This parashah contains perhaps the most chilling three-word phrase in the Bible. We rarely pay much attention to this passage: in Orthodox worship, it is chanted in Hebrew and rarely discussed; in Reform and Liberal practice, where we generally do not read the entire parashah, a more uplifting set of verses like those about the “cities of refuge” is understandably preferred. But it is there in our Tanakh, part of our Torah, our sacred tradition, and we need to confront this material rather than pretend it does not exist.
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.