Weekly D’var Torah from Rabbi Emma Gottlieb

The following D’var Torah was written / delivered for Am Shalom Congregation, in Barrie, Ontario

(August 2025 / Elul 5785)

Shoftim: Cities of Refuge, Spaces of Repair

This week’s parasha, Shoftim, centers around the theme of justice and highlights several categories of laws that all contribute in some way, toward protecting the legal system itself. For example, the parasha begins with laws for judges and priests and kings, designed to ensure that no person is seen to be above the law, especially those who potentially wield tremendous power through positions where they adjudicate others. We also find the famous quote, tzedek tzedek tirdof  in this week’s parasha – Justice, Justice shall you pursue!

And, in what might initially seem like a less critical category of law, we find the instructions for setting up and maintaining Cities of Refuge. These cities (there were six of them in total in Biblical times) were designated places where someone who had accidentally caused a death could go to escape from an “avenger of blood” (i.e. someone who was related to the person who had died, and who had a legal right to exact a blood vengeance from the person who caused their relative’s death).

Rabbi Tali Adler teaches that these Cities of Refuge – called arei miklat in Hebrew – served a dual purpose. On the one hand they, “seem to exist purely for the accidental killer’s protection,” a place where they could live out their life in safety. On the other hand, the Sages of the Talmud described the arei miklat as, “places of punishment” whereby, “the accidental killer (is forced) to uproot (their) entire life” in order to access the safety they provide. 

Rabbi Adler teaches that there is also a third, “more subtle purpose of the ir miklat, which stems from its strangeness.” Although the Cities of Refuge functioned like any other city in terms of day-to-day living, its inhabitants were only two types of people. These cities were, “composed only of killers and (Levites),” which means that, “no matter where an accidental killer might go” or who they might talk to, their history would be “implicitly understood”, since every non-levite in the city would only be there if they had accidentally caused a death. 

Rabbi Adler describes how this “community of killers” as she calls it, “this community of collectively acknowledged sin, is not only a place of protection or a place of punishment. It is a place where no one has to hide what is monstrous within them. It is a place where darkness can be acknowledged. It is a place where the energy (that) human beings usually spend hiding their flaws and their past misdeeds can instead be used to move toward redemption.”

In the Talmud, we learn that in an ir miklat, if the inhabitants of the city want to honor one of the accidental killers in any way, the person is required to inform them of their past, by stating: “Rotzei’ah ani – I am a killer.” If the people of the city insist “even so,” then the person can accept the honor being offered to them. Rabbi Adler sees this as “the essence of the ir miklat … a place where the teshuvah process is open, a place where people are required to speak about the things they have done wrong, and a place where it is safe for them to speak that truth because everyone around them is doing the same.”

“When a person is feeling the most unworthy because of their past,” she writes, “it is a place where they can speak their fear out loud . . . and it is a place where, because the people around (them) have accepted the darkness in their own past, they can answer ‘Yes, we know, and we want you here, doing this, even so.’”

What would it mean for us to have such spaces of safety and affirmation in our own lives? While hopefully, none of us have or will have the experience of causing an accidental death, we can probably relate to the experience of feeling shame over something we did or caused unintentionally. Even though we did not mean to cause harm, the harm we ended up causing might be such that we carry a heavy burden of guilt with us, even long after the incident has passed. What would it mean for us to have spaces where we could speak about the darker truths of our lives, without fear that we might be rejected because of them? And where could we find such places today? 

While we might not have physical spaces like the arei miklat, Rabbi Adler brings forward a teaching from the Talmud to suggest a different kind of space where we might bring forward our vulnerabilities and find acceptance and even comfort. 

The text states: “divrei Torah koltin”— “The words of Torah are a refuge.” In other words, when we study Torah together, we actually create opportunities for us to talk about things that we might otherwise feel are impossible to say aloud. Rabbi Adler explains that by, “engaging in Torah as a community, we (can) create space(s) where we…acknowledge that we are each flawed, that each of us contains mini-monstrosities. We (can) create space(s) where we are invited to speak our inner darkness out loud. And we (can) create communities where we can trust that (we won’t be rejected) for our inner weaknesses,” and where we can say to one another: “yes, we know about this part of you, and we accept you even so. We accept you because, like you, we are flawed—and, like you, we are here because, in Torah, we are striving to be better.”

In just a few weeks we will be standing together and professing our sins aloud. On Yom Kippur, we confess our individual sins silently, but we read together, out loud, in one communal voice, the list of our collective sins. Why do we each have to read out all of the sins, even the ones we did not personally commit? Because as a community, we recognise that we are responsible for one another; That if one of us has erred, all of us need to work together to ensure that they have the opportunity to be forgiven, to learn, to grow, to be better in the year to come. We say each sin aloud so that we can be witnesses to one another, so that we are each seen, and so that we each can hear that we are not alone in our human frailty.

In the meantime, throughout this month of Elul we are each, hopefully, moving through the difficult work of introspection. As we come together in community over Shabbat, may we remember to be gentle with one another – knowing that all of us may be carrying our shame and regrets closer to the surface than they might be at other times of year. Let us try to make this space, a space of safety for one another – where we can be vulnerable and feel seen, where we can share with one another and be affirmed; Where we can find refuge in community.

Kein Yehi Ratzon.