Rabbi Elizabeth Dunsker

Yom Kippur Morning 5786

Congregation Kol Ami, Vancouver WA

The Goat[1]

                  Around 12ish years ago or so, I was sitting at breakfast, or maybe it was lunch, at the faculty table at Camp Kalsman. That summer Flip, Lauren Trexler who was our educator, and I were for some reason, all at camp at the same time. The three of us were sitting at the table, with Rabbi Allison Flash from Seattle. Two of us next to each other and 2 of us across the table, I can’t remember who was where, but what happened is clear in my mind. Rabbi Flash was talking about growing up in Los Angelos, and she said that the rabbi she grew up with was crazy. And then she said, “He was so crazy that he would bring goats for Yom Kippur.” I felt the lightning strike of a great idea, and I looked to whomever was next to me, it was either Flip or Lauren, and I looked at the other one across the table from me, in my memory we all silently understood and agreed. I looked at Rabbi Flash and I said, “Oh, I’m pretty sure, that I am also exactly that kind of crazy! And I even know where to get the goats.” And a tradition was born.

                  Over the years we’ve had several different goats come for our children’s services. That first year, the Ferguson’s brought their goat whose name was Baby. Baby looked like she was straight out of central casting. She was bright white and soft and perfect. The Fergusons had been preparing her by regularly touching her ears and face and blowing in her ears so she would be ready for all the children. She was so gentle with them and so patient. Baby was a resounding success! But the following year she was busy with her own babies so she couldn’t come to services. Noah Shinneman invited friends with their goat Daisy to come instead and do the honors. Daisy clearly enjoyed the attention. After that Noah brought their own goat Isidore who was a big guy with big horns which were covered with pool noodles to ensure no one was accidently injured if he moved his head while a child’s face was close. The noodles gave him a certain joi-de-vive. Noah used to drive up with Isidore in the back seat of their car sticking his head out the window like a dog. I’m sure this gave everyone who saw him on the road a shock and hopefully a smile. For the past few years, Noah has been bringing smaller goats Strider and Atalanta. By now we have this children’s service with goats down to a science. The goats are professions who can hear confessions without judgement. Nothing is better than whispering in a goat’s ear about all the things that leave you feeling guilty this year.

                  Two years ago, during this service, our security guard walked up to me just as we finished children’s services and said, “You know rabbi, I was today years old when I learned that the scapegoat comes from the bible and that it was about an actual goat!” Not only is story of the scapegoat about an actual goat, but the scapegoat is the original way that the Israelite community observed Yom Kippur.

                  Leviticus chapter 16 tells us of this intricate and ancient ritual. The parts of this text concerning the goat is above, if you’d like to read it, but I’ll summarize the ritual. Aaron, the High Priest, the Kohain gadol, is told to take two male goats from the Israelite community’s herd. Then he throws lots, essentially divine dice, which will determine which goat is for Adonai and which is for Azazel. By the way, the Mishnah Yoma 6:1 tells us that these two goats were meant to be nearly identical. This is the first time, and this passage is the only time that Azazel is mentioned, if you are confused about who or what that might be, don’t worry, you are in good company. The goat for Adonai is designated as a sin offering and is therefore sacrificed, it’s blood is collected and dabbed and sprinkled in several places around the Mishkan, the desert sanctuary as a way of cleansing the space of all of the Israelite’s various sins they may have committed during the previous year. Really that is standard sacrificial behavior, and the Israelites would have been used to that experience. The bit that is different on Yom Kippur is this other goat is for Azazel, whatever that is. This goat is kept alive, and Aaron puts his hands on its head and whispers all of the sins of the Israelites to this goat, essentially transferring the sins to the goat. Then someone was assigned, the Hebrew text calls him an אִ֥ישׁ עִתִּ֖י, which might mean a man of the hour, or the right man at the right time, an available timely person, to take that goat out into the wilderness, some place “over there” an inaccessible region, and set it free. When the person returns to the camp he and his clothing must be cleansed and purified to ensure he doesn’t return with any of the sins attached to him.

                  This original scapegoat was the literal version of everything a metaphorical modern scapegoat is. The community’s sins were laid on this goat so that he could take them away from the community. Now this original piece from the Torah has the goat just being let free somewhere in the wilderness but Mishnah Yoma 6:6 informs us that this אִ֥ישׁ עִתִּ֖י “pushed the goat backward, and it rolls and descends” down a hill until it is torn apart.

                  I find this story of the scapegoat imminently interesting. It is a strange ritual that stands out amongst all the other strange rituals that our ancient ancestors participated in. This question of who or what is Azazel is part of what makes it so interesting. Jewish sources offer us essentially three possibilities. Either its the name of the place “over there” where the goat is sent, it’s the name of the goat himself, or there is some thought that Azazel might be some kind of desert demon that is worshipped by some other ancient people. But this leads to some really problematic theology that somehow at this peak moment in our relationship with God we would offer some of our guilt to our God and some of our guilt to some other god or demon that we do not worship? That doesn’t seem right. But what does feel interesting to me is the notion that some sins we keep in our own community and essentially take care of privately, and some sins we send away.

                  The goat for Adonai also carries our sins but it is sacrificed with a quick and Kosher death and it is burnt up as an offering to God. The community is essentially saying, “God we have sinned and we understand  that to be forgiven we must offer something as an apology.” But the other goat also carries our sins and it is left to a presumed death in the wilderness which is violent and treif—a not ritual death, one that involves being torn apart.

