Yom Kippur, 5766, Josh Gressel
Yom Kippur Drash
October 13, 2005 / 10 Tishrei 5766
Josh Gressel
Jacob Milgrom likens the Temple sanctuary, the kodesh hakodeshim, to the Portrait of Dorian Grey. The sins the people commit throughout the year, which may appear to have no overt consequence, are registered as spiritual pollution within the sanctuary. If this pollution is not periodically removed, eventually God can no longer dwell there. Therefore, while the people may think their sins or their silent acquiescence to other people’s sins have no consequence, left unchecked they will lead to the community being cut off from its access to God. Something must be done. That something was the scapegoat ritual, performed once each year on Yom Kippur.
This morning’s reading in Leviticus is devoted to the purification of the ohel moed, the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness. This afternoon’s Avodah service is a description of how the same ritual was conducted in the Temple sanctuary in Jerusalem. The text of the afternoon service, while it comes from the Talmud and contains some minor differences, is still based on this Levitical teaching. Why are we devoting our most sacred day of the year to reading so much about this strange scapegoat ritual? What does this 3,000- year-old purification rite have to say to us in 2005?
To answer that, I first want to review the Leviticus ritual and then turn our attention to how this might apply to us today.
In Leviticus 16, three animals are used in the purification process. The first is a bull, which is sacrificed as a burnt offering by Aaron on behalf of himself and his family. After the sacrifice of the bull, there are two goats which are to be used on behalf of the people. Lots are drawn so that it will be God’s choice as to which goat will be sacrificed and which sent to the wilderness. That which is “leadonai” is sacrificed in the same manner as the bull, but rather than being for Aaron and his family it is for the iniquities of Israel. This goat’s blood is sprinkled in a ritualistic manner throughout the sanctuary, to purge it of the pollution caused by the people’s sins.
When this pollution is freed from the sanctuary by the blood of the goat sacrifice, it must be disposed of. This happens when Aaron places both hands on the head of the second goat, the sair leAzalzel, transferring onto it the pollution from the sanctuary and sending it off into the wilderness.
This notion of placing sin upon the head of an innocent one in order to get rid of it is the origin of the “scapegoat” concept. There are different theories as to how the English word developed. One is that it is a shortened form of “escape goat.” The thinking is that the early translators believed “Azalzel” stood for “Ez” “azal” – the goat that got away. This would require some poetic license since the Hebrew word used for goat in this ritual is “sair” and not “ez.”
In midrashic literature the most accepted understanding of Azalzel is that he was a demon god of nearby tribes. He was used in this ritual to signify a place to which impurities and sins were sent off, somewhat like our sanitary landfill. Each week the garbage we want to “throw out” is placed on the curb in front of our house and it is taken “away.” Do any of us really stop to think of what it really means for something to be thrown “out” or “away?” We just have a vague notion that it’s removed to someplace else, and we feel cleaner when it’s gone.
Like many other Torah rituals which out of context seem strange, there is ample evidence of similar practices in neighboring peoples at the time this was written. So that in its day this rite was no more unusual than an 8-track tape was in the ‘70s or the telegraph was in the 19th century. Yet as with other practices taken from neighboring pagan tribes, the Torah adopts this one into a monotheistic framework, rendering it the same but quite different.
In the neighboring pagan worldview, there were multiple deities which interrelated with each other and were under some meta-divine realm. Some deities were benevolent and some, such as Azalzel, were malevolent. Human beings who tapped into this realm could attempt to coerce the gods to do their will through sacrifices.
The monotheistic world of the Torah posits the existence of one supreme God. There is no need to attempt to appease demons such as Azalzel, because there are no demons. The only one with “demonic” power is the human being. Endowed with free will, the human can not only defy God, but, Milgrom writes, “Humans can drive God out of the sanctuary by polluting it with their moral and ritual sins. All that the priests can do is periodically purge the sanctuary of its impurities and influence the people to atone for their wrongs.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are here to do today on Yom Kippur. It will look different here in Haver Hall in 2005, but the process we need to undergo is still very connected to the 3000-year-old rite we just read about. We need to purify our sanctuary. We need to ask God for forgiveness for our sins against God. We need to ask forgiveness from people we’ve harmed.
Since our Temple was destroyed and we can no longer offer sacrifices, our prayer services take the place of the actual sacrifice. So we have this base covered through our reading from the Torah today. I don’t think this is a perfunctory notion but something very real. I think that the act of individual and communal prayer in a sanctuary really does purify the energy of the place, and you can feel this in any house of worship you walk into.
The second thing we need to do is ask God for forgiveness. If we say the vidui with kavanna – ashamni, bagadnu, gazlnu, dibarnu dofi – by the end of the na’ila I think we have this base covered too. It is the third part, our need to ask for forgiveness from each other, on which I want to focus my remaining remarks.
We all like to believe that overall we’re pretty good people and if everyone were like us, then the world would be a better place. In a recent survey of drivers, 95% rated themselves as good drivers while saying at least 50% of the other drivers on the road were bad drivers. What is this tendency to see the problem as all out there, rather than also within ourselves? Isn’t this a little like placing our hands on a goat and sending our bad stuff off into Azalzel?
I only wish we were as good about owning our stuff as the Israelites were in this scapegoat ritual. Because the sair leAzalzel in Leviticus really is not a scapegoat in the way we use the term today. There was no pretense by the High Priest or the Israelite nation that it was evil. There was no blaming this poor goat for a drought or unemployment. The Israelites recognized and took responsibility that it was their sins they were asking the goat to take away. They were quite aware that it was an innocent victim they were using to bear away their sins.
Today, when we talk about scapegoating, we mean blaming someone else – often someone weaker than ourselves – for something we can’t consciously stand in ourselves. I don’t think a politically aware Berkeley congregation needs a drash from me to appreciate how we place the darkness we cannot tolerate in our society onto the shoulders of a marginalized few, making them the scapegoats of society’s problems. The poor, people of color, the mentally ill, immigrants, women, gays, and dare I say it, even the very rich – all have their turn at carrying our sins into Azalzel. This is familiar territory, as is the way nations do it through ethnic cleansing of a religious minority within their borders, such as the Germans did to the Jews, or the Hutus to the Tutsis, or the Turks to the Armenians.
As I’ve thought about scapegoating over these past months, I realized it doesn’t mean only lynching and ethnic cleansing or looking down at some minority. If we think about it in only these ways, we let ourselves off the hook a little too easily. I want to propose that scapegoating happens any time we don’t take responsibility for our own darkness. By darkness I mean not only our aggression and meanness. I mean also our anxiety, our depression, our narcissism, our fragility, our unconsciousness – in short, all that makes us the imperfect humans we are.
Let me give some examples to illustrate what I’m talking about. I’m going to purposely choose minor things that are pretty every day and subtle because as I said, most of us don’t have to confess that we burned a cross on our neighbor’s lawn.
Many years ago, when TWA was still in business, our family was traveling to Israel. You all know the mob scene at the gate when 400+ Israelis and American Jews are acting like if they don’t shove each other their reserved seat on board might somehow disappear. The TWA agent, her hair perfectly coiffed and her nails beautifully manicured, picked up the mike and hissed: “You people need to sit down until you’re called.” She rebuffed any of the Israelis who approached her, wanting to know when the plane would depart. I then approached her in my perfect American English and perfect American manners and asked nearly an identical question to the rebuffed Israeli before me. Her demeanor changed completely and she politely answered my question, visibly relieved to be speaking with “one of her own.”
Was this woman evil? No. Was she anti-Semitic? Maybe. What happened in this scene? I can’t say for sure what happened to her. I do know the New York/Tel Aviv route had a terrible reputation amongst the TWA flight crews. I do know there was a lot of tension in the gate area and she, because of her uniform and position, needed somehow to contend with it. I suspect that it was just too much for her to hold, so she had to expel it through the path of least resistance – hostility toward the “other,” the place where Azalzel resides, some place just over the horizon of the familiar.
Fast forward to July 2005 and our family is again traveling to Israel, though this time aboard El Al. It is again a mob scene; the passengers are again crowding the gate as if they might otherwise be left behind. An El Al agent gets on the mike and says in a friendly tone: “Chevre tiragu, anachnu nikre lechem sheze zman la’alot.” “Hey folks, relax, we’ll let you know when it’s time to get aboard.” What I noticed, not just at this juncture but throughout the duration of the flight, was that the Israelis were much better mannered aboard El Al than other carriers. I believe it’s because the El Al crew not only “speaks their language” in terms of Hebrew and understanding their mentality, but also speaks to them from a place of warm acceptance. Like the sair leAzalzel – you begin to carry the energy placed on you. Seen as a despised other you might begin to act in a despicable manner, just as being treated in a warm and friendly manner will likely result in warmth and openness.
