּלְאֶ֣בֶן נֶ֠גֶף וּלְצ֨וּר מִכְשׁ֜וֹל

We all know what tzur is.

Tzur is protection. (Tzur Yisrael)

It’s the stone of protection.

So God becomes the protector.

And in Ezekiel, when it talks about the Jews spread around the world, it talks about, I have become to them, says God, a diminished sanctuary.

L’mikdash ma’at.

The idea is that God becomes the ir ha’miklat.

God becomes the refuge.

He has these protecting wings.

Beseter kenafecha.

He will shelter us, besukot, beyom ra.

And I will go one step further.

That that same God who is the refuge, He is the one who takes the revenge.

So in Psalms 94, it says, God of retribution, Lord, el nekamot ha’shem, el nekamot hofeah.

Rise up, judge the world, give the arrogant their deserts.

In Psalms 18, and God who has vindicated me and made people subject to me, in Deuteronomy, to be my vengeance and recompense at the time that their fault falters, yea, their day of disaster is near.

The idea is that we pass this responsibility on to God, just as when you lay the hands on it.

That’s my read of it.

And it is God’s obligation to get rid of the pollution, so to speak.

Of course, the biggest thing that we’re going to be saying on Yom Kippur in the Av HaRachamon, Vayin Kom Nikmat Dam Avdav HaShafuch, וְיִנְקוֹם נִקְמַת דַּם עֲבָדָיו הַשָּׁפוּךְ  and he will avenge the blood of his servants that has been shed.

And that was written for the people who were killed in the Crusades, so it’s very much in the same spirit.

And in the history of Yom Kippur, it brings the verses, it brings the texts, to prove it, that it is God who takes revenge.

So I think that number one, I love the way the Pasha speaks to us at this time and helps us understand and maybe help us direct our angst and our emotions.

But certainly there is an evolution here where it took this revenge and this need to somehow channel one’s emotions in a unique way.

And it was towards, away from us and away from the other amongst us and towards God, let God do what God needs to do.

That was my takeaway.

I’m curious to know what yours is.

It’s fantastic.

I think it’s really interesting.

And no, it’s unfortunate that this week was a week of Hashvichot Domam.

But, you know, it’s something that you see now in Israel, and I think it’s something that people need to understand.

And it’s something to think about what Nikamah means and the fact that Nikamah, revenge, has its place in the Jewish tradition.

But it has to be understood in the broader picture, which is exactly what we did.

Like we said, like I said before, the Jewish commentaries don’t give this enough, so I think this was a great topic today.

So thank you so much.

Shabbat shalom, everybody.

And we look forward to seeing you back next week for Ki Tetze.

And let us all hope that the day approaches very soon, where we can study verses and concepts like this as hypotheticals and not soclose to home as they are right now.

Let we all know peace and no more suffering.

Shabbat shalom and see you all next week.

Shabbat shalom.

Be well.

Hey, Bill, how’s it going?

I just wanted to say, I thought that this was great.

I think you know that one of my colleagues’ daughter was killed on October 7th.

And one of my student’s sons was one of the hostages from two days ago.

Oh, wow.

And so what you said means a lot to me.

What you two said means a lot to me.

I just wanted to thank you.

Thank you so much, Bill.

And it’s great to hear your voice.

I haven’t, we haven’t spoken in a while.

No, we should again.

Okay.

Shabbat shalom.

Let’s all be safe.

Bye bye.