Acharei Mot
Scapegoating for Healing, Scapegoating for Hurting
Julia Andelman, 5762
This week, in addition to the heavy weight of the situation in Israel, another problem facing the Jewish people is very much on my mind, and this is the problem of Jewish unity, or lack thereof. On Monday I and thousands of others in New York traveled to Washington to attend the rally in support of Israel, hoping to show Israel and the world that we are with her in spirit and hoping to derive some strength and comfort for ourselves from our fellow Jews.
While most of the people I know who were there had an overwhelmingly positive experience, mine was sadly negative. I was with a group of rabbinical students and many others who were carrying "left-wing" posters in support of Israel but questioning some of Israel's policies. Anyone who knows me knows how devoted to Israel I am, and the same is true of the others with me, as evidenced by our getting up before dawn that day to go down to Washington for the rally. Unfortunately I realize now that a rally is no place for such nuanced messages as loving critique of Israel. While we were there to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters (some of whom held banners bearing messages that were morally abhorrent to me, basically implying that they would just as soon kill off 3 million Palestinians so that Israel can complacently claim its biblical inheritance) despite any internal dissent, others at the rally did not see it that way.
Throughout the day, my group and others like us elsewhere at the rally were viciously attacked, both verbally and at times even physically, by those who disagreed with us. These people did not take the time to consider the messages on our signs or to ask us what we meant by them if they seemed strange. (In fact, none of our signs said anything more radical than what left-wing parties in Israel say and what Yitzhak Rabin himself was trying to implement before he was killed.) Rather, they assumed that any and all messages critiquing Israeli governmental policy on any level were pro-Arafat, pro-terrorist, pro-Nazi statements. Some people grabbed our signs and tore them up, and physically harassed members of the press so that they couldn't talk to us. At times we were surrounded by massive crowds of people chanting "Traitors, traitors, traitors!" in our faces as we tried to drown them out by singing songs about shalom. The worst moment for me was when someone started screaming in my friend's face, "Go blow yourself up, Nazi!"
At a time when Jewish unity is needed more desperately than ever, it was so painful for me to see these Jews blindly, stupidly, and cruelly attacking us, their fellow Jews, without caring in the slightest what we really believe, and without it occurring to them for a single second that there are different ways to be Jewish and different ways to support Israel but that we can still unite over the things that we share. Rather than turning their anger against Arafat and Hamas and using the energy from that anger to push themselves to think productively about a long-term vision for getting out of this horrendous and bloody conflict, they responded only to messages of "hate, hate, hate, kill, kill, kill," directing their rage at the many victimized Palestinians who have had no part in creating this situation, and at us, their fellow Jews. Needless to say, I left the rally with a sense of deep grief and disappointment.
There is a lot of scapegoating going on the world right now. Arab nations use Israel as a scapegoat for their own internal problems. Israel uses the Palestinians as a scapegoat to avoid accepting responsibility for its own historical role in creating the current situation. And on Monday, I was reminded of how much Jews use other Jews as scapegoats in so many ways. This week we read in Parashat Aharei Mot about the original scapegoat ritual, and I would like to examine the description of this ritual to see what we can learn from it about our lives today.
VaYikra 16:5-10 and 16:20-26 describe how on Yom Kippur Aharon would take two goats (שְׂעִירִים) and, by casting lots, designate one for God and the other for "Azazel." The first goat was sacrificed on the altar as a sin offering (korban hatat). Afterwards the sa‘ir la-Azazel was brought forward and the following ritual was performed (VaYikra 16:21-22):
| Aharon shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. | וְסָמַךְ אַהֲרֹן אֶת שְּׁתֵי יָדָיו עַל רֹאשׁ הַשָּׂעִיר הַחַי וְהִתְוַדָּה עָלָיו אֶת כָּל עֲוֹנֹת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאֶת כָּל פִּשְׁעֵיהֶם לְכָל חַטֹּאתָם וְנָתַן אֹתָם עַל רֹאשׁ הַשָּׂעִיר וְשִׁלַּח בְּיַד אִישׁ עִתִּי הַמִּדְבָּרָה: וְנָשָׂא הַשָּׂעִיר עָלָיו אֶת כָּל עֲוֹנֹתָם אֶל אֶרֶץ גְּזֵרָה וְשִׁלַּח אֶת הַשָּׂעִיר בַּמִּדְבָּר: |
We also learn that both Aharon and the person whose job it was to lead the sa‘ir la-Azazel into the wilderness had to cleanse themselves and their clothing after performing this ritual.
