Go to Azazel - Reflections of Parshat Acharei Mot
by Rabbi Yehoshua Mizrachi
In this week’s Torah reading (Leviticus 16:1 - 18:30) we study the complex rituals of Yom Kippur when the Holy Temple still stood.
One of the most obscure aspects of the day’s rituals was the dispatching of the scapegoat to the wilderness, the Seir HaMishtale'ach, the Azazel goat. How are we to understand the curious ritual and of what relevance is it today?
Let us review: Two identical male goats were brought before the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest. One was placed to his right, one to his left. The Sgan Kohen Gadol held a box containing two slips of paper. Upon one was written “for Hashem (G-d)” and upon the other was written “for Azazel.” The Kohen Gadol would reach into the box and pick the slips of paper at random, the slip in his left hand for the left goat, the slip in his right hand for the right goat. The goat designated for Hashem was taken away and immediately slaughtered as a chatat, a sin offering. The goat designated for Azazel was not offered as a sacrifice. Instead, it was left alive and a crimson thread was tied between its horns.
After the goat for Hashem was offered as a chatat, and after other parts of the Yom Kippur service were performed, the Kohen Gadol returned to the Azazel goat, placed both his hands on its head, and confessed all the sins of Bnei Yisrael upon it. The Azazel goat was then led out to the wilderness by a Kohen standing by. After a long trek in the desert, the designated Kohen led it to a specific, very high, craggy cliff, and he then pushed the Azazel goat over the side. The mishnah in Yoma states that it was torn apart by the rocks before it was even half way down. But – miraculously - the scarlet thread between its horns turned white, symbolizing G-d’s acceptance of the Yom Kippur atonement rituals.
So let’s get this straight: we push a goat over a cliff, and the scarlet thread turns white, symbolizing the atonement of the Jewish people? Who – or what – is Azazel? How are we to make sense of all this?
The Ramban quotes the Pirkei D'Rabbi Eliezer that there was a desert deity called Azazel who is associated with Sama-el, the angel of Esau, aka the Angel of Death, and that the Azazel goat is a propitiation to this god. Hello? What kind of blasphemous voodoo is this?
Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch utterly rejects this understanding and offers a more rational explanation of the symbolism at play here.
Let’s break it down.
First: why are billy goats chosen for this offering? Because they are stubborn, willful and seemingly always hungry. They kick their hind legs when you try to lead them or butt you with their horns when you try to guide them.
And the Kohen Gadol is presented with two identical billy goats. One is offered immediately to G-d as a sin offering. The other – goes completely free! Spared! Left alive! To the wilderness! A place where there are no rules! Everything’s up for grabs! A place of total freedom – a lawless place to indulge every whim, to satisfy the basest of desires; a moral vacuum to do whatever one wants, whatever feels good in the moment.
Freeze frame: At this moment, which goat looks like it got the better deal?
You see, from our vantage point, sometimes the life of unbounded freedom and self-indulgence seems more attractive than a life of service, devotion and self-sacrifice.
In the long run though, that is, before the end of Yom Kippur, both of these goats will die. That we die is inevitable, says Rabbi Hirsch. The question is: to what do we devote our lives?
One will die a painless death, offered as a chatat, having lived a life of meaning, in the service of Hashem. The other had the illusion of freedom, but ultimately will die a treifa, dying a horrible, bloody, painful, meaningless death on a hard cliff – a cliff called Azazel.
We are those two identical, stubborn billygoats. They represent us. Stubborn. Willful. Full of ta’avot, physical appetites. Yet both paths stand before us.
To us, sophisticated urbanites who don’t hang out with these animals, this ritual is incomprehensible. But to the assembled people of Israel in G-d’s House, people who were farmers, people who understood the peculiar characteristics of each type of barnyard animal, the symbolism of the Azazel Goat could not have been clearer.
Through the choices we make every day, we have the power to change the world. Not by staging protests at Columbia & UC Berkeley, although this, too, is sometimes necessary. The real power to change the world is by changing ourselves, by turning inward.
Which path will we choose? Service or Self-indulgence? Especially in light of the resurgent Jew-Hatred we experience today, each of us must choose. Hashem is waiting for our answer.
Shabbat Shalom.