In the weeks leading up to this drash I was very sensitized to the scapegoating process around me and within me. I observed, for example, what happened to me one evening while when paying the weekly bills I came up short. The anxiety and tension mounted in me, and inexorably I was led to picking a fight with Noga. If I were to translate quite baldly what was going on inside me, it was that I wanted her to feel badly. As her husband of 24 years I knew just how to do that. If she weren’t around I might have turned to my kids, who fortunately for them were out of the house.
What was happening here? As I reflected on it, my response to the bills was a tremendous anxiety. I should say, because I think it relevant, that there wasn’t much that was objectively realistic in my anxiety. It’s not like it was something particularly unusual or something for which there wasn’t a solution. But because of my own constellation of issues, the bills had a charge for me, and one I didn’t want to accept. I wanted it to be someone else’s fault, because if I could blame someone I thought I would feel better. In the tension of the moment I wanted out, even if that meant transferring my darkness to someone else.
Fortunately, this drash was enough in my mind for me to deal with the situation by taking responsibility for my anxiety. It didn’t mean I had to shoulder it alone. It only meant I had to say to Noga: “You know, there’s all these bills and they’re making me so anxious I want to make it your fault.” This, I believe, is the equivalent of confessing my sin and sending it harmlessly into the wilderness. My taking ownership of my darkness actually brought us closer; rather than starting one of those all too familiar squabbles of recrimination. The darkness I was feeling was carried off to some other place, and there was more light available to both of us.
Milgrom’s notion of the sins of the people being registered as spiritual pollution may seem to us a mystical assertion that can’t be factually verified. I would submit to you that we simply use different terminology to say the same thing today. Don’t we talk about a place having a good or bad atmosphere or vibe? What causes that, if not the collective action of the community involved, whether it be a synagogue, office setting or restaurant? To this day I remember my welcome into Netivot Shalom, when Ken Cohen, a former member, approached me in a very friendly way on my first day here. Everything we do or don’t do has a consequence, and while it’s challenging to stay aware of this all the time and all the responsibility that entails, it doesn’t change the reality that it’s true.
I think the ancient system of sacrifices accounted for the inevitability of darkness and sin and provided ways to atone regularly for it. Today most of us lack regular means to hold ourselves accountable, but at least we have this once-a-year rite of asking each other for forgiveness for how we’ve wronged them.
I want to ask now for a show of hands to two questions: First: How many of you have approached someone during these High Holidays and asked them for forgiveness for something you’ve done? Second: Now how many of you are either fasting or would be fasting if you were medically able?
Why are there so many more people who are fasting than who have asked someone for forgiveness? Somehow I don’t believe that every one of us hasn’t done something to someone that merits a request for forgiveness. Is it easier to fast for 26 hours than to ask someone for forgiveness? Is our ego so much more fragile than our body that we have to treat it with kid gloves?
I’m going to suggest we all do a small exercise. I’m going to give you a few minutes, and I want you to turn to your neighbor. Ideally, this will be someone that you can ask for forgiveness for something you’ve done in the past year. There’s no need to pull out your darkest deed. Start with something small. If the person next to you is not someone you’ve harmed, then I would like you to tell that person something you’ve done to someone else that you need to ask forgiveness for. You don’t need to use names. Implicit in this will be a commitment to ask forgiveness from that person when you next see them.
Discussion break
Our tradition tells us that the few minutes you have just spent are at least as important for you and for our community as are all the hours you have been spending in prayer and fasting.
In today’s Haftorah, Isaiah chides the people: “Is this the fast that I have chosen? Is this affliction of the soul? Is it to droop your head like a bulrush, to grovel in sackcloth and ashes? … This is My chosen fast: to loosen all the bonds that bind men unfairly, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke….If you remove from your midst the yoke of oppression, the finger of scorn and the tongue of malice, if you put yourself out for the hungry and relieve the wretched, then shall your light shine in the darkness, and your gloom shall be as noonday.”
Gmar Chatimah Tova