Parshas Shoftim – The Small Cracks
At the end of Parshas Shoftim, the Torah teaches us the mitzvah of Eglah Arufah. If a murdered person is found outside a city and no one knows who killed him, the elders of the nearest city must perform a special ceremony.
During the ceremony they say: “כַּפַּר לְעַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר פָּדִיתָ ה'” - “Bring atonement upon Your nation, Klal Yisroel, whom You redeemed” (Devarim 21:8).
The Ibn Ezra explains that the words “אֲשֶׁר פָּדִיתָ","whom You redeemed,” refer specifically to the generation that left Mitzrayim.
This is difficult to understand. The murder may have taken place hundreds of years after Yetzias Mitzrayim. Why would the generation that left Mitzrayim need kapparah for something that happened much later?
Rav Elya Baruch Finkel zt”l explains this based on a teaching of Rav Yisrael Salanter.
There was once a poor shoemaker in Vilna. After many years, he became wealthy. When his son became a chassan, he made the wedding in one of the better halls in the city.
There was a wealthy man who did not like seeing the former shoemaker become successful. As the father was walking his son to the chuppah, the man took off his shoe and called out, "How much would you charge to fix this sole?"
He wanted to remind everyone that this man had once been a shoemaker.
When Rav Yisrael Salanter heard what happened, he said that such behavior does not begin in one day.
It starts with something small. Someone speaks without enough respect. Another person acts without derech eretz. Nobody says anything. The behavior is allowed to continue. Over time, things become worse.
Rav Yisrael said that the people of the earlier generation who saw the first problems and did not correct them also carry some responsibility. Had they stopped the problem when it was small, it might never have grown into something much worse.
A simple mashal explains the idea. Imagine a dam holding back a large amount of water. One day, someone notices a small crack with a little water coming through. People say, “It is only a small crack." Later, the crack gets bigger. Still, nobody repairs it. Eventually, the dam breaks and the water floods the city. The flood did not really begin when the dam broke. It began when the first small crack was ignored.
Rav Elya Baruch explains that this is the meaning of the Ibn Ezra.
When the elders say: “כַּפֵּר לְעַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר פָּדִיתָ” they are saying that perhaps the roots of this murder began many generations earlier.
Maybe there was once a small lack of respect for another person. Maybe people became a little less sensitive to the value of another person's life. Maybe improper behavior was ignored instead of being corrected.
Over the generations, the problem became worse until it eventually led to murder. The Torah is teaching us an important lesson. Big problems often begin as small ones.
A small lack of derech eretz can grow. A small problem in middos can grow. Something that people once knew was wrong can slowly become accepted if nobody says anything.
We therefore have a responsibility to deal with problems when they are still small. What one generation allows can affect the next generation. If we fix the small cracks today, we can prevent much bigger problems tomorrow.
