Miller's Musings Parshas Matos-Masei: The End is the Beginning

בס''ד

When visualising the City of Refuge for those who inadvertently kill another, one could really let one’s imagination run wild.  One can envisage the victim’s family pursuing the murderer to wreak revenge on their fallen brethren with the killer fleeing for his life towards his only chance of survival.  A battle for freedom.  A race against time.  Besides for this rather thrilling depiction of what may have transpired there, there are many details involved in this complex mitzvah that require elucidation. One of which is why it is only after the death of the Kohen Godol that the murderer can leave the City of Refuge with the allowance for retribution for the family of the victim revoked?

The Kohen Godol was a major figure within the Jewish nation.  Before the appointing of his position became corrupted, he was an individual of extreme piety and tremendous significance to every Jew.  When he died, explains the Abarbanel, it shook every person to their very core.  If even one so pious and exalted still eventually met their end, then the acknowledgement that death comes to us all will help to comfort the one mourning for their relative and assuage his desire for vengeance for the loss he has felt.  He will see that for whatever the reason may be, his relation too was meant to die and he will reconsider the importance of revenge in the great scheme of things.

Death is part of life.  For the time being at least, there is no escaping it.  Many choose to ignore this fact because of the implications that it generates, yet there comes a time for everyone, when someone dies or some tragedy occurs, when this reality can no longer be disregarded. It is at this point that a person perceives their own mortality and it is hopefully at this point that a person begins to understand the futility of so much we aspire for and the senselessness of so much animosity we harbour towards others.  Pirkei Ovos tells us to repent one day before you die which, due to our ignorance as to when this might be, compels us to consider every day as if it were our penultimate one on this earth.  This is not to invoke in us feelings of constant trepidation, but to help us realise what the true priorities in life are.  Life is finite, this is perhaps the most important reality of our existence.  Let’s embrace rather than ignore that knowledge and live our lives in the knowledge of what truly matters.  It may be that there is nothing that can teach us as much about life as death.   

May this Shabbos live within us and we truly live within it. 

לעילוי נשמת לאה בת אברהם