Rabbi Freedman’s Shabbat Message

The parshiot of Acharei Mot – Kedoshim are often read together as a double sidra.  The first of the two sidrot deals primarily with the rituals surrounding Yom Kippur; it ends however, with a list of prohibited sexual relationships.  On Yom Kippur we have a tradition to read these passages as our Torah readings for the day.  Parashat Kedoshim is quite different – it is a call to holiness.  Kedoshim makes it abundantly clear that the mission of the Jewish people is to embrace holiness, just as God Himself is holy.  Kedoshim is therefore concerned with ethics, morality, and the path to righteousness, and includes the famous statement וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵֽעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ love your neighbour as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18)

Nonetheless one can say that these two sidrot come together in the most powerful way.  If our quest is holiness, then one would do well to summarise the words of the late Rabbi Sacks:

Yom Kippur is the holy of holies of Jewish time, when we give an account of our lives.  We reflect on what has happened to us and what we plan to do in the coming year.  The single most important lesson of Yom Kippur is that it’s never too late to change, start again, and live differently from the way we’ve done in the past.  God forgives every mistake we’ve made as long as we are honest in regretting it and doing our best to put it right.  Even if there’s nothing we regret, Yom Kippur makes us think about how to use the coming year in such a way as to bring blessings into the lives of others by way of thanking God for all He has given us.  In ancient times Yom Kippur was celebrated in the form of a massive public ceremony set in the Temple in Jerusalem: it was there that the holiest man (the High Priest), entered the holiest place (the Holy of Holies), confessed the sins of the nation using God’s holiest name, and secured atonement for all Israel on the holiest day.

Nonetheless included among the Yom Kippur rituals is one that seems at odds with our modern thinking that to achieve forgiveness it is best to admit one’s failures, apologise for one’s indiscretions and sincerely beg for forgiveness.  Instead, in Temple days a goat was taken by the High Priest and there followed a symbolic transferring of sins onto this unfortunate creature.  In the words of the sidra:

וְכִלָּה֙ מִכַּפֵּ֣ר אֶת־הַקֹּ֔דֶשׁ וְאֶת־אֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד וְאֶת־הַמִּזְבֵּ֑חַ וְהִקְרִ֖יב אֶת־הַשָּׂעִ֥יר הֶחָֽי: וְסָמַ֨ךְ אַֽהֲרֹ֜ן אֶת־שְׁתֵּ֣י יָדָ֗ו [יָדָ֗יו] עַל־רֹ֣אשׁ הַשָּׂעִיר֘ הַחַי֒ וְהִתְוַדָּ֣ה עָלָ֗יו אֶת־כָּל־עֲוֹנֹת֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְאֶת־כָּל־פִּשְׁעֵיהֶ֖ם לְכָל־חַטֹּאתָ֑ם וְנָתַ֤ן אֹתָם֙ עַל־רֹ֣אשׁ הַשָּׂעִ֔יר וְשִׁלַּ֛ח בְּיַד־אִ֥ישׁ עִתִּ֖י הַמִּדְבָּֽרָה: וְנָשָׂ֨א הַשָּׂעִ֥יר עָלָ֛יו אֶת־כָּל־עֲוֹנֹתָ֖ם אֶל־אֶ֣רֶץ גְּזֵרָ֑ה וְשִׁלַּ֥ח אֶת־הַשָּׂעִ֖יר בַּמִּדְבָּֽר

When Aaron finished making atonement for the holy place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he would bring forward a live goat.  Laying both hands on the head of the goat, he would confess over it all the failures and wrongdoings of the Children of Israel — all their sins—and then unload them on the goat’s head.  He would then send the goat away into the wilderness, in the care of someone appointed for the task.  In this way the goat would carry all Israel’s sins to a remote place, where it would be released into the wilderness. (Leviticus 16: 20-22)

This goat had a specific name, which is found only in this chapter of Tanakh, Leviticus 16.  The first of four references is in verse 8 which describes the process – two goats are brought before the High Priest – one is to be sacrificed in the Temple – the other, as described above, is to have heaped upon it all of Israel’s sins and then taken into the remote wilderness to disappear for all time:

וְנָתַ֧ן אַֽהֲרֹ֛ן עַל־שְׁנֵ֥י הַשְּׂעִירִ֖ם גֹּֽרָל֑וֹת גּוֹרָ֤ל אֶחָד֙ לַֽ֔ה’ וְגוֹרָ֥ל אֶחָ֖ד לַֽעֲזָאזֵֽל

Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one lot is for the Lord; the other is for Azazel.

