A Bar Mitzvah Student Grapples with the Scapegoat • (Im)purity: Alienation vs Integration
Dear Friends,
This Shabbat, we celebrated the Bar Mitzvah for Elias Zaring. Elias’s parashah, as will be discussed below, was the double portion of achareit-mot/kedoshim, two portions in the midst of the book of Leviticus that include the portion that is read each year on Yom Kippur, involving the ritual of “the scapegoat,” where the High Priest Aaron is instructed to have two goats brought to the tabernacle, the portable sanctuary in the midst of the Israelites reminding them of God’s presence. One goat is sacrificed in order to purify the sanctuary (for more, see below), while the other has the privilege of being sent off to Azazel, a mysterious word, perhaps connoting some sort of wilderness, after the community’s sins are confessed over the head of the goat, as a means of ridding the community of its sins.
You still with me?
Elias was undaunted by this challenging material, reflecting how he found it profound that Judaism had morphed and remained relevant over the years even if its foundational document, the Torah, largely prescribed a series of sacrifices that we would consider antiquated. He lifted up prayer and Torah study as examples of how religion can remain relevant even if its core practices need to evolve.
He then asked how the same might be said for the practice of the scapegoat: in what ways can that practice be said to have evolved? He wrote, “When there is a problem in our society, the blame is put on a select few, even in situations when that blame should be widespread. Sometimes it is not just these select few people; it might be partly the fault of the public. Scapegoating has happened throughout history, like when the Jews were blamed for killing Jesus and when people were blaming immigrants for crime, stealing jobs, and even disease.”
But, he said, there are redeeming qualities to the ritual of the scapegoat: “putting your sins on a goat was a way of not being held down by your past actions and being free of emotional burdens. Starting with a clean slate makes it much easier to improve and to become a better person.”
Elias noted the capacity for change through ritual, even if that ritual needs to evolve.
It was a sharp insight from someone forming their religious identity.
We are so grateful for his and his family’s contributions to this community.
Mazal tov to the whole family.
The night before, Elias’s Bar Mitzvah service, I shared the following D’var Torah about his portion:
Elias’s Torah portion is the singularly most encountered Torah portion in all the Torah, and yet in some ways the most mysterious and least understood.
It is the most encountered because Elias’s Torah portion is the portion we read on Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement—the day in the Jewish calendar when the most people are present to hear the words of Torah auspiciously chanted.
How is it read both on Yom Kippur and on this Shabbat? Well, of course Jews traditionally chant the Torah from beginning to end over the course of the year. Starting with Bereshit, Genesis, in the fall, we march chronologically through Shemot, Vayikra, Bamidbar, and Devarim—Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, week-by-week. We’re essentially midway through the Jewish calendar, and we are midway through the Torah, right in the middle of the third of five books, the book of Leviticus, with the Israelites lingering at Mount Sinai, on their journey through the wilderness from Egypt, from the narrow place, to the promised land—lingering at sinai, learning about, meditating on, a series of laws and practices that will help them kedoshim tihiyu, a phrase in this week’s portion—help them to facilitate holiness. “Kedoshim tihiyu,” Adonai, God the source of being, says to Moses to tell the whole community of Israel: “You shall be holy,” “ki kadosh ani adonai eloheichem,” “for I, your God יהוה, am holy.” In your conduct in the world you shall emulate me, for I, your God adonai am holy.
Oh, that’s all? Just emulate God? How in the world do we do that?
