The end of this week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, deals with the egla arufa, the beheaded calf which atoned for a murder whose perpetrator was unknown. If a body was found out in the open and it was not known who had killed the person, the Torah commands the elders of the nearest city to take a year-old calf down to the river and proclaim, “Our hands did not spill this blood, and our eyes did not see.” This served to both atone for the death and also publicized the matter, so that the true murderer could be found.
It seems odd at first that any culpability is ascribed to the elders of the city which just happened to be closest to the discovery. They may not have even known of this person’s existence during his lifetime. What possible role could the city’s leaders have played in his death? Why does the Torah involve the city’s rabbinical court, when obviously the real murderer is the one who needs to be punished?
The mitzva of the egla arufa serves to underscore the dictum: “All Jews are guarantors for each other.” The responsibility for the death lies not only upon the shoulders of the cold-blooded murderer, but also upon the inhabitants of the nearest town and most specifically, on the community leaders, the elders who served on the supreme court.
The innocence of these leaders must be publicly proclaimed, for it was their responsibility to ensure the high moral caliber of their flock. Had they instilled Jewish values properly, such a situation would have never arisen. The fact that this murder happened in their domain shows that something is indeed wrong with their leadership.
The concept of bloodshed may also be applied to the Jew’s spiritual life. When a person transgresses Torah law he is ostensibly “murdering” his G-dly Jewish soul with the degradation it must endure. With the repetition of such actions a Jew in this spiritually reduced state can even appear to be a lifeless corpse, where he too is found in an “open field,” the domain of the non-Jewish world.
Whose responsibility is this Jew’s present condition? Is he not responsible for his own actions which led to his spiritual downfall? Could he not, of his own free will, have abandoned the “open field” and returned to the “city,” the embracing fold of the Jewish way of life?
The Torah clearly states the duties of the Jewish leaders: “The members of the greater court were to gird themselves with ropes of iron...and make the rounds in all the inhabited places of Israel...and teach all of Israel.” Their function was to ensure that this individual would not fall through the cracks and abandon the proper path of the Torah.
Being responsible for our fellow Jew is a lesson which should be noted by every Jew, especially during the month of Elul, when the thoughts of the entire Jewish People turn to repentance and return to G-d before the advent of the new year. During this propitious month for repentance, when G-d goes out into the “field” to make our return to Him that much easier, let us truly exemplify the love of our fellow Jew so we can all enter the G-dly palace on the Day of Judgement.
Adapted from the works of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
