Хасидус к Бамидбар 35:26

And the Lord spoke to Moses in the steppes of Moab at the Jordan near Jericho, saying, "Command the children of Israel people to assign, out of the holdings apportioned to them, towns for the Levites to dwell in, etc. six cities of refuge... and you shall add forty-two cities": There is a need to understand why the Levites did not get an inheritance in the land of Israel besides the forty-eight cities in total and not more, and also the murderers were living there as well. Moreover, in the six cities, the murderers were living there for free and would not pay rent to them. And even in the forty-two cities, the murderers could live there, and why were the murderers only protected in the Levite cities and not in the cities of the other twelve tribes? And there is also a need to understand Scripture's statement that he must dwell there until the high priest's death. Why did it make his return dependent upon the death of the high priest? True, the Sages, may their memory be blessed, have already explained that, but there are yet more of God's words [about it]. And the matter is that when a person does a sin inadvertently, and especially when it is a severe sin like murder — even though he did it unintentionally, the blemish is nevertheless very great; the thing only came to the person because he did sins earlier without thinking about repenting for them. Hence one sin leads to another [alluding to Pirkei Avot 4:2] until this great sin, meaning murder, came to him. And it is like our Rabbis, may their memory be blessed, explained in Makkot (10b) about the verse, but God caused it to come to his hand(Exodus 21:13), As the ancient parable says, "From the wicked comes forth wickedness" (I Samuel 24:13). And behold, even though a person wants to repent from this great sin, it is impossible for him to repent properly, since he does not remember the sins that preceded it which brought him to this sin. Moreover, not all repentance is the same, such that not every person merits to repent fully from the depths of the heart and come to an elevated repentance. So the remedy for this is that he attaches himself to one of the righteous people of the generation, who are the true penitents and repent every instant, as is well-known. And I likewise heard from our master, our teacher, our rabbi, the rabbi, holy light, man of God, my teacher Rabbi Elimelekh, may the memory of the righteous and of the holy be a blessing, that he said that he would repent about the sin of his youthful days and also for what he sinned when he was in his mother's stomach and gave her pain at that time. And so is the way of the holy righteous who are on the earth [alluding to Psalms 16:3], who pine day and night about repentance and teach those in their company how to repent and the different paths and approaches to the gates of repentance. So when someone who has sins decides to connect to them, he makes an a fortiori argument [kal vechomer] about himself. If those who are holy from their youth do this, repenting for a light sin they have, all the more so, someone whose sins have grown and gone above his head. In this way, he will remember all of his sins at all times and repent about them from the depths of the heart, and the righteous ones will teach him about the paths of repentance and the rectifications. And behold, it is well known that the root of the Levites is from the traits of power, and the source of their source is from Understanding [Binah], where the fifty gates of repentance are found. And they are the true penitents, such that they enter through their root, which are the fifty gates of repentance. And behold, it is stated: If the anointed priest should sin for the guilt of the people (Leviticus 4:3). Its explanation is that the coming of an inadvertent sin to a high priest, even though he is not fit for such a deed — since no wrong befalls the righteous [alluding to Proverbs 12:21] — it is because the generation needs rectification, and they do not know how to properly repent. Hence this inadvertent sin comes to him in order that all the repentance of all of the Jewish people can be elevated by his repentance. And this is [the meaning of] If the anointed priest should sin for the guilt of the people. The explanation is that it is to rectify the guilt of the people through this. And that is why the inadvertent murderer must flee specifically to the Levites. For they are the true penitents and walk among the fifty gates of repentance. So when the inadvertent murderer comes to them, his heart will be bitter and he will regret his sin with a broken heart at all times and at every instant. And, through this, he will come to elevated repentance from the depths of the heart. So therefore if the murderer goes outside of the border of his refuge city, etc. he has no bloodguilt (Numbers 35:26-27). For since he went out of the city of his refuge, which is the city of the Levites, we see that he does not yet want to repent completely. For were it not so, he would not have budged from the Levites, even for an instant, out of the fear of his evil impulse, that it spoil his repentance. But from his exiting from his [city of] refuge, it appears that he only exiled himself out of fear from the blood avenger, that he does not kill him. And hence, if the blood avenger murders him, he is exempt [from punishment]. It is also because of this reason that he needs to dwell in the city of refuge until the death of the high priest. As it is unavoidable that the high priest will do some inadvertent sin sometime during his life, such that through his repentance, the repentance of all of the children of Israel will be elevated. So there will then be a rectification for this murderer as well, that his repentance should be elevated with the repentance of the high priest. Therefore, he should dwell [there] until the death of the high priest. For all the time that he is alive, there is a concern that no sin has yet come to the high priest, even inadvertently, such that the repentance of this murderer was still not accepted until the death of the high priest. As it is then unavoidable [that it has been accepted] from one of two angles: Either an inadvertent sin already came to the priest, the repentance of whom has elevated the repentance of the children of Israel, including the repentance of the murderer. But [even] if no sin happened to him his whole life, even inadvertently, this is certainly a sign that the repentance of the generation was accepted, along with the repentance of the murderer, such that they did not need that wrong befall the high priest. So because of this, the murderer returns to his land-holding with the death of the high priest, as mentioned above.