As is normal with words that only appear very occasionally in the Bible, there is much conjecture as to what the word really means. 

Suggestions for ֽעֲזָאזֵֽל Azazel include an uninhabitable physical location, a foreign deity, or a wilderness-dwelling demon.  Early Greek translations of the Bible rendered it as “the one sent off” and the Latin Vulgate translation called it the “emissary goat.”  It was not until the Tyndale English Bible was published in 1530 that the translation “escape-goat” later shortened to the familiar “scapegoat” in the King James Version of 1611 was introduced.  This expression was based on the Hebrew ֽעֲזָאזֵֽל – for as one can see, the word can be conveniently divided into two words – עֵז (ez) meaning goat and אֲזַל (azal) meaning sent away.

The Talmud in Massechet Yoma 67b presents an additional opinion that Azazel is a contraction of two names: Aza (or Uza) and Aza’el, and that the goat atones for their sins.  Other than this short allusion, this page of Talmud says nothing more. 

Who then were Aza and Aza’el?

The origins of Aza and Aza’el are described in the Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni, Bereishit 44).  Rabbinic legend states that Aza (also known as Shemhazai) and Aza’el were angels who saw the terrible sins of the people at the time of Noah and the Flood and they scoffed at the humans.  God told them however, that if they had been given free will like human beings, they too would have succumbed to the evil inclination.  The angels wanted to prove God wrong, and asked Him to send them down to Earth inside a physical body.  God agreed, and just as He had predicted, the angels quickly fell into all forms of evil.

Firstly, they could not hold back from the beautiful women, and this is what Genesis 6:2 means when it refers to divine beings mating with humans.  The Midrash continues to say that it was these angels who taught women the art of makeup and provocative dress in order to entice men further into sin.  These angels helped to bring the sword to the world, increasing bloodshed and warfare, as well as the consumption of animal meat, which was at this point still forbidden.

Ultimately, the Midrash tells us that Shemhazai recognized his evil ways, and began a long process of repentance.  No longer among humans, he remains suspended between the earthly and heavenly worlds.  Aza’el, by contrast, refused to repent, and continued his evil ways.  This is the reason, explains the Midrash, why the Kohen Gadol sent the people’s sins symbolically to Aza’el (Azazel), for he was the evil spirit who had taught mankind a new level of sinfulness and cared not for repentance.

In his commentary on the Torah, the Ramban (Moses Nachmanides 1194–1270) provides a lengthy comment on Leviticus 16:8, in which he elaborates on the identity of Azazel stating first the view of Rashi that it refers to a particular mountain, a flinty, harsh, precipitous peak, as the text says: אֶרֶץ גְּזֵרָה a land which is cut off (Leviticus 16:22).  According to the Ramban, this was based on an ancient Midrash known as the Sifra or Torat Cohanim.  The authors of this Midrash based their idea on a linguistic similarity between the word – ֽעֲזָאזֵֽל Azazel and the word – עִזּוּז izuz (strong, hard, harsh), both of which contain two zayins. 

The Ramban then quotes the commentary of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Spain 12^th century) who makes a connection between the goat (Hebrew שָׂעִיר sa’ir) and Esau, the brother of Jacob, who was described as hairy (Hebrew שֵׂעָר say’ar) and who inhabited the region known as שֵׂעִיר Seir.  Of some relevance is the fact that the word שָׂעִיר sa’ir can also mean a satyr, i.e. a creature from the spirit world.

