Atonement should not be reserved for just one day a year. As an apt reminder of that - today’s day of atonement meets today’s chapter in the Book of Words which actually highlights the concept and the word ‘atonement’ - ‘Kapara’. The blood stains trailing through this week’s chapters lead to today’s atonement ritual - and yet another lesser known ritual of atonement: The Breaking of the Cow’s Neck.
What happens when an anonymous corpse is found between two jurisdiction areas? What is the people’s responsibility to the shed blood of nameless,unknown strangers?
There is already legal precedent for this, from prior Semitic sources. The Hittite laws, pre-Moses, describe the consequences of murder by an unknown person in a terriorty where the killed person is a stranger. The heirs of the victim get to claim a set amount of land as compensation. If the murder happenes in a no-man’s-land there is no such reparation option.
Moses offers a different outcome. While the Hittite law, similar to other local systems, demands fiscal retribution for spilled blood in this situation - this chapter prescribes a peculiar ritual response.
The elders of the closest town to the crime scene gather by a nearby river where water flows. They bring a heifer and then break its neck or possibly behead it. This is not a sacrifice - but a ceremonial killing. The elders than wash their hands in the river and recite these words:
“The elders shall then make this declaration: “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done.
Absolve, Adonai, Your people Israel whom You redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel.” And they will be absolved of bloodguilt.”
There are a lot of odd details about this stand alone, intriguing readers for generations. At its core it seems to respond to the ancient, primal assertion that innocent blood that was shed on one’s land is left unavenged, it brings a curse on the land and its dwellers. The only thing that can atone for this spilled blood -- is blood. What stands out most here, in context of today, is the responsible role of the elders for any violence done in proximity to their town.
“The ritual of the broken-necked heifer offers unequivocal evidence for the belief that the community is collectively responsible for homicides committed in its midst. As long as the mandated retribution has not been carried out, the entire society lives under the imminent threat of a collective divine retribution. The extent of this anxiety is revealed here, in Deuteronomy 21, addressing a case in which the community is powerless to carry out the necessary punishment.
The heifer ritual could be viewed as creating a virtual reality, whose purpose was to alter the circumstances in actual reality. In asserting the virtuality of ritual, the ritual theorist Bruce Kapferer contrasted the chaotic, uncontrolled aspect of everyday life with the ability for ritual to achieve a “slowing down of the tempo of ordinary life and a holding in abeyance or suspension some of the vital qualities of lived reality …thus allowing the dynamics of reality formation to be entered within and re-tuned, readjusted.” Put simply, ritual provides the possibility for a ‘time-out’ in reality, enabling the participants to readjust its inner workings.
In the case of the broken-necked heifer, the elders’ denial of culpability for “this blood” deliberately employs a double reference, linking the ritual reenactment with its real-world counterpart. This reenactment of the killing serves to retroactively erase the blood-guilt of the original murder. Viewed in this light, this ostensibly bizarre ritual turns out to be surprisingly coherent: a virtual solution to a very real problem.”
This Yom Kippur, it’s meaningful to keep on our minds and in our hearts that atonement for the crimes committed in our name or in our vicinity is part of what it means to be responsible for injustice all year long. Despite our best intentions - are any of our hands clean? We are reminded to keep on seeking, as much as possible, better balance between what we know and what we ought to change, with the hopes of a less violent and kinder world.
What would this ritual look like these days - cow-blood-free??
G’mar Chatima Tova.
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What comes to mind is reparation. I did not live on a log cabin in PA on land where the Lenape forced to leave. But I do live in a farmhouse on the very spot where Lenape would fish, forage and hunt. I walk in their footsteps.
What comes to mind is reparation. I did not live on a log cabin in PA on land where the Lenape forced to leave. But I do live in a farmhouse on the very spot where Lenape would fish, forage and hunt. I walk in their footsteps.