cities of refuge
sanctuary
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I know that I've promised you a second post after the women and witchcraft piece, and Part Two on some of Jewish women's traditional modes of spirituality and ritual is coming! But given some of the changes in the news recently, this felt like it needed to go from a Thursday House of Study post to a more expanded everybody essay.
Today we're going to talk about yet another biblical concept that feels all too relevant in these days of suffering:
Sanctuary cities.
That is, the Torah tells us that if a person commits accidental manslaughter, they may be allowed to claim refuge in one of a few specific cities.
They didn't mean to murder the personā listen, mistakes happenā but the family of that person might be very angry and desire blood vengeance nonetheless.
The Torah recognizes that someone who didn't cause harm with malign intent deserves to be protected from such an assault, and sets up a failsafe for them, as described in Numbers and now here, in Deuteronomy:
You shall set aside three cities in the land... You shall divide the territory of the country that God your God has allotted to you into three parts so that any manslayer may have a place to flee to...
Now this is the case of the manslayer who may flee there and live: one who has slain another unwittingly, without having been an enemy in the past. For instance, a person goes with another into a grove to cut wood; as their hand swings the ax to cut down a tree, the ax-head flies off the handle and strikes the other so that they die. That person shall flee to one of these cities and live.ā
Otherwise, when the distance is great, the blood-avenger, pursuing the manslayer in hot anger, may overtake them and strike them down; yet they did not incur the death penalty, since he had never been the otherās enemy.
That is why I command you: set aside three cities.ā¦if you faithfully observe all this that I enjoin upon you ā¦then you shall add three more towns to those three.
Thus blood of the innocent will not be shed, bringing bloodguilt upon you in the land...If, however, [for instance,] a person who is the enemy of another lies in wait for them and sets upon him and strikes a fatal blow and then flees to one of these towns, the elders of that town shall have them brought back from there and shall hand that person over to the blood-avenger to be put to deathā¦ (Deuteronomy 19:1-12, abridged)
If you accidentally kill someone, you can come and be protected in one of the officially designated cities so someone bent on revenge doesn't come get you, but if you actually do a murder and try to use our cities to hideā well, we sure won't be protecting you, that's for sure.
Though this passage does not name the cities, elsewhere in Deuteronomy and the Books of Joshua do. There are initially three, and then up to six and possibly nine cities once their manifaux destiny kicks in (remember, there was very most likely no actual historical conquest of the Holy Land).
Many ancient near eastern cultures subscribed to the notion that one would be safe around or near their deity's turf ā by the altar or in a similar holy space. (See also the double-meaning of the word, "sanctuary," ā which comes from the Christian understanding that one might be safe from the law if within a church, in use by the mid-14th c.)
Remember how, with Deuteronomy, the Temple became centralized and all these local "high places" became obsolete, and the priests working them were put out of work? Well, two things. First of all, the local priests were turned into landless Levites, with special cities set aside for them to live in. And second of all, some scholars suggest that, before the centralization, folks may have gone to these high places for refugeā so now, without them, people still needed safe regional spaces. Go figure: These sanctuary cities were all Levitical towns.
The bottom line is this:
The sanctuary cities existed to protect someone who had not had malicious intent from the threat, and possible reality, of communal violence.
The Rabbis took this concept and engaged in their textual activism, expanding the range of what was possible through midrash and other means. They do things like turning those nine cities into as many as, potentially, forty-eight (which Maimonides holds by.)
They work out some of the logistics:
If an unintentional murderer, exiled to a city of refuge, unintentionally killed a person in the same city, that person is exiled from that neighborhood where they resided to another neighborhood within that city. And a Levite who is a permanent resident of a city of refuge and unintentionally killed a person is exiled from that city to another city. (Mishnah Makkot 2:7)
They provide the person fleeing with protection:
And the court would provide the unintentional murderers fleeing to a city of refuge with two Torah scholars, due to the concern that perhaps the blood redeemer, i.e., a relative of the murder victim seeking to avenge his death, will seek to kill the person in transit, and in that case they, the scholars, will talk to the blood redeemer and dissuade him from killing the unintentional murderer. (Talmud Makkot 9b)
Most importantly, the Mishnah regards these cities as a sort of a holding space for everyone who has killed, in order to ensure that due process takes place:
Rabbi Yosei bar Yehuda says: Initially, either one who killed another unintentionally or one who killed another intentionally would hurry and flee to the cities of refuge, and the court in that person's city would send for them and would bring them from there to stand trial. For one who was found guilty and obligated to receive the death penalty in court for intentional murder, the court would execute them, and for one who was not found obligated to receive the death penalty, e.g., if they deemed that the death occurred due to circumstances beyond their control, they would free that person. For one who was found obligated to be exiled, [aka who committed involuntary manslaughter] the court would restore them to their place in the city of refuge where they can be safe. (Mishnah Makkot 2:6)
The Torah delineated two basic categories: If you meant to kill someone, you'd wind up getting the death penalty.* Or you didn't mean to, you go to the city of refuge.
*We'll talk more about the Rabbinic understanding of the death penalty some other timeā suffice to say, it wasn't handled with the carelessness and racism that we see in the U.S. now, and might have been an entirely theoretical exercise for them.The Rabbis articulated the difference between gross negligence- cases wherein you should have been more careful, and bore some responsibility for the death of the other personā and cases in which you were doing your job just fine and something went totally awry, out of your control. Wild accidents. "Acts of God," if you will.
According to this mishnah, above, everyone goes to the sanctuary city initially. If you're found guilty of murder, you're executed. If you're found guilty of what we might call gross negligence, you get sent back to the sanctuary city. If the court concludes that the person's death was actually totally beyond your control, you get to go home.
In Rabbinic Judaism, intention matters.
L to R: Ximena Arias-Cristobal was brought to the US when she was four, is now a college student in Georgia, was pulled over on a routine traffic stop. Yolanda Perez was taken by ICE as "collateral" when they were seeking her son. She is the primary caregiver to her daughter with cancer. (Her son has a few minor charges for drug possession -- not dealing, not trafficking, just having on his person.) Jeanette Vizguerra, a 53 year-old grandmother with four American children, works at Target, fled violence in Mexico City in 1997, and was arrested as retaliation, as she is an immigrant rights activist and SIEU organizer. She has repeatedly been granted stays by the system-- no lawful removal order exists-- and sought sanctuary in a Colorado church for a time before her capture by ICE. Some of these cases have been resolved simply because they hit the news and public pressure mounted. But they exemplify so many of the other cases that haven't hit the news, the stories that we haven't heard, because there are too many. There are too many.
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Of course, the idea of sanctuary cities today are differentā and not.
The people seeking sanctuary today are, like the people in the Torah, those who have not done anything so grave that they would merit the punishment that those who pursue them are attempting.
They are people who did not mean to cause harm. They are people who did not wish ill for anyone. And yet, those who pursue them would see them suffer without due process, and quite possibly have their blood spilled.
I'm speaking, of course, of those running from the gaping maws of ICEā which now bears all the characteristics of a secret police forceā and, with its new budget increase of $100 billion āis now bigger than most worlds' militaries. ICE is now the 16th largest military budget in the world. ICE's budget is bigger than Israel's, Italy's, and Brazil's military budget.
ICE is "disappearing" people. They're being taken from courthouses, citizenship appointments, churches, graduations, restaurants, Home Depots, farms, and other workplacesā often without warrants or probable cause, let alone due process or basic human rights. They're holding a record 57,861 human beings in custody, and the monstrous Stephen Miller has demanded that they take 3,000 people a day. According to data from TRAC, over 71% of those being held have no criminal record at all.
This is to say nothing of the horrors endured once in detention, or the concentration camps being opened by the State. (Click the links there if you have any uncertainty about what happens.)
Never again is now, friends.
Right. Now.
This is what it looks like when people get taken away and they may never come back. This is what it looks like when the State disappears people. This is what it looks like when the State targets people based on their race and ethnicity to be taken away. This. Here. Now. This.
What are you going to do about it?