Proposing that Azazel is one and the same as Esau’s demonic spirit, Samael, aka Satan – the rabbis were deeply concerned that this spirit would do all in its power to undermine Israel’s efforts to achieve divine forgiveness.  This being the case it was imagined by Ibn Ezra that this goat was sent as a conciliatory gift on the Day of Atonement, so that Satan (Samael/Azazel) should not seek to annul Israel’s offerings to God on this most holy day.  This is the meaning behind the Ramban’s words that the High Priest dispatched the goat into the wilderness to ‘the prince who rules over the areas of destruction’.  The Ramban, aware of the possible heretical nature of these ideas, added rather pointedly that the goat dispatched to the wilderness was not to become a sacrifice to Azazel, God forbid, but rather that our intention was always to do the will of our Creator who so commanded us.

The Ramban then quotes another Midrashic source (Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer) which depicts Satan (Samael/Azazel) addressing the heavenly court concerning Israel’s merits and failings.  It appears that the attempt to appease this demon was a complete success for Satan (Samael/Azazel) could find no fault with the Children of Israel. 

His testimony could not have been clearer.

Master of all worlds!  You have one people on earth who are comparable to the ministering angels in the heavens.  Just as the ministering angels are barefooted, so are the Israelites barefooted (i.e., do not wear leather shoes on Yom Kippur).  Just as the ministering angels do not eat or drink, so is there no eating or drinking in Israel on Yom Kippur.  Just as the ministering angels have no joints in their feet, and therefore cannot sit or lie down, so do the Israelites stand on their feet on the Day of Atonement.  (There is a tradition among some Chasidic and Sephardi Jews not to sit at all during the synagogue services on Yom Kippur – see Shulhan Aruch HaRav.)  Just as there is peace in the midst of the ministering angels, so do the Israelites bring peace among themselves on Yom Kippur.  Just as the ministering angels are free from all sin, so are the Israelites free from all sin on Yom Kippur.  When the Holy One, blessed be He, heard these words from Israel’s prosecutor, He forgave Israel and offered them atonement.

The idea of unloading one’s guilt onto another creature existed throughout the ancient world.  James Frazer devoted an entire volume of his study of religion and folklore to the subject of the Azazel noting that other ancient Near Eastern “sending away rituals” involved dispatching animals carrying away abstract evils, such as impurity, curses, plagues or disease to uninhabited places.  

He was able to document similar practices in diverse societies all over the world, in many periods of human history.  After the evils are transferred to that animal its release purifies the territory and the people.  The most ancient example of a sending away ritual was uncovered in the Ebla tablets (24^th century BCE) found in Syria in 1974.  One tablet describes a ritual in which an animal is sent away in order to purify the house of the dead prior to a royal wedding.  Frazer also remarked on an ancient Hittite rite for purifying the king and queen (“The Ritual of Šamuha”) recorded in the latter half of the second millennium BCE.  In this ritual an exorcist would release a bull for the king, and a cow, ewe, and goat for the queen, adding that whatever evil word, false oath, curse, or impurity had been committed in the sight of the deity—these animals would carry them away from the deity.

With this in mind, Jacob Milgrom argued in his commentary on Leviticus, that the goat that had been burdened with these sins “is in reality returning evil to its source, the netherworld.”  Milgrom wrote that in the minds of the ancients these wilderness areas were thought to be beyond the reach of the gods and therefore the sins of the urban dwellers would fall outside the deity’s jurisdiction.  Once the deity could no longer see them, it is as if they ceased to exist; out of sight, out of mind.  The forgiveness of sins in ancient Israel was therefore, not simply a matter of feeling contrite for what one had done wrong; in their minds, said Milgrom, sin was like matter and had to be physically removed.