                  The goat is not the only character we talk about on Yom Kippur who wanders off. This afternoon we will read about Jonah whom God uses to purify the people of Nineveh. They have sinned and God sends Jonah not to carry off their sins but to be their אִ֥ישׁ עִתִּי֖, their man of the hour, to tell them that their sins are sticking to them, and because of that they will be destroyed. But Jonah refuses the role, perhaps because he is afraid they might turn him from the אִ֥ישׁ עִתִּ֖י  into their sacrifice of expiation, shooting the messenger as it were. Perhaps he is afraid that they will consider him like the goat for Adonai to be sacrificed and silenced immediately so that they the Ninevites will survive. Or worse, perhaps he fears he will be like the goat for Azazel to them, dragged to the wilderness and tipped off a cliff where he will die brutally.

                  Once he hears the voice of God, Jonah gets on a boat and sails toward Tarshish in the opposite directions of Nineveh. But God creates a storm that threatens to destroy the ship and resigned to his fate, Jonah tells the men to offer him as a sacrifice to God by throwing him overboard so that they can survive. Which is what happens.

Then, there is the magical fish which swallows Jonah and spits him out in Ninevah. While in many ways, this is the most interesting part of the story, it’s also just the vehicle to get Jonah to where he needs to be. In the end the Ninevites listen to Jonah and repent by fasting and sitting in sackcloth and ashes and they are redeemed.

This story is a bridge between the Biblical rites of Yom Kippur of sacrifice and our modern day rite of fasting and prayer. While both Jonah and the Goat for Azazel wander there are some differences between them. Jonah is making his own choice to disobey God and he learns that there is no hiding. On the other hand, the goat is blameless, he’s not obeying or disobeying God, he’s just the vehicle to get the people where they need to be spiritually.

                  The Israeli scholar and poet Admiel Kosman has written a long and brilliant article on this goat for Azazel.[2] In it, he traces the history and examines all the sources, rabbinic and otherwise. Ultimately after all this research of what the ritual might mean, he comes to this:

I propose, then, that this ritual conveys to the people of Israel the following message on Yom Kippur: if you have done what you can do, then you are clean and pure, because what remains unresolved and incomplete is not in your hands to resolve or complete; and this being the case, you must hand it over in faith and trust to the One into whose hands everything is given. The goat thrown from the cliff, which supposedly bears the sins of the people on its back, is therefore not a “bribe” to the harmful demon of the wilderness, but rather is a symbol of the guilt feelings of the individual and the national collective.

This goat sent off to Azazel, somewhere “over there” is everything about ourselves and our lives that we don’t want to look at, that we are embarrassed by, ashamed of, or would like to make someone else’s problem. It is a Hebrew linguistic quirk that has the word Azazel sounding a little like the Hebrew word Aza or Gaza. Aza-El might then sound like it could mean God’s Gaza or God’s place over there, far away where no one wants to look. That’s not what it actually means, it’s more of a linguistic pun. But it’s not God who made Gaza the difficult place to look at, it is people who did that. I would argue that as Americans Gaza is not the only “over there” we are not really comfortable looking at. We have been making our own habit of sending immigrants “over there” lately whether or not it’s the over there they came from. There is plenty in our world that is hard for us to look at.

                  Those are large communal sins for us to wrestle with, but I would venture to guess that we each also have our own personal embarrassments and shameful behavior that we may be avoiding looking at. That is what the goat is for. But the truth is, neither the big national or international moral quandries nor our personal ones can actually be solved by just using some vehicle to take them away, we must actually confront whatever it is we are trying to expel. Only then will we let go of the fear that it might wander back into our lives again.

                  Last week I spoke about how Isaac is credited with writing the m’chayah meitim prayer that blesses God for reviving the dead, because he himself had been marked for death but a ram had taken his place on the altar. If the goat for Azazel is not tipped off a cliff like the Talmud explains, but as the Torah tells us merely taken to the wilderness, there is always the risk that the goat will return to the camp carrying all the sins with it as if he too were revived from the dead. There is one other dead not dead wanderer in Jewish tradition, we celebrate him during the springtime when the natural world wakes from it’s winter death. Elijah went to the afterlife without dying and we are told he wanders and visits us to offer the blessing of a future messianic time. Because we want him to come and offer that blessing, we set out wine for him at the Passover seder. We sing of his greatness at the end of Havdallah, and we will do it later today when we conclude Yom Kippur, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, because if we do things correctly today, we will make the day of his return that much closer.

                  Samson Raphael Hirsch, known as the founder of contemporary Orthodox Judaism, taught,  “So are all of us, without distinction, placed at the entry to God’s Sanctuary to decide between ‘ה and עזאזל between God and the power of our senses.” We are each like those two identical goats, one being offered to God and one to the wilderness, but like Jonah and the Ninevites we have the power to choose who we are going to be and what we are going to do. Will we turn and face Azazel that place over there where we would like to hide everything that is uncomfortable? Will we be the right person at the right time to stand up and shout that we will no longer hide our problems whether they are personal, communal, national, or international on the backs of some scapegoat. We can choose to live in a way that keeps us afraid that the same old problems will keep wandering back into our lives or we can live in a way that faces them directly and brings a future that Elijah may want to participate in.

                  This afternoon the goats will be here. We can whisper to them whatever we want. Maybe instead of serving as a scapegoat this year they might serve as a big fish helping us get to the place we know we need to go where we can become the people we know we need to be. Ken Yehi Ratzon, May this be God’s will.

[1] With thanks to Rabbi Michael Marmur Ph.D. for his study session and his book “Living the Letters” for resources used for this sermon

[2] Kosman, Admiel, “A Journey Through the Gates of Good and Evil,” Zeramim: An online Journal of Applied Jewish Thought, Vol. V: Issue 2-Spring 2021/5781