To this day, scholars are unsure of the true meaning of Azazel. Prof. Baruch Levine explains in the JPS Torah Commentary (p. 102) that there have been three main schools of thought on the subject. The first is that Azazel is the name of a place or is a term for unnamed wilderness (like the "אֶרֶץ גְּזֵרָה" to which the goat is sent - some sort of inaccessible region hostile to human settlement). The second is that Azazel is a contraction of the Aramaic "'ez 'azal," which can be translated roughly as "the goat that went" ("אזל" is the Aramaic equivalent of "הלך"). It is this interpretation that has become dominant in tradition: the Talmud (e.g., Mishnah Yoma 6:2) refers to the sa‘ir la-Azazel as "שָעִיר הַמִּשְתַּלֵחַ"-roughly, "the sent-off goat". This interpretation is the origin for the English term "scapegoat." ("Scape" is a shortened form of "escape".) The third and most likely interpretation is that Azazel referred to some sort of demonic wilderness goat-god that existed in the ancient imagination-a belief about which there is ample historical indication. (Note that VaYikra 17:7 instructs the Israelites not to sacrifice to the se‘irim, apparently popular goat-demons to whom other peoples sacrificed.) The Ramban, in addition to several modern scholars, subscribes to this third interpretation.
When I first read these three interpretations, I felt distressed that our modern concept of the scapegoat seems to be so well-rooted in the Bible and that the interpretation favored by tradition seems to be the one which most emphasizes escapism and avoidance. But then I decided to look at the ritual more closely to try and figure out what its essence really is. It seems to me that at the core of the sa‘ir la-Azazel ritual is an act of confession. Aharon lays his hands on the animal's head and confesses "all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins." The word used for confess is "וְהִתְוַדָּה". The connotation of this word is to verbally affirm a truth.
In fact, I believe that what the Israelites did with the sa‘ir la-Azazel is the very opposite of what we do today. The ritual was meant to provide them with an opportunity to admit their sins, thereby taking responsibility for them. It is the furthest thing from having an escapist attitude towards one's own wrongdoings. If the sa‘ir la-Azazel was meant to be a projection or symbol of anyone, it was of the people sending it, not of some other party. The Israelites were confronting themselves with a physical embodiment of their own sins.
Another literary element worth noting is that the sa‘ir la-Azazel is repeatedly referred to as "הַשָּׂעִיר הַחַי"-the living goat (in contrast to the goat that was sacrificed). I believe that this repetition serves to emphasize an important point. The goat is sent out into the wilderness but is not killed. It is rather left to die a natural death. (It seems that in later times the goat was actually driven off a cliff, but this appears nowhere in the Torah's description of the ritual.) Unlike virtually all other animals employed in ancient Israelite rituals, the sa‘ir la-Azazel alone is not killed but rather remains alive after it has received the sins of the people onto itself. In essence, even though those who came into contact with the sa‘ir la-Azazel purified their clothing and bodies afterwards, the sins of the people are never fully purged or eliminated. They become removed, but the people know that those sins still exist out there in the desert somewhere, and because of this they must always be reckoned with on some level. Again, the Torah is stressing that our sins cannot be run from and cannot be fully transcended. We must take responsibility for them.
I pray that all people in conflict today learn to practice this kind of "scapegoating" rather than the more prevalent, cruel, dishonest forms. Perhaps if enough people and governments do this, we will be able to bridge our differences and work towards real solutions to conflicts. On a final note, I will briefly connect these ideas to Parashat Kedoshim, since this year, as in many years, we read both parshiyot on the same week. Parashat Kedoshim begins, "וַיְדַבֵּר יְהֹוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר: דַּבֵּר אֶל כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם:"-"God spoke to Moshe, saying: Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy" (VaYikra 19:1-2). A long list of laws on various subjects follows. The Sefat Emet wonders why this particular set of laws in the Torah, which apparently centers around the goal of achieving holiness given the introduction, must be addressed specifically to "the whole Israelite community," a phrase not generally used when Moshe is instructed to deliver laws to the people. The Sefat Emet concludes that it is only through Jewish unity that we can ever hope to achieve true holiness. May we all strive for this vision.