A young man walking on the street in Lakewood sees a sign that says: “Apartment For Rent”” with a phone number beneath it. He calls the number and goes to see the apartment. The young man walks in and meets the owner, an older man who lives alone and who shares that he is planning to move out of his apartment to live in an assisted living facility. The young man asks the older man how much the rent is, and the older man quotes him an outrageous price for the small and modest apartment. The young man can’t afford the rent, so he leaves.
A few weeks later, the young man passes by where the sign for the apartment stood and it’s no longer up, so he figures someone else must have rented it. Then a year goes by, and the sign is back up again! He returns to the apartment and asks the older man if he would be willing to rent him the apartment at a more reasonable price. The old man responds: “Listen, I’m not going anywhere. I never planned on moving out and I’ll probably be in this apartment until the day I die.” “Then why,” asks the young man, “did you put the ‘for rent’ sign back up?” The older gentleman gets quiet, and then answers: “Because this is the only way people will visit me.”
Our theme at Manhattan Jewish Experience for the High Holidays this year is “belonging” — feeling a sense of connectedness. In the post-October 7 world in which we live, it is critical to feel like we belong — that we are connected with the Jewish community here in New York, and with our brothers and sisters in Israel. This is not the time for Jewish people to be alone. The world has done a pretty good job of making us feel like we’re on our own, but in the spirit of the achdus our Israeli brothers and sisters have exhibited towards each other in rallying together to fight Hamas and Hezbollah, I want to share some words of Torah on the spiritual significance of belonging.
One of the strangest rituals the Torah commands us to perform is the Eglah Arufa in a situation in which a dead body is found in the public arena. Somehow, a visitor to a city is murdered. What the circumstances are or how the murder took place remains a mystery, but the Torah makes clear what those who live nearby must do: The Torah instructs the elders and scholars of the closest city to take a calf, bring it to a certain place, decapitate it and pronounce the following declaration: “Yadeinu lo shafchu at hadam hazeh — Our hands did not shed this blood.” What is the purpose of this strange ritual, and why are the elders required to declare that they didn’t kill this visitor passing through their city? As the Talmud asks: “Does anyone really think these elders and scholars took this man’s life?”
The Rambam and Abarbanel offer a practical answer: The public procession of the elders and the taking of the calf serve to publicize the murder of this stranger passing through town. The more the leaders are involved, the more pomp and circumstance there is to the ceremony, the more the news of the murder will get around and will make it more likely they will catch the perpetrator.
Rav Yosef Bechor Shor (12th century French Tosafist) offers a different explanation: The elders of the city make the declaration, “Our hands did not shed this blood,” to show how precious the loss of life is to God. Rav Yaakov Ruderman, z’l, the late rosh yeshiva of Ner Yisroel, explained this is why the Eglah Arufah portion is sandwiched in the Torah between the laws of warfare, even though the Eglah Arufah is performed in a peacetime situation. Warfare desensitizes us to the loss of human life. As we’ve seen this past year in Israel, war brings about a greater loss of life, and we therefore run the risk of becoming insensitive to those losses. Hersh Polin Goldberg, HY”D became so well known, even though all the hostages are equally precious, because the family gave us a window into their pain, so we can relate to it that much more. Considering the loss of 1,200 lives taken last Simchat Torah is overwhelming, but when we focus on one person’s life, that helps us retain the kedushas hachayim— the sanctity of human life. Judaism mourns the passing of every precious soul — every soldier who gives their life defending Israel is a whole world, and so, the most important members of society, the elders and scholars, participate in the ritual of the Eglah Arufa, and they recite this declaration over one visitor who came to town to ensure we never become numb to death and the value of a single human life.
The Talmud, however, gives a different reason as to why the elders are commanded to declare: “Our hands did not shed this blood.” In the words of the Talmud what that the elders are really saying is “that the victim did not come to us” while he was alive, “and so we let him go without giving him food, and we did not see him and so we let him go without leviya (without accompaniment)” (Sotah 45b).
In other words, we let the visitor leave our town without food and without escorting him out.
Wait— because the elders and the city folk failed to give someone food and escort, they are now responsible if something happens to him? Just because you give someone food or you accompany them out of town, does not mean you have protected them from danger! There is a well-known Jewish tradition to walk guests out of our home dalet amos — four cubits (about 7-8 feet). Is that tradition really meant to protect our guests, such that if we failed to provide the escort and something happens to our guest, we are somehow responsible for their death? How would leviya of dalet amot prevent a murder anyway? The great 16th century thinker, the Maharal of Prague, wrote: “Ki Koach ha’adam hu yoter ka’asher hu betoch klal bnei h’adam -—because the power of a person is greater when he is part of a community of people.” If a person is separated from the community, then that individual only has the spiritual power, the zechuyot, of himself. He or she otherwise stands alone and will lack the power to properly confront whatever challenges come his way.
