Parashat Matot-Masei: The City of Refuge Inside Us

 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 -- so you can take these parts and feed them to the dogs -- 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.   

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, that we need to create and provide easy access to places where such humans can take shelter from the go’el hadam, the victim’s avenging relative.  

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 -- to harshly attack them, 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 from the perpetual attack of the go’el hadam -- 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, a people whose lives were fully dedicated to facilitating the connection between heaven and earth in the Temple, 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.   

Perhaps at this moment you have a part that is shouting loudly, angrily -- but those parts need to improve!  They can’t just be sheltered; they have to be judged and criticized in order to stop being so terrible, to learn to be better.  They need to face the consequences of their actions, not to be coddled in a compassionate shelter.  Let them out of that city so we can have a word with them!  These words are from the go’el hadam, your own harsh internal avenger, and the go’el hadam does have his place.  He is not evil.  Note that his name includes the root for ge’ulah, redemption.  What he wants is to save you -- to make you better -- and also to save the world, to bring justice and redemption to the world.     That is all good, and we can admire his good intentions and passion.   

But harshness is not the way to deal with these vulnerable down-trodden parts; they already know they aren’t perfect and beating them up further does nothing but send them into a cave of shame.  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.  And let them see how God is present here, how God is called forth to be with us in our worst moments, how in our very human struggles and mistakes, we somehow create a tunnel to reach another plane, how we surrender and open to the divine in a new way, and how, here, above all, in this city of shelter, here is where the ultimate ge’ulah happens.  Here we are redeemed in our very messiness; here we learn that love surpasses such error and still holds us, just exactly as we are.  If this is not redemption, what is.  

Meditation on Parashat Matot-Masei: The City of Refuge Inside Us

 Click here to listen.  

Parashat Pinchas: On the Tamid Sacrifice, Mountains, and Eternity

Included in this week’s parsha is the Olat Tamid  -- the burnt offering that was sacrificed on the sanctuary altar twice a day, every day.   Tamid means “always” -- not just now and then, but all the time, regularly -- reminding us of the importance of constancy and steadfastness in our connection to God. 

The verse inexplicably connects this particular offering to Mount Sinai, saying that we should bring the olat tamid “that was done on Mount Sinai” (Numbers 28:6). Commentators have various explanations -- that it refers to the practice days before the erection of the Tabernacle or to a sacrifice that was in fact brought at the time of Mount Sinai -- but perhaps there is also a metaphorical meaning here, a connection between the theme of steadfastness implied by tamid and a mountain such as Mount Sinai, the Israelites’ most recent and prominent experience of mountains.  Perhaps the message is -- if you want to understand how to do this tamid, learn from the mountain; be a mountain.  

A mountain is nothing if not steadfast.  It stands still through all types of weather, stable and constant through rain and wind and sun, simply staying the course.   That’s what it means to have this tamid quality in relation to God, as well.  To be an olah, to reach up, like the verb alah, “to rise up,” to reach up to connect to God and to keep that connection going, to stay with it through whatever external or internal weather we experience -- through life challenges and sickness and health and emotional ups and downs -- just to stay the course, to keep stable like a mountain in our unwavering connection to heaven.   

Shiviti Hashem lenegdi tamid.  I place God before me at all times, tamid, says the Psalmist, always.   Do we need to place God before us -- isn’t God already there?  Yes, and yet we need to continually be placing Him there.  Part of this tamid quality involves the constant re-awakening to God’s presence before us, a constant re-remembering the mountain-like stillness that is at our center, a constant rising up again to connect -- with each new in-breath, a new start, a new rising up.   Our connection, our home, is always there, and yet we need to continually place it, place God, before us, continually remind ourselves, twice a day bring an olah, twice a day say the Shma, at each moment re-awaken to this eternal stillness.   Our minds and hearts swirl with activity and busyness and worry and fear and so much human vulnerability; we are distracted from this truth, from this ner tamid, eternal light, that always flickers in us, is always connected.  Only when we are perfectly still, like a mountain, do we remember.  

Each moment of remembering is a kind of teshuva, a return to knowing our tamid connection.  We are given a thousand opportunities a day to return, to be steadfast, to remember.  Life seems so complicated to us, but is really so simple; just to keep returning home, to be constant in our devotion, in our connection, in our knowledge of the divine.   It’s ok that we forget; it just gives us more opportunities to remember, to re-ignite the olah flame and burn brighter, more completely, as was the special trait of the olah, to burn up entirely on the altar.   

Something happens in these tiny moments of returning, some tiny glimmer of some other realm.  It’s as if when we, on our human plane, are tamid, we get a taste, on the divine plane, of le’olam, of eternity.   The word tamid, “always,” is used almost exclusively for humans, and the word le’olam, “forever,” almost exclusively for God (think: ki le’olam hasdo, “for His loving kindness is forever”).  But the two are similar -- “always” and “eternity.”   “Always” is our human approximation of “eternity,” an attempt to enter that space beyond time, to be so still and steadfast that we are still here and still here and still here, so that we are actually so present that we enter some other “here” where time stretches out before us with no end; we are in divine time, no time. Our ability to “stay” opens up eternity for us. This is part of what is meant to happen on Shabbat.  We pause; we are still and present in a steadfast, “always,” mountain way; and we get a taste of olam haba, the world to come, the divine world that is “always coming,” the future merging with the present through our simple act of standing still and remembering, zachor.   

To be tamid on some level seems impossible to us humans.  We can’t promise or even hope to ever be “always” anything; we are notoriously fallible and unpredictable and unreliable.  We are not mountains and not meant to be mountains.  But the olat tamid was not really an “always” offering.  It was brought twice a day.  To be tamid, steadfast in this way, is to commit not to something we can’t do -- constant, every moment presence -- but simply to keep returning every day, to know that we will leave, but also to know that we can remember and return, become a mountain, again and again, and that this is enough; this, too, this momentary re-awakening to divine presence, done a thousand times over, this, too, is an entryway to eternity.

A Meditation for Parashat Pinchas: Be Steadfast as a Mountain

 Click here to listen to this parsha-themed meditation.