The ‘body in the field,’ and the silence around suicide
This week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, describes one of the strangest, most haunting rituals in all of Torah: the ceremony of the eglah arufah, the broken-necked calf (Deuteronomy 21:1–9).
The scene is stark. A body is discovered in a field. There are no witnesses, no suspects, no clues. The killer is unknown. And yet, the Torah insists: this death cannot be brushed aside as unsolvable, untraceable, or unfortunate. Instead, the elders of the nearest town must come forward. They measure the distance to determine whose responsibility it is. They bring a calf that has never been worked, lead it to a barren valley, and break its neck. The priests wash their hands and declare, “Our hands did not spill this blood, and our eyes did not see.”
It is a ritual of refusal. Refusal to ignore a body in the field. Refusal to let death go unnamed. Refusal to pretend innocence – to pretend freedom from responsibility.
The rabbis puzzle over the elders’ declaration (Mishna Sotah, 9:6). Of course the leaders did not cause the death, so why should they have to swear? They conclude: the elders’ duty was to make sure a traveler was not left to walk alone, unfed, unescorted, unseen. A body in the field is not simply a personal tragedy. It is a communal failure.
I cannot read this portion of the parsha without thinking about suicide. Like the body in the field, suicide implicates the community. It demands that we ask not only what happened to the individual, but what conditions we created, or failed to create, around them. Did something terrible happen in the past that caused irreparable harm to the person’s soul and the person was too ashamed to speak of it? Did we build a culture where vulnerability could be spoken aloud? Or did we cloak suffering in silence and stigma? Did our institutions center care, or did they look the other way?
Too often, Jewish communities respond to suicide with exactly the opposite of eglah arufah: with secrecy, avoidance, or erasure. Funerals where the cause of death is obscured. Obituaries that say “suddenly” but never “suicide.” Families left carrying not just grief but shame. Communal conversations that stall out at whispers. We think silence is a form of protection, but in reality, it leaves the next person even more alone.
As my friend, colleague and advocate Rabbi Marianne Novak notes, “a healthy brain does not plan for its own demise.” She reminded me that suicide is not the result of character or choice, rather it is the outcome of a brain that is not functioning as it should. While outside factors can worsen that dysfunction, they are not the cause of death itself. Just as with cancer or heart disease, the illness is real, and it can be fatal. Shifting the conversation in this way helps move us beyond the unanswerable question so many ask “Why did they do it?” The truth is, they didn’t “do” anything. They died of an illness.
Prevention and care
So what, then, can we do as a community? We can make mental health care accessible and normalized. We can treat deaths by suicide the way we treat other illnesses, with compassion, honesty, and support for those left grieving. We can learn from organizations like Chai Lifeline, which offers wraparound care for families facing cancer, and build parallel systems for those facing mental illness. Most importantly, we must stop philosophizing or romanticizing suicide in ways that keep us stuck. Too much energy has gone into abstract debates, while too little has gone into real research, prevention, and care. Our task is not to dress suicide in metaphor, but to confront it as illness, to support those who struggle, and to stand with those who mourn.
The Torah refuses the move toward silence. It insists that when a body is found in the field, everyone must see it. The priests, the elders, the people must all acknowledge the loss, all must wash their hands in protest, all must feel the rupture.
The eglah arufah is about moral responsibility. The calf’s death in a barren valley is a shocking act meant to sear the truth into memory: a life has been lost, and our community cannot pretend it is untouched.
What would it mean to respond to suicide in that way? To craft Jewish rituals that acknowledge the loss directly, with courage and compassion? To train our leaders, rabbis, teachers, and board chairs to recognize despair and extend care? To teach our children that mental health is not shameful but sacred, part of being fully human. To build communities where no one is left walking alone?
This section ends with a promise: “You shall remove the bloodguilt from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of God.” Doing what is right does not mean pretending innocence. It means taking responsibility for building a society where the vulnerable are cared for, where the traveler is not abandoned, where the desperate are not left alone in the field.
When someone dies by suicide, we cannot undo the loss. But we can refuse to let it disappear into silence. We can tell the truth. We can remember. And we can commit as elders, leaders, and community members to doing better.
The eglah arufah insists that even when we do not know the killer, we are not off the hook. Neither are we when suicide claims a life. The body in the field is not only theirs. It is ours.
