Rabbi Dovid Schwartz
If he (the killer) did not hunt and trap to murder, but Elokim brought about involuntary-manslaughter through him, then I will lay
down a space where the killer can flee.
-Shemos 21:13
[HaShem said to Kayin] “You are more cursed than the ground … When you cultivate the soil it will no longer yield its strength to
you. You will be restless and isolated in the world.”
-Bereishis 4:11.12
Kayin responded “Is my sin then too great to forgive?”
-Ibid 4:13
Kayin left HaShems presence. He dwelled in the land of Nod (isolation) to the east of Eden.
-Ibid 4:116
We live in an era in which our lives are kinetic and
restless. In every phase of life and during all of our
waking hours, we are always on the go. Yet few people
really seem to mind. The pan-societal consensus seems
to be that whenever a person is on the move, that he is
doing so for his own good.
Some people transfer to new universities or yeshivas in
middle of their education. Others relocate to advance
their careers. Even the increasingly rare “company
man” who stays with one firm throughout his entire
career will make frequent business junkets. The travel
industry does not refer to the area between first-class
and coach as business-class for nothing.
Most ubiquitous of all is traveling for pleasure.
Staycations
are indicative of a general economic downturn
or of one’s own lack of financial success. The old
saying goes that “if you’ve got money … you can
travel” and most people who have money — do. The
rule of thumb for achieving greater social status
through travel is that the further-flung the destination,
the better the vacation.
People advance all kinds of rationalizations to validate
their wanderlust. “Travel is broadening” they will say
or they might claim “a change of scenery will do me a
world of good.” Still others associate their homes and
offices with stress and tension and, impatient for the
afterlife, their vacations as the precursors of the
ultimate reward in the world-to-come; “I’ve worked
really hard and I deserve some R&R.” Some will even
couch their constant flitting about in religious terms. "מזל משנה מקום משנה” – a change of location will result in a
change of fortune.” (cp Rosh HaShanah 16B and Talmud
Yerushalmi Shabbos 6:9).
But some latter-day nomads dispense with the
rationalizations altogether. They travel lishmah, so to
speak. They may not be able to articulate it as
eloquently, but they are in general agreement with
Robert Louis Stevenson who said “I travel not to go
anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great
affair is to move.” Perhaps it is modern man’s relentless
movement that robs him of the luxury of pausing to
ponder; why this is so? Why is the great affair to
move? What is the real subconscious compulsion, the
psycho-spiritual dynamic at work, which induces us to
travel for travel’s sake?
Rav Tzadok-the Kohen of Lublin provides an eyeopening
and astonishing answer to these questions:
Like Kayin, we are wanderers because we are
murderers. This is not to say that we are guilty of the
most flagrant and literal forms of homicide. Stabbing,
strangling, shooting or poisoning the victim is not
required. Our prophets and sages taught that there are
other sins that, while not causing the permanent
irreversible termination of life, are still iterations of
murder. We’re all familiar with the Chazal that equates inflicting
public humiliation to the point of blanching, with
murder. (Bava Metzia 58B) Chazal coined a term “the
three forked tongue” to describe sins of lashon hara–
gossipy speech, because these sins kill three people; the
speaker, the listener and the subject of the conversation.
(Arachin 15B) The prophet Yeshaya condemned another
form of non-homicidal murder when he thundered
“You that inflame yourselves among the Terebinth
trees, under every leafy tree; that slay the children in
the riverbeds, under the clefts of the rocks!” (Yeshaya
57:3 see Niddah 13A)
While those who transgress sins that do not rise to the
legal and halachic definition of homicide are not
sentenced to utterly abandon their homes and exile
themselves to a refuge city or to the camp of the Levi’im
they become unsettled, itinerant wanderers all the
same. The Lubliner Kohen goes on to say that, the
good news is, when we do begin to lay down roots in a
particular place and achieve some tranquility and
stability we can rest assured that we have been metaken [ameliorated] these homicide-like offenses.
There’s even an intermediate condition during which,
while we may be more or less fixed and established in a
particular location, we are not really happy about it.
The normal state of affairs is that of יושביו על מקום חן-
“every place is charming to its own populace.” (Sotah
47A) If, on the other hand, we do not find anything
attractive or satisfying about our homes,
neighborhoods, towns or workplaces this is
symptomatic of having repaired and been forgiven for
the deed that was in some way equivalent to murder but
that the antisocial thoughts that motivated us to act as
we did, still require tikun-repair and teshuvahatonement.
While our feet may not be itchy enough to
take the first step in a journey of 1000 miles, our minds
and spirits remain agitated, distracted and 1,000 miles
away.
In his classic work of Hashkafah, Michtav M’Eliyahu,
Rabbi Eliyahu Lazer Dessler, z”l, views the entire
contemporary human condition through the prism of
the Lubliner Kohens teaching. Writing presciently in
the mid twentieth century he points out that never
before has mankind been so murderous and, not
coincidentally, so nomadic and adrift.
Weapons of mass destruction can lay waste to entire
cities in a matter of moments. Gossip is no longer
something whispered in dark corners but a multibillion
dollar publishing industry. Slander, inaccuracies and
half truths coupled with a breakdown in civil discourse
had transformed character-assassination by means of
public humiliation into an international sport.
Unparalleled pornography, lasciviousness and loose
morals had disseminated the form of murder that the
Prophet Yeshaya decried to previously stern and
puritanical corners of the earth.
Concurrently, advances in aviation and other
technologies made modern man substantially more
mobile than his ancestors. From one end of the earth to
the other, millions of people traverse unprecedented
distances at previously unimaginable speeds. And
while these travelers may dream that all this running
about is advantageous to them or that they’re doing so
for pleasure and entertainment (בידור in Hebrew is entertainment which is synonymous with a deep-seated disquiet, distraction
and scattering of the soul-פיזור הנפש) they are, in
fact, just living through the curse of Kayin, humanities
first murderer. Despite all of the giant leaps forward in
technology man has never felt so rootless, anxious and
insecure.
Imagine how much sharper Rav Dessler’s critique of
modern man and how vindicated his linkage of highspeed,
easily accessible travel with WMDs, the venality
and universality of gossip and humiliation would be,
were he writing today.
Virtue is always its own reward. So we already had
ample incentives to avoid doing the many sins that our
tradition teaches are equivalent to murder. But if we
needed an ulterior motive the Lubliner Kohen, has
provided us with one. As the Torah is eternal HaShem
“lays down a space where the killer can flee” and be
free of the curse of Kayin in every generation.
Refraining from lashon hara, publicly humiliating
others, withholding wages et al seem a small price to
pay to achieve a sense of a rootedness, connectedness
and tranquility via entry to the sanctuary surrounded
by invisible walls of Torah and teshuvah — the space
that HaShem has laid down.
