Torah Study Blog

One of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not kill.” However, our Bible is filled with stories of warfare slaughters and the triumphant warriors are not considered sinners. A better translation might be, “Thou shalt not murder.”

In America today, it would be ill-advised for people to take the law into their own hands. But in biblical times it was understood that, if someone in your family was murdered, it was expected that someone in your family will track down the murderer and kill him. The person charged with tracking and killing the murderer is called the blood avenger. The details of the blood avenger are not expanded upon in the Bible, but the traditions regarding the role of the blood avenger are mentioned enough times that scholars agree that the custom was an accepted norm. A family had a right, even an obligation, to seek revenge.

The idea of an innocent person being senselessly murdered is anathema in the Bible, as can be seen from the early chapters. When Cain kills his brother Abel, just the second generation of people on Earth according to the Bible, God says to Cain, “your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground! Therefore, you shall be more cursed than the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. If you till the soil, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. You shall become a ceaseless wanderer on earth” (Genesis 4:10-12).

To the people of the agrarian society of Israelites, the threat of the ground being cursed and not being able to grow crops meant the serious threat of famine – and death for the community.

In fact, this threat was used in 2 Samuel 21. The story is that King Saul was overzealous in a military campaign and, wrongfully, wiped out a community of people called Gibeonites. The story goes on to say that, years later, there was a famine in Israel and God told King David, the successor to King Saul, that it was because of this wrongful death that the land was cursed and would not yield crops. David allowed the Gibeonites to take the role of blood avenger and to kill seven of Saul’s sons in retribution. Maybe,

as the story goes, it was only done so that God could respond “to the plea of the land” (2 Samuel 21:14). But, Rabbi Jaech also pointed out that perhaps David staged this story so that he could execute any contenders to the throne.

But what happens when you do not know who committed the murder? God would be angry because innocent blood has been split on his land. How can the community make it right again?

According to Deuteronomy 21, the elders of the community will gather to bring a heifer, or a baby girl cow, to a remote location near a running stream and, there, sacrifice it to God, while saying, “Our hand did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done” (Deuteronomy 21:7).

While PETA would object to this sacrifice of an innocent heifer, we should remember that our ancient ancestors were shepherds and they had flocks that could be used for sacrifice. In biblical times, sacrifice was how you worshipped God.

The medieval rabbi Rashi agreed that no one would have thought the elders committed the murder. But the elders have the responsibility to protect the community. Part of the ritual of the elders is to make the sacrifice to God and also to verbalize their innocence. The medieval rabbi Maimonides pointed out that by going through this process, people would start to talk and maybe the actual murderer would be found out.

More recently, Brandeis University professor David P. Wright pointed out that sacrificing the heifer at a remote location is a way of transferring the bloodguilt away from the community. And keeping the community safe is of the utmost importance.

Rabbi Jaech was struck by a study by University of Pennsylvania professor (retired) Jeff Tigay who pointed out that the elements we undertake today during the High Holiday ceremonies are surprisingly similar to the ceremony the elders undertook to purge bloodguilt. The elders would have asked for forgiveness for the community and confessed that, while they are not completely without sin in all things, they did not commit this murder. Then the heifer is sacrificed by the running stream to wash away sin.

During the High Holiday service we pray to God and ask for forgiveness. We confess, as a community, to something that we personally might not have done, but wrongs that have been done. And in our own Reform community we go to the river and toss bread in as a way to wash away our sins. Our community does not sacrifice an animal, but there are some orthodox communities where, during the High Holidays, a hen is swung over the head while the person holding the hen says, “A life for a life, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This hen shall go to death, but I will go to a long life of peace.” Then the hen is killed.

As a final note, Rabbi Jaech pointed out that the act of sacrifice to remove sins is central to Christian worship.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter