Listening to the leining last week, parashas Shofetim, two observations about the language struck me.

First, there is a q’ri ukesiv (a word that is written one way, but read another). Someone is killed outside of any city. The elders from the nearest city come to the site of the killing:

וְכֹ֗ל זִקְנֵי֙ הָעִ֣יר הַהִ֔וא הַקְּרֹבִ֖ים אֶל־הֶחָלָ֑ל יִרְחֲצוּ֙ אֶת־יְדֵיהֶ֔ם עַל־הָעֶגְלָ֖ה הָעֲרוּפָ֥ה בַנָּֽחַל׃
וְעָנ֖וּ וְאָמְר֑וּ יָדֵ֗ינוּ לֹ֤א (שפכה) [שָֽׁפְכוּ֙] אֶת־הַדָּ֣ם הַזֶּ֔ה וְעֵינֵ֖ינוּ לֹ֥א רָאֽוּ׃

Then all the elders of the town nearest to the chalal, the corpse shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi.
And they declare and say, “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done.

-Devarim 21:67

The written form is “shafchah“, the “shed” is written in the singular. But it is read “shafchu“, in the plural, acknowledging that multiple hands are somehow related to the shedding, if not the ones that actually committed the crime. Why is the kesiv in the singluar?

Second thing I noticed, even though it appears first, was the use of the word challal. Usually someone who was killed would be “נהרג”, using the \הרג\ (kill) root. Not here. A challal is usually a hole. Or something that lost its qedushah and became chol, secular. A spiritual hole.

It struck me that the two may be making the same point, a statement about the unity of the Jewish People.

If the city elders realize that we are all one body, each of us playing a distinct but important role, then they would feel that a when someone is senselessly killed, it leaves a hole in our nation. The person isn’t “merely” a killed person, but a chalal, something missing from that body.

Such elders would realize the same about the necessity of their political opponents. That the running of the city needs the dialectic between multiple voices. A healthy body needs different organs playing different jobs. Achdus doesn’t mean equivalence, but unity — workding together to become a single, harmonious, organism. If the internalized this, the city elders would be able to act in unison, yadeinu lo shafchah. Like the famous comment by Chazal about “vayichan sham Yisrael neged hahar — and Israel camped (in the singular) there opposite the mountain”, ready to hear the Ten Commandments. The singular is used because we united “as one person, with one heart.”

But somehow the elders’ job of curbing lawlessness in and around their city hit a failure. If they were capable of working together, such things would be far less likely. The keri vs. kesiv split forces us to pay attention to the lack of unity.

So I think the Torah is telling us that one of the messages of the Eglah Arufah is:

We are one body, only capable of surviving if we work together.