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Zeramim https://zeramim.org/past-issues/vol-v-issue-2-spring2021-5781/a-journey-through-the-gates-of-good-and-evilin-jewish-sources-towards-a-monistic-psychological-reading-of-the-azazel-ritual/ Export date: Wed Jan 22 8:15:47 2025 / +0000 GMT |
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE GATES OF GOOD AND EVIL IN JEWISH SOURCES: TOWARDS A MONISTIC-PSYCHOLOGICAL READING OF THE AZAZEL RITUALFor a Formatted PDF of this article, click here. 1
Admiel Kosman A According to the Mishnah, part of the Yom Kippur ritual involved the casting of lots with respect to two similar goats[1] in order to determine which of them was to be offered as a sacrifice to God and which would be offered to Azazel. The text on which the Mishnah bases its halakhot is Leviticus 16:7-10, which details the various rites of atonement that are to be led almost entirely by Aaron, the High Priest:[2] Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the LORD at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting; and he shall place lots upon the two goats, one marked for the LORD and the other marked for Azazel.[3] Aaron shall bring forward the goat designated by lot for the LORD, which he is to offer as a sin offering; while the goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be left standing alive before the LORD, to make expiation with it and to send it off to the wilderness for Azazel […] Later on, in that same chapter, verses 20-22 present further instructions: When he [Aaron] has finished purging the Shrine, the Tent of Meeting, and the altar, the live goat shall be brought forward. Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat;[4] and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. Thus, the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region[5]; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. According to the Mishnah Yoma (6:6), this latter goat was “pushed from behind, whereupon it went rolling off a cliff and was wholly dismembered before it was halfway down the hill”.[6] The word Azazel does not appear anywhere else in the Tanakh, and its meaning is controversial. In essence, scholars have proposed three different suggestions regarding its correct interpretation: a. Azazel is a place name (or a description of some specific place), b. Azazel is a name for the goat itself,[7] or c. Azazel is the name of the desert demon to whom the goat was being “sent” for some unstated reason.[8] It is the third proposal—the one that takes Azazel as the name of desert demon — that is the most puzzling, since it seems to presume a dualistic worldview wholly inconsonant with the unwavering monotheism of the Torah and the Talmudic sages.[9] How can the Torah possibly be commanding that a sacrifice be send to a demon named Azazel? B Nevertheless, it should be noted that already by the beginning of the 20th century, scholars of the ancient Near East understood clearly that this ritual was not an original Israelite one, but rather a Hittite one.[10] Indeed, it is quite clear from the sources that in Hittite culture this was a magic ritual designed to rid society of something unwanted (diseases) by pitching it into the territory of the demon, and at the same time it is intended to reconcile the demon by the presents that were send with it. One of the first scholars to show this was the British scholar of Hittite culture Oliver Gurney, who wrote a book in which he presented three clear examples of ways in which the ancient Hittite scapegoat ritual resembled the one described in the Torah.[11] All are fascinating. For the sake of the brevity, however, I will present here only one of those examples and then cite Gurney's conclusion. This text in question was written by Hittite person named Askhella, a man of Hapalla, and is presented as the “Ritual of Uhhamuwa (=name of a magician from Arzawa in the west of the Hittite kingdom)"[12]: When evening comes, whoever the army commanders are, each of them prepares a ram—whether it is a white ram or a black ram does not matter at all. Then I twine a cord of white wool, red wool, and green wool, and the officer twists it together, and I bring a necklace, a ring, and a chalcedony stone and I hang them on the ram's neck and horns, and at night they tie them in front of the tents and say: “Whatever deity is prowling about(?), whatever deity has caused this pestilence, now I have tied up these rams for you, be appeased!” And in the morning I drive them out to the plain, and with each ram they take 1 jug of beer, 1 loaf, and 1 cup of milk(?). Then in front of the king's tent he makes a finely dressed woman sit and puts with her a jar of beer and 3 loaves. Then the officers lay their hands on the rams and say: ‘Whatever deity has caused this pestilence, now see! These rams are standing here and they are very fat in liver, heart, and loins. Let human flesh be hateful to him, let him be appeased by these rams. And the officers point at the rams and the king points at the decorated woman, and the rams and the woman carry the loaves and the beer through the army and they chase them out to the plain. And they go running on to the enemy's frontier without coming to any place of ours, and the people say: ‘Look! Whatever illness there was among men, oxen, sheep, horses, mules, and donkeys in this camp, these rams and this woman have carried it away from the camp. And the country that finds them shall take over this evil pestilence. Gurney then concludes as follows: At all events, these […] rituals provide a possible parallel to the dispatch of the Biblical scapegoat “to Azazel,” if this word is indeed the name of a demon.[13] C In Second Temple times, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which as a body of literature undoubtedly tend toward dualistic conceptions,[14] the act of sending the goat into the desert was taken plainly to denote sending Israel's iniquities to the camp of the great opponent of God, the rebellious angel regularly known as Satan, but in apocryphal literature also sometimes called Uzzah or Azzael.