L: Masked and unmasked white men in CBP vests forcibly take a struggling Brown woman by the arms. R: White men in POLICE ICE vests look as a young Brown woman and young Brown man walk past them with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Center: Six Brown children lined up in an institutional setting; it says ICE painted on one of the counters behind them.
ICE's (or Trump's) vendetta of vengeance may not always be personal to the person they're going after*, but the dynamic of people running from violenceā despite meaning no harm and trying only to do their best by all involved feels... familiar.
*In many cases. Though there are many others-- like Mahmoud Khalil's, Mohsen Mahdawi's, and RĆ¼meysa ĆztĆ¼rk's among others, that were very personal indeed-- that is, in which they were targeted for their political articulations, even though "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech."Em Fishman observes,
There are a lot of people who talk about how "MY ANCESTOR CAME HERE THE RIGHT WAY," as though that means that anyone else should be, well, doomed to the death penalty (or something not far off from it.) Andā sure. That immigration process was available to your ancestor at that time.* But now that kind of process does not exist in the same way. The people who are being hunted now did not come into this country with nefarious intentionsā whether or not they fit the official definition of an asylum case. We need to let people be able to live in safety, and under protection.*Those ancestors probably got in before the Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the explicitly racist Asian Exclusion Act, which was the big tightening of U.S. immigration overall. According to the Department of State, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity." Yep. It also authorized the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Vera, an organization fighting mass incarceration, describes contemporary sanctuary cities as
jurisdictions that prioritize the safety and well-being of all residents by limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities, allowing limited local resources to be used to support local community members.
Twelve states and many cities/counties have self-designated as sanctuary spaces, often with ordinances and other formal policies. You can find a fairly updated list here. In a devastating, horrific blow, a federal judge ruled in April that ICE can raid houses of worship.
This doesn't, of course, mitigate our ethical obligations to try to save every life that we can, to hide every person that we are able to hide.
Sanctuary spaces to protect innocent human beings from the horrors of ICE are a moral imperative.
And, even now, even as the terrors rise around us, our cities of refuge can remind us of the world that we are striving to build.
As Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg wrote,
With the command to construct [sanctuary cities], the Israelites receive a profound challenge: create new possibilities for yourselves, outside the context of violence and revenge. Itās a commandment to make manifest new possibilities so that those most persecuted can live with dignity. Itās a manifestation of the unwillingness to live as though only some in society were deserving of rights and respect.
Our vision of justice must include everyone.
The command to make cities of refuge can be read as the command to transform the rhythms and expectations of our society.
To hard-wire within the very design of our society an alternative to the whiplash cycle of persecution and cruelty.
There's a classical midrash that looks at the end of this Deuteronomy passage, the verse about intentional murder, and learns from it that someone who is able to start walking down the path of hate will ultimately arrive at dehumanization and all that it brings:
"If a person hates their neighbor, and lies in wait for that person, and rise up against them" (Deuteronomy 19:11)
From here [the Rabbis] taught: If a person violates a "light" mitzvah, in the end they will violate a grave one:
If they violated
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself," (Leviticus 19:18)
they are destined to violate "You shall not hate," (Leviticus 19:17)
"You shall not take revenge," (Leviticus 19:18)
"You shall not bear a grudge," (Leviticus 19:18) and, in the end,
"and your sibling shall live with you" (Leviticus 25:36)
until they arrive at the spilling of blood.
(Midrash Sifrei Deuteronomy 186:2)
Implicit in this, the Rabbis suggest, is the importance in beginning at the beginning.
We cannot ever violate "love your neighbor as yourself."
That's already a hard line that we must never cross.
That's the beginning of everything, and the starting point of all we must do.
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Know Your Rights:
You have constitutional rights!
- DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR if an immigration agent is knocking on the door.
- DO NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS from an immigration agent if they try to talk to you. You have the right to remain silent.
- DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING without speaking to a lawyer first. You have the right to speak with a lawyer.
- If you are outside of your home, ask the agent if you are free to leave. If they say yes, leave.
- GIVE THIS TEXT TO THE AGENT. If you are inside of your home, show the text through the window or slide a card with this text under the door:
I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights.
Many thanks to the wonderful Parker Weinstein for the research layup, here.