The City of Refuge Inside Us
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
This Dvar Torah on Parashat Matot-Masei was edited from one written by Rachel Anisfeld holds a PhD in Rabbinic Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a student and teacher of Torah in a wide variety of contexts. She lived in Albany, NY for many years and now lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband and three children.
Photo by Galih Nyb on Unsplash
Here’s the thing: we all make mistakes, sometimes with harmful consequences for ourselves and others.
Mostly we don’t make these mistakes out of ill will or an evil nature, but simply because we are human beings, inclined to error and imperfection by our very nature.
Our relationships are messy; we try; we do our best, but often there is still hurt, still harm, still wrong even.
What are we to do with ourselves and each other in light of this pervasive imperfection?
There is a choice.
You can take these parts of us that don’t measure up, that sometimes do the “wrong” thing despite meaning well and allow the harsh climate of our inner critics to hold sway and attack them.
Or you can provide them with some shelter, a place of refuge and acceptance and compassion.
In Numbers 35:6-7, the Torah opts for the second alternative in creating the ir miklat, the city of refuge, for the accidental killer.
Such a killer is an extreme example of how our fallibility as humans can cause great harm, and the Torah instructs us that we should be careful to take care of people who make such grave mistakes.
We have a similar choice on a daily basis internally.
How do we treat the parts of us that mess things up, that make mistakes and don’t do everything “right,” often causing accidental harm?
These parts carry a heavy burden of guilt and shame.
Our tendency is to allow our internal critics -- our own personal go’el hadam (avenging relative) -- to harshly attack these parts of ourselves, causing still more pain and shame.
But there is another way -- to cultivate a kind of ir miklat inside us, a place -- perhaps our heart -- where we can send these imperfect parts to go and rest -- a place of forgiveness, a place where there is permission to be human in all our messiness and still be held in God’s love.
Because the cities of refuge, according to the Torah, were Levite cities, and the Levi’im, scattered around the country in their own cities, were a tribe without land, a tribe whose inheritance was God Himself, and perhaps also in these mini-temple cities of theirs, places of sanctuary for the vulnerable.
And so part of what this ir miklat provides is a reminder of our never severed connection to the divine, of how we are held, even in our worst moments, in the face of our largest mistakes and human imperfections, even then, how we are still held in love in a sheltered container.
This is the message of the ir miklat, that God continues to embrace and shelter us in our errors.
We can find such refuge at all times inside us, in returning to our heart, returning to our connection to the divine.
Let the go’el hadam take up a chair and sit outside your internal ir miklat.
Let him watch what happens to these imperfect parts as they are taken in by the welcoming shelter of this Levite city.
God is called forth to be with us in our worst moments.
In our very human struggles and mistakes, we somehow create a tunnel to reach another plane, to surrender and open to the divine in a new way, and discover, in this city of shelter, where the ultimate ge’ulah (redemption) happens.
Here we are redeemed in our very messiness; here we learn that love surpasses error and still holds us, just exactly as we are.
If this is not redemption, what is.