The Maharal may be speaking on a spiritual/mystical level, but it also applies on a psychological level. The Jewish tradition of leviya— of accompanying guests four amos may seem very symbolic, but if you were visiting a certain city thousands of miles away from your home, and a group of people from that city recognized that you were a visitor and embraced you by offering you some food, and when it was time for you to leave they came to escort you out of the town, then when you leave you will possess a certain inner strength because you were made to feel more like a somebody — like part of the community. But what if while you were in the city no one invited you to their home and no one shared which of the sites you should go and see. You were just an anonymous figure passing through someone else’s city. No one knew you came, and no one noticed you left. That’s a very different feeling. Then you leave feeling alone, like you never mattered to anyone in that place. That, according to Rav Ruderman, is the purpose of the mitzvah of leviya — to give a person the sense that they are not on their own, that they are cared for by others; that you are noticed because people care. That you belong.
That is a critical feeling for each of us to possess because when you feel cared for and connected to others in this way, it gives you a positive feeling about yourself, which in turn gives you confidence in your future journey. Then, when you are confronted with obstacles on your journey, you will have more confidence to face those challenges — because you mattered to the people of the city from which you came. If the people of the city ignored you, you will be missing that confidence and lack the strength to fight off whatever danger lies ahead.
Rav Ruderman offers the following proof: The first time the root of the word leviya appears in the Torah is when the Matriarch Leah names her third son Levi. In describing the etymology of the name Levi she says: “Ata Hapaem Yilaveh Ishi alay” (Beresihit 29: 34) –—Now, this time my husband Ya’akov will yilaveh to me”. Onkelus says yilaveh means yitchaber — to become attached. To melave a person from your community is to tell them we are attached to you. You mean something to us. Yes, you’re leaving our community, but we feel a connection to you. And that attachment is vital for having confidence and strength to confront the challenges that lie before us.
In my first book, “Beyond the Instant,” I wrote about the smalltown Roseto, Pennsylvania,which in the 1950s had less than half the national rate of heart disease in America. This was years before cholesterol-lowering drugs and aggressive prevention of heart disease. When heart attacks were like an epidemic in the United States, there was almost no heart disease in Roseto. There was also no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction and very little crime. No one in Roseto was on welfare.
What accounted for all this? The people of Roseto shared the same unhealthy dieting and exercise habits of the surrounding towns. Researchers found that a whopping 41% of the people of Roseto’s calorie intake was from fat. No one was working out and many of them smoked heavily and struggled with obesity, yet the death rate from heart disease was half of the national rate, and they had significantly lower rates of suicide, crime and alcoholism!
What was it about this town? It was a real community. Roseto was settled by a group of immigrants from Southern Italy in the late 1800s and what they brought with them was a tight- knit community where people looked out for each other and took responsibility for each other. The senior citizens used to sit on their rockers on their front porches and if a kid was cutting school, they would grab the kid and bring him to the principal’s office. The researchers saw how the people of Roseto visited one another, how they stopped to chat with each other in Italian on the street, and how they cooked for each other in their backyards.
But it was more than that. It was also the life and values they lived. The people of Roseto were very faith oriented: Almost everyone in town attended church each Sunday. There was also lots of volunteering: The researchers counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people! That means that virtually everyone in town had a spiritual life and everyone was involved in a cause in which they believed.
Living in a tight-knit community together with having a religious life and volunteering on a regular basis improved the people of Roseto’s ability to fight heart disease and helped them confront the social and mental issues challenging our world, such as addiction and depression. Living in a neighborhood whose residents look out for one another and who cultivate spiritual practices feeds our souls, builds us up from within and enables us to confront life’s greatest problems.
Over the past year, my beloved father, z”l passed away and my son Ezra got married. Having community with us for both experiences made all the difference. So much of what made our son’s simcha a simcha was celebrating it with the community, and I was better able to deal with my father’s passing because of the community’s outpouring of love. There’s a Jewish tradition called a seudat havra’ah — which is a meal the community prepares for the mourners when they return from the cemetery. It’s a simple meal consisting of a piece of bread and an egg. But the meal is served by the community because the saddest thing for someone who has just buried their loved one is to have to prepare their own meal.
That’s essentially what Israelis have been doing all year to show love and support to families who lost loved ones fighting in Gaza. At many of those funerals, hundreds and sometimes thousands of Israelis lined the streets as the family’s car passed by on the way to the cemetery. It was a modest but powerful way to show the community cared — that the bereaved family was not all alone in their grief.
Our enemies this year tried to split us apart, to drag us into a war in Gaza and to provoke us in Lebanon. They do this not only to destroy us, but so that we will fight against one another. Our best response and our greatest revenge to today’s antisemitism is to come together as a community and fortify ourselves as individuals by increasing our Jewish knowledge and commitment. What greater zechut could there be for the chayalim, who in these last few months gave their lives so we can live as proud Jews. By celebrating our Judaism, we honor their memory. By strengthening our community and our commitment to Torah and mitzvot, we elevate their souls and ensure that we can face any challenge the New Year brings. In doing so, may Hashem bless our community and the entire people of Israel with a year of good health and safety for all.
G’mar Chatima Tova.
Thank you to my friend Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb of Ramat Beit Shemesh for sharing some of the Torah in this article.
Rabbi Mark Wildes, founder, Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE), a highly successful Jewish outreach program which engages 20’s/30’s in Jewish life and which has facilitated 383 marriages