The ancient rabbis of the Talmud asked the same question. “Is it actually possible for a person to follow the Divine Presence?” Rabbi Chama, the son of Rabbi Chanina asked. “Doesn’t sit ay elsewhere in the Torah, כִּי ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵשׁ אוֹכְלָה הוּא “For the Lord your God is a devouring fire.” How could we conceivably follow a devouring fire?” Rather, he explains, the meaning is that one should follow the the pattern of the Holy One. And he provides a number of examples. He cites the verse from Torah which says God provided clothing for Adam and Eve, which he suggests means it is holy to provide clothing to those who need it. He says that God visits the sick, citing a verse from Torah which says God visited Abraham when he was recovering from an illness, suggesting we facilitate holiness through our visits to the sick. He cites similar verses to suggest that God consoles those who are mourning, as when God blessed Isaac following the death of his father Abraham, and that God even buries the dead—one of the ultimate mitzvot in Judaism, to perform a sacred act for someone that cannot perform for you—that it is God who sees to Moses’ burial, and thus that we should console those who are mourning and bury those who are dead (Sotah 14a). This is kedoshim tehiyu ki kadosh adoani eloheichem, “You shall be holy, for I, your God יהוה, am holy:” performing actions that flow from God’s actions according to Jewish tradition.
At the same time, we said this Torah portion is also read on yom kippur. Why is that? Well on holy days, we are not concerned with the chronology of the Torah—different portions for different holidays are selected, even when they have already been read at a different point in the year, to highlight some of the themes of the day.
For Yom Kippur, we read part of Elias’s Torah portion concerned with holiness from a different angle, from the angle of tehora and tumah — purity and impurity, as expressed through the the rituals of Yom Kippur.
כִּֽי־בַיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּ֛ה For on this day of Yom Kippur יְכַפֵּ֥ר עֲלֵיכֶ֖ם לְטַהֵ֣ר אֶתְכֶ֑ם מִכֹּל֙ חַטֹּ֣אתֵיכֶ֔ם, atonement shall be made for you to purify you of all your sins.
So what does this mean, purify you of all your sins? What does it mean to be pure or impure?
Rabbi Daniel Landes teaches that tahor and tamei, what are traditionally translated as pure and impure, can or should be translated as ritually or spiritually integrated, tahor/pure, and ritually or spiritual alienated, tamei/impure.
That what seem to us to be puritanical expressions of purity and impurity, are really about the extent to which we felt spiritually integrated with the community and with God or spiritually alienated from the community and from God.
In some ways, this is what holiness is all about, too. When we are living are lives in such a way that we discussed above—when we are visiting the sick, when we are providing clothes to those in need, comforting mourners, burying the dead—we are tahor, we are spiritually integrated: integrated within ourselves, integrated within our community, integrated with God. And when we don’t, when we are disconnected from others, not reaching out to provide these means of support, when we have our head in the sand, we might feel tamei, alienated, distant—from the core of ourselves, from our community, from God.
Yom Kippur is meant to facilitate that purification or, better yet, that reintegration. Through a series of offerings, through a ritual around transparency, around owning up to our actions, through a means of humbling our souls, which the rabbis interpreted as fasting, we achieve tehora, purification and/or spiritual integration.
And yet some of us might imagine we are too far gone. Or sure, maybe once a year on Yom Kippur, we can come in and feel better about ourselves, but what about the rest of the year? What’s the point of me doing rituals, or doing all these good deeds for people? I wouldn’t even know where to start.
Therefore, it says in Elias’s Torah portion ״הַשּׁוֹכֵן אִתָּם בְּתוֹךְ טוּמְאֹתָם״ “It dwells with them in the midst of their impurity.” Even when we are feeling that sense of alienation, that sense of alienation from the divine, the rabbis teach שְׁכִינָה שְׁרוּיָה בֵּינֵיהֶן the divine presence dwells among the people—among all of at us, at every moment, even when we are feeling most alienated; mosts distant.
Last week we discussed the Jewish connection to the moon, whose full presence is there, even when we see only a sliver or nothing at all.
Even when we feel fully alienated, even when we are not integrated at all, when we haven’t been acting in a holy way, through all the ways of caring for others we mentioned—visiting for the sick, comforting mourners—when we haven’t carried out the purification rituals of our people on Yom Kippur, shecinah sheruyah beneihen, the divine dwells among them, among us, within us, waiting to be fully let in.
