At the end of this week’s reading, the Torah prescribes an unusual procedure if a dead person is found out of town. They measure to determine which neighboring city or town is the closest to the corpse. The elders of that town bring a heifer, a calf which has never worked, and break its neck there in an uncultivated valley. They wash their hands over it and say, “our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see him” [Deut. 21:7].
Rashi asks an obvious question: does anyone imagine that the elders of the rabbinic court are murderers? How can the verse demand that they deny having shed his blood?
Rashi explains that they are saying they did not see him and let him leave town without food for the way and without escort. They taught the people of their town to show a visitor appropriate hospitality and strengthen him for his journey, rather than letting him leave hungry and weak.
This unusual command teaches us to go beyond letting people fend for themselves. We have a responsibility to our fellow to help them, as we would hope they would help us were the situation reversed. If that’s true even for a stranger passing through town, how much more so for our neighbors and family!
And, also, it teaches us that culture makes a difference. Again, no one is suspecting that the elders of the town’s court personally saw the stranger passing through, much less failed to show him hospitality. The Torah is telling us that if people in that town would let something like that happen, it means the elders were not doing their job!
In the Chapters of the Fathers we are told to find good friends and good neighbors, and to avoid evil neighbors. This is part of the same concept found here in the reading—because friends and neighbors form the surrounding culture, and culture matters. May we always strive to find good influences, and to be a good influence on others!