Maimonides (1135-1204), ever the rationalist, gave his own explanation of this strange ritual:

The goat of the Day of Atonement that was sent into the wilderness (Lev. 16), served as an atonement for all serious transgressions; even more than any other sin-offering of the congregation.  As it seemed to carry off all sins, it was not accepted as an ordinary sacrifice to be slaughtered, burnt, or even brought near the Sanctuary; it was removed as far as possible, and sent forth into a waste, uncultivated, uninhabited land.  There is no doubt that sins cannot be carried like a burden, and taken off the shoulder of one creature to be laid on that of another.  But these ceremonies are of a symbolic character and serve to impress men with a certain idea and to induce them to repent; as if to say, we have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, have cast them behind our backs, and removed them from us as far as possible.  (Guide for the Perplexed Part III, Chapter 46)

In spite of these ideas by Judaism’s greatest medieval thinker, it is hard not to relate the concept of the Azazel to historical antisemitism, by which all of the sins and burdens of non-Jews have been offloaded at different times onto our people.  The global rise in antisemitism offers almost daily reminders of the many ways Jews have been, and remain, scapegoats for a variety of societal ills.

In pre-war Germany, the Jews were blamed for the catastrophic defeat in World War 1, the Great Depression and its economic effects, and inciting the evil of Bolshevik socialism, the arch-enemy of German nationalism. 

In more recent times, it was the Jews who planned and executed 9/11, it was the Jews who released Covid with all its terrible consequences, and of course it is the Jewish people, by creating, defending or supporting the State of Israel, who are to blame for the absence of universal peace.  In this irrational world of Jew hatred,

Medieval Christians blamed the Jews for the Black Death, for economic hardship and for the occasional, tragic disappearance of small children – i.e. the Blood Libel.  Not unsurprisingly, the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination remains a staunch favourite in the Arab world, even as it has now been utterly discredited in the West.

Deborah Lipstadt in her book Antisemism, Here and Now wrote that this delusional aspect of antisemitism had become strikingly clear to her in 1972 during her first trip to the USSR.  Refuseniks, she said, marvelled at how the Communist regime managed to blame so many of its problems on the Jews.  At the same time that the government was persecuting Jews and spreading antisemitism, many Soviet citizens who hated the Communist regime believed it was a conspiracy of Jews.

To illustrate this, Lipstadt retold an old Soviet joke which best expresses this form of antisemitism, the implication being, whenever bad things happen to people, Jews are always to blame or at least receive special privileges over and above the rest of society.

The USSR suffered chronic shortages of consumer goods.  Early one morning a rumour circulated in Moscow that a store was to receive a shipment of shoes.  A queue formed immediately outside the store and continued to grow exponentially.  After people had been waiting for an hour or so, the manager emerged and announced, “We will not receive enough shoes to accommodate everyone.  Jews leave the queue and go home.”  And they did.  A few hours later he emerged again and said, “We will not receive enough shoes to accommodate everyone.  All non-veterans go home.”  And they did.  A few hours later he emerged yet again and said, “We will not receive enough shoes to accommodate everyone.  All those who are not members of the Communist Party go home.”  And they did.  As dusk was falling, he emerged for a final time and said, “We will not receive any shoes today.  Everyone go home.”  Deeply disappointed, two exhausted and shivering loyal Communist Party members, former soldiers in the Red Army, walked away from the store.  As they did, one turned to the other and bitterly proclaimed, “Typical, damn those Jews, they have all the luck!”

How ironic that in introducing the scapegoat into Biblical literature, it led to such malice and jealousy against the Jewish people.  Conspiracy theories are always difficult to counter, yet knowing the range of accusations made against us, we should remember Napoleon’s words: “Without education, there is no present and no future.”  It is therefore, only through education, wrote Alex Ryvchin, that our future will be protected and the forces against us will be exposed for what they are.  We live in hope that by educating others about the history of our people, the true nature of Judaism, and above all the unique contribution Jews have made to the world, that we will succeed in changing attitudes and that far from being a global menace, the Jews will be seen as a universal blessing.

No one said this more forcefully than Paul Johnson in his A History of the Jews: “Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place.  Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights.  But we cannot be sure.  All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time.  The Jews had this gift.  To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind.  Without Jews it might have been a much emptier place.”

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi David Freedman