Sermons Archive 2020

Erev Shabbat Mattot-Mas’ei 5780/ 17th July 2020

It seems almost unbelievable that by tomorrow we will have read two full books of the Torah since the lockdown.  The first Shabbat that Rabbi Igor and I broadcast live was on 21^st March from the Sanctuary – the last time we held our services in the synagogue.  It was Shabbat Vayakheil-Pekudei, the last double parashah of the Book of Exodus.  Since then we have covered the sacrificial and cultic rituals of the priesthood, dwelt on the Holiness Code and laws of the land in Leviticus, and navigated the Israelites’ rebellions in the Book of Numbers.  Today we read the last double parashah of Numbers and although we are planning our return to the Sanctuary towards the end of August, we will be in exile a little longer in Deuteronomy before entering the Promised Land.

One of the most striking laws of the last parashah of Numbers concerns the provision of forty-eight towns to be build for the Levites, the priestly clan, once the Israelites enter the land of Israel.  Without any territory assigned to them, the Levites are given the cities and surrounding pasture for cattle and other animals to graze.  Of the towns that are to be assigned to the Levites, six are designated as ‘cities of refuge’ – in Hebrew arei ha-mik’lat.  The Hebrew word mik’lat means ‘refuge’ or ‘asylum’ and is found only here at the end of Numbers, in Joshua and Chronicles and refers to specific cities where a person guilty of manslaughter can find refuge from anyone seeking take revenge against the manslayer.

‘The cities shall serve you as a refuge from the avenger, so that the killer may not die unless he has stood trial before the assembly’ (Numbers 35:12).

We should note several things about this verse.  Firstly, the protection is afforded to the one who was guilty of manslaughter – not murder, not an intended assassination, which is dealt with separately in the chapter, but an accidental death for which there still needs to be a just process of trial and sentence.  Secondly, the city would need to ‘absorb’ the one who has fled; its citizens would have to protect the accidental manslayer and keep the blood-avenger from doing any harm (Abarbanel).  That is quite a responsibility.  Indeed, the one who has fled is permitted to remain in the city of refuge and he remains the responsibility of the citizens of the town.  If the manslayer ventures beyond the limits of the city of refuge and he encounters the ‘blood-avenger’ and is killed, the Torah states that the citizens bear no guilt on his account.

While the manslayer is protected in the city of refuge, the murderer who has struck someone intentionally with a tool of stone or wood that causes death, is to be sentenced to death.   The Torah and the  Talmud emphasise the difference between these two killings: one is accidental, the other with an instrument that will inevitably kill the victim – as the Talmud says  שהברזל ממית בכל שהוא  ‘an iron instrument of any size kills’ (Sanhedrin 76b 12).

I mention this because tomorrow will mark the twenty-sixth anniversary since the bombing of AMIA - Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, in which 87 people were murdered and over 100 people injured.  The July 18^th 1994 bombing came two years after a car bomb exploded outside the Israeli Embassy in Argentina’s capital, killing 29 people and injuring 250 others, including Israeli diplomats, children, clergy from across the street and passersby.

Despite several investigations into both bombings, no one has ever been brought to justice for the murder of the victims. In 1998, Argentina expelled six Iranian diplomats from the country following an intercepted call from the Iranian Embassy in Argentina that demonstrated that Iran had been involved in the Embassy attack. But it was never determined which individuals had been responsible.

In the twenty-six years since the bombing of AMIA, there has been neglect, wanton mistreatment and abuse of the case, incriminating evidence burnt, information withheld, poor handling, charges directed against former presidents of Argentina relating to concealed evidence, abuse of authority and obstruction of justice.  The special prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, on the eve of exposing Iranian leaders who had orchestrated the attacks and names of Hezbollah operatives as well as Iran’s terror cells in South America, was found dead in his apartment.

There have been trade deals between Iran and Argentina that have included agreements to sweep the AMIA bombing under the carpet, cover-ups and abuse of power – and all this, in the words of Federal Judge, Claudio Bonadio, ‘to the detriment of justice, the victims and punishment of the accused.’

Justice for those victims has been thwarted.  It was Aleksander Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archepelago who wrote, ‘In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand-fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.’

When individuals criticise the Hebrew Bible and its idea of God as purely a God of justice in contrast to the ‘God of love’ in the New Testament, I want to say firstly, that they are wrong; that there are hundreds of references in the Hebrew Bible to a God of love, compassion, lovingkindness, patience and forgiveness. But secondly, I would want to add, yes – our God is a God of justice and you cannot have love without justice.   For injustice is repellent; injustice should cause us outrage and indignation; it should prompt us towards action that counters the abuse of power, the restrictions of freedom, dishonesty and corruption and the uneven distribution of wealth. 

How have the victims of the Embassy and AMIA bombings been vindicated?  What about their lives and the lives of the surviving families? Justice would have gone some way towards mitigating the trauma of loss or injury.  The Argentinian Jewish community was massively changed after 1994; the grief and anger are still palpable as the perpetrators elude justice.

This Shabbat – the Shabbat on which we read about the arei miklat – the cities of refuge and justice served – let us remember the victims of the bomb attacks in Buenos Aires.  Justice is vital to all societies and failure to pursue justice shatters the very foundations of the society in which we live. 

The Torah teaches firmly this lesson that we can only thrive when we live by its moral imperative to pursue justice: Tzedek, tzedek tir’dof – ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue.’

Rabbi Alexandra Wright