Re’eh: Between the Paralympics and Beit HaMikdash 

Even as I write these words, in Paris, athletes from around the world have gathered for the 2024 Paralympics, a place where people with disabilities, missing limbs and severe health challenges are able to compete athletically on a very high level like many great inventions, the Paralympics came in to the world thanks to a Jewish idea. Dr. Ludwig Guttman was Germany’s highest neurosurgeon who had to flee to England in 1939 due to antisemitic persecution. In the UK, Gutman was put in charge of a rehabilitation facility in Stoke Menville, where he got people who were bed-bound to begin exercising, competing, and playing. The word about these games spread, and more and more people wanted to compete until it became the Paralympics we know today. Guttman has changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who realized that disability is not the end of their lives. 

Was this Guttman’s original life plan? No. It came about when Guttman was in exile, on the road, away from his native Germany. Being the most famous neurosurgeon in Germany, Gutman probably did not envision himself heading a rehabilitation center, but he made the most of it, and that changed everything. His choices on his life’s road made his legacy so powerful. 

In this week’s Parsha, we are taught of another road. The Torah commands us to ascend to Jerusalem three times a year. Rabbi Norman Lamm contrasts the commandment to pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year–on Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot—with the commandment to build cities of refuge for those who kill someone accidentally. 

“Prepare the road for yourself and divide into three parts the boundary of your land, which the Lord, your God, is giving you as an inheritance, and it will be for every killer to flee there.” (Dvarim 19) Rashi comments that this verse obliges the Jewish people to prepare signs on the road so that a murderer who killed someone by accident can avoid the wrath of the family whose loved one was killed and make sure the city is easy to find. Signs along the road to the city of refuge must say: “Refuge! Refuge!”

Rabbi Lamm wonders why it is that when it comes to a murderer–albeit someone whose killing was done by accident–a smooth path is made with clear signs showing him where to go, yet when it comes to a person making the meaningful pilgrimage to Jerusalem, we do not make any efforts to smoothen their path to Jerusalem: no signs, no support team, and no directions given. We just expect them to somehow get over Jerusalem. Why are we doing more for a murderer than we are doing for someone making a holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem?

Rabbi Lamm goes on to explain that when it comes to a murderer, in addition to saving their lives, we have an interest in minimizing their contact with the broader community. Although the cities of refuge only absorb those who killed someone by accident, we do not want those people wandering from town to town; we want them in the city of refuge as fast as possible. A person making a pilgrimage, on the on the other hand, is someone we do want on the roads for longer. We want him to wander from town to town, perhaps sleeping over in the homes of strangers for a few more nights, just to share with others the excitement of his journey to the house of God. It may not be the pilgrim’s intention, but his journey to Jerusalem will imbue others with a spark of inspiration. 

Our Parsha teaches: “You shall not do as all the things that we do here this day, every man [doing] what he deems fit. For you have not yet come to the resting place or to the inheritance, which the Lord, your God, is giving you.And you shall cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord, your God, is giving you as an inheritance, and He will give you rest from all your enemies surrounding you, and you will dwell securely.” (Dvarim 12)

We live in a world where we always wonder if we “have not yet come to the resting place or to the inheritance”. Whereas in the past, people lived in the same town for generations, became Landsman, and had the same friends for decades, today it is common for people to relocate often, to go to new jobs, and to do new things often. 

We often wonder about the places we are at, how transient are they? How long will we be in them? Is this really where I will leave my life impact on? 

And yet, while there is great value in permanence, in finding the final resting place, there are also opportunities in not reaching that place yet. Before the Temple was built in Jerusalem, an individual may bring certain sacrifices in a Bama, an individual altar. 

The lesson of this week’s Parsha is that, like the pilgrimage to the Beit Hamkidash, sometimes the greatest impact we will have is during an unplanned turn on our road to holiness. Like Professor Guttman, the greatest impact we might leave might well be the one we planned for least. Let us spread those parts of kindness and holiness wherever we go.