Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur Sermons
Scapegoat
by Daniel Bersani
Shana Tova to everyone. I would like to start by thanking Rabbi Goldstein for helping me through the dvar torah writing process. I would also like to thank you, the congregation, for allowing me to tackle this subject.
In today's Torah Reading, we learn about two goats. One goat is sacrificed as an offering and the other is sent into the desert with the sins of the children of Israel. Today I am going to concentrate on the second goat, the scapegoat. I am going to tell you his story and the questions that have risen from it.
In Achrei Mot, the Lord commands Moses to talk to his brother Aaron. Aaron is to go into the Holy place with two goats. Aaron must cast Lots on both of the goats. The first goat gets one Lot for the Lord and the other gets one Lot for Azazel. The goat for the Lord is meant to be sacrificed on the alter. The goat for Azazel is described in section 21 of the parsha. "And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat and send him away into the wilderness". To summarize this passage, the goat for Azazel is to be sent into the wilderness with all of the sins of the children of Israel. Let us now turn for a moment to listen to what the rabbis have to say about this goat. Rabbi Israel Chait says that not only is the goat sent out into the wilderness, but once it gets there, it is killed by being dropped off a cliff- so the goat never has a chance to return our sins to us. Nachmanides also comments that the service of the scapegoat can be understood through a Midrash, a story made up by the Rabbis. The Midrash suggests that the Children of Israel's "prosecuting angel"- the angel that is going to convince G-d to punish them- is bribed on Yom Kippur. This bribe is the Scapegoat. When the angel sees that there is sin on the head of the goat, he will go before G-d and tell him that the Jews themselves have no sin, since its all on the goat now.
Whatever the Rabbis say, or try and do to explain the goat, to me one thing is clear. This parsha illustrates what comes to humans so naturally. We don't want to take the blame for our actions. A personal experience comes to mind. When I was younger, maybe around 4 or 5, a friend and I decided that it would be clever to call 911 and hang up. Once we had done it, we decided to do it again not knowing that they could trace our call and would be phoning us back any minute. My friend's mom picked up the phone when the 911 operator called. "The Mom" calmly told us that the police had called and didn't want us calling them over and over again. Oh no! The police were coming to arrest us (or at least that's what we thought), we should probably do something about this. Doing what I am sure any sibling would do, we pointed to my friend's little sister and said "IT WASN'T US, IT WAS HER!" We were now safe because the police would come and take her away. We shifted the blame to "sister" just the same as the children of Israel shifted the blame onto the goat. Just as the police were going to come and take away the sister and put her in jail, the guide would take away the goat and put it in the wilderness.
By letting someone else take the blame, we somehow feel that we no longer carry that burden. I argue however that we carry an even larger burden. We carry not only the weight of our transgressions but also the guilt that we tried to get rid of those sins by lying about what we did. What's a little guilt you may say; who cares. This guilt will torture you from the inside. It does not matter if anyone else knows that we were wrong. The only person who can make you feel guilty about it---is you. However, if you tell someone else what you did and that you were wrong, that person can remind you that you did wrong but made up for it honestly instead of lying about it. The children of Israel did not make up for it honestly. Instead, they lied about it by blaming the goat. But who can blame them, as illustrated in the story above, we blame other people or, in the case of the scapegoat, Other things naturally. We cannot live in a world with out guilt however. We naturally regret the bad things that we do. If we didn't experience guilt we would never know that we did anything wrong and would not be able to perfect ourselves. This is the perfect subject for Yom Kippur because we learn how to repent for our sins which is what Yom Kippur is all about. We feel guilty so that we may repent for it on Yom Kippur.
What we can learn from the parsha is simple. Be honest. Don't lie simply because it is more convenient. Instead, tell the truth so that you may free yourself from the guilt of what you have done.
Let me tell you how I, Daniel Gold Bersani age 16, sees how scapegoating occurs in our world. I have no doctorate degrees or masters degrees like so many people in this room. But I am observant. What I see is a world that is about to be inherited by my generation. A world that has slowly been destroyed over the past 150 years. Now I am not a tree hugger or an environmentalist per say but I am concerned about what my generation has to deal with. What I am about to say does not apply to all but don't say: "oh that's not me" because we all have done it. We are encouraged to clean up the earth by a generation that has destroyed it. I see a generation of adults placing their sins on the "green" goat of Azazel and sending him forth into the wilderness to be rescued by us, the younger generation, or worse still, to be sent off the cliff so we don't have to face him. I see the mindset of the past generation as : I want to retire with a nice pension and buy a cottage in Muskoka. So why don't you go save the earth while I read a newspaper on my front porch. I find that this is scapegoating in its most basic form. It is not the passing of sins to the next person in line but passing your own responsibility to the person next to you. It's saying (mind you I do this occasionally) "Oh sorry I spilt my soup on the floor but I am sure you can clean it up for me". My generation cannot do it alone. We need help from the older generation. Help from a generation with so much knowledge and experience and wisdom. I ask: Why would you leave us to do it when you can do it with us? I recently read a quote that said "The adult world should hang its head in shame at the terrible, unforgivable things done to the young". But Judaism doesn't let you just hang your head in shame. It commands us all to hold them high while righting the wrongs. It commands us to face the goat we have sent off into the wilderness, to account for it in our own souls, to bear the responsibility and to face the consequences of our sins together.
Shana Tova.
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