Parashas Masei

In this week’s parashah, we are taught that if a person kills accidentally, he must go to an ir miklat, a City of Refuge, where he remains until the death of the Kohen Gadol. One reason to link the murderer’s freedom to the Kohen Gadol’s death, according the gemara (Makkos 11a, and cited by Rashi here), is that if the Kohen Gadol would have prayed adequately well, no one would have killed / been killed on “his watch.”

But the responsibility to protect others is not limited to the Kohen Gadol.

The gemara there recounts that a man was devoured by a lion about 8 miles from the home of R’ Yehoshua ben Levi. Because R’ Yehoshua’s prayers had not been adequate to protect the person from this horrible fate, Eliyahu Hanavi, who apparently regularly visited R’ Yehoshua, did not visit him for three days.

In our own times, a boy was hit by a car in front of Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem. When they ran into the Beis Midrash told the Rosh Hayeshiva, Rav Moshe Feinstein, that a Jewish boy had been hit, he replied that the boy was not Jewish.

“But Rosh Yeshivah, I just saw his yarmulka lying next to him in the street,” a man said; but Rav Moshe insisted that the boy was not a Jew.

It soon emerged that it was, in fact, a non-Jewish teenager who had been harassing a Jewish boy. The Jewish boy ran away and the teenager gave chase. The victim’s yarmulka fell off as he ran and he was afraid to stop to pick it up. The teenager was hit by the car just where the yarmulka had fallen off.

When Reb Moshe was asked how he knew that the teenager was not Jewish, he said, “I was studying Torah in the yeshivah at the time. It is inconceivable that this could have happened to a Jewish child right outside.”

The truth is, each one of us has the ability, through our tefillos and actions, to impact the fate of others and even the entire world. The gemara (Kiddushin 40a-b) tells us that each one of us, through a single action, can tip the scales.

Last Shabbos afternoon (Parashas Mattos) a girl at the Skverer girls camp came into her bunkhouse and announced that her bunkmates had to hear what some other girl had done.

One of the other girls asked if it would be lashon hara, and the girl about to retell the story paused, grappling with whether she should continue. (Of couse, one girl shouted: “Why did you have to say that before she told the story?”) Another bunkmate then piped up, “You know, my father needs a yeshuah. Maybe don’t say the story as a zechus for him.” Indeed, the girl did not tell the story.

That night, when the girl whose father was not well called home, she learned that her father had suddenly awaken from a weeks-long coma on Shabbos afternoon, just about the time the girl refrained from sharing the story. The story was told to me Wednesday night, by the father of the bunk’s counselor who was present for the exchange and when the girl shared the good news. The family agreed that the story be spread as a zechus for the father, Yehoshua by Liba Yocheved, who has a way to go before he achieves a refuah sheleimah.

The lesson is that the power we have to influence and impact others is immeasurable to us. May we be zocheh to use it properly.

Gut Shabbos.