[15] This is how William Guilders formulates the conception of scapegoat in Qumran sect: The evidence of these works […] suggests that the members of the Qumran sect viewed the Azazel of Lev 16 as a fallen angel, a demonic figure, who had been the leader of the Watchers,[16] before his confinement. Sending the nation's sins out to him (as indicated by the Temple Scroll) returned them to their source, so to speak. This sending away of sin to the demonic realm prefigures the eschatological triumph over sin […].[17] To that can be compared the interpretation of those early rabbinic sages who took Azazel as the name of the place (or, more precisely, as a description of that place) rather than as the name of the desert demon to whom the sacrifice was being sent.[18] Consider, for example, the tannaitic text of the Sifra: “To Azazel” (Lev. 16:8): to the “hardest” [az] place in the mountains.[19] Israel Knohl and Shlomo Na'eh claim however that, although this surely was the most common approach to the text under consideration, rabbinic culture also countenanced the dangerous notion that the Torah in Leviticus 16 is indeed commanding that a sacrificial “present” be sent to the demon of the desert. In an exegetical text from a different section of the Sifra (i.e., the one discussing the “days of the inauguration of the Tabernacle,” the so-called yemmei ha-milluim)[20] we find a text that must originally have belonged to the larger discussion of the scapegoat in which the Rabbis seem accepting of this precise idea. Indeed, Knohl and Na'eh suggest that this text appears in the “wrong” place in the text exactly because it was such a scandalous suggestion.[21] Cited in the name of the tanna Rabbi Ishmael (2nd century CE), the text reads as follows: “And he said to Aaron: Take for yourself a bull-calf for a sin-offering” (Lev. 9:2): We are hereby taught that Moses said to Aaron: Aaron, my brother, even though the Holy One, blessed be He, has consented to forgive your sins [i.e., the ones relating to the episode of the golden calf], you must [nonetheless] “place something in Satan's mouth.” Send your gift before you before entering the sanctuary, lest He condemn you upon your entering.[22] Knohl and Na'eh noted as well that this daring concept is mentioned only once more in all of tannaitic and amoraic literature, at BT Yoma 67b (perhaps again in the name of Rabbi Ishmael![23])[24] where it is said: The school of Rabbi Ishmael taught [tanna d'vei rabbi ishmael]: Azazel is so called because it atones for the actions of Uzzah and Azael. [25] [Cf. Rashi: “These are the names of “sons of God” who sinned with “daughters of men” (Genesis 6:2) and thereby caused the world to sin during the generation of the Flood”].[26] Daniel J. Stökl stressed another important linguistic point in his interpretation of the passage, one which strongly supports the idea that in tannaitic times the dualistic reading of the scapegoat ritual (i.e., that in tannaitic times, imagining the scapegoat ritual to have been a kind of sacrifice to the demonic realm) was at least formally rejected by the rabbis. Stökl paid attention to the simple fact that the Mishnah systematically use the term ha-sa·ir ha-mishtalei·aḥ (i.e., the goat (that is) sent away) and does not mention Azazel even once.[27] The concept of “sacrificing” to Satan was thus at best a marginal one, while on the “main road” of rabbinic Judaism we appear to find only the idea that Azazel is the name of a place or a descriptive word referring to that place. Yet, following the observations of Knohl and Na'eh, we can surely say that the dualistic idea retained some currency even in Talmudic times, and that that was so even despite the concerted effort to repress it. Although any strange reference to worshiping Satan would be immediately rejected in standard rabbinic texts as an obvious contradiction to the monotheistic concept that would open the dangerous door to a dualistic worldview, it appears nonetheless that the notion continued to exist in some out-of-the-way corners of the literature. This is evidenced, indeed, precisely by the fact that the Talmudic rabbis felt the need in the first place to chase after this line of interpretation, if only robustly to reject it, on the grounds that the commandment regarding the sacrifice of the scapegoat is a pure decree of God, and thus no one should dare misinterpret it as a direction to worship Satan. This point is made expressly at BT Yoma 67b:[28] The phrase: “And you shall keep my statutes” (Leviticus 18:4), [is a reference to] matters that Satan challenges [because the reason for these mitzvot is not known]. They are: [The prohibitions against] eating pork and against wearing [garments that are made from] diverse kinds of material [i.e., wool and linen]; [the one ordaining that the] ḥalitzah [ceremony be performed with] a yevamah, [i.e., with a widow who must otherwise participate in a levirate marriage]; the purification [ceremony] of the leper; and the [ritual regarding the] scapegoat [who is cast into the desert]. And lest you say these [commandments have no reason and are thus] meaningless acts, the verse [therefore] states: “I am the Lord” (ibid.) [to indicate:] I am the Lord, I decreed these statutes and you have no right to doubt them.[29] It seems as well that the following tradition, preserved in the Tosefta at Sotah 2:10 in the name of Rabbi Akiva, is related to the concern of the Sages that those who harbor a predilection for magic will assume that the scapegoat ritual is basically a propitiatory sacrifice made to the forces of evil: Rabbi Akiva's students asked him: Is he allowed to change it? [In other words, if the lot with respect to the two goats was drawn by the High Priest incorrectly with his left hand, what is the halakhah regarding his right simply to transfer the lot to his right hand?] He said to them: Do not give the heretics an opportunity to dominate.[30] As Saul Lieberman in his edition of the Tosefta explains (in his short commentary), the fear that R. Akiva expresses here of the hertics has to be understood as follows: Do not allow the heretics [minim] to gain the upper hand in their answers, as they will say that even Israel believes in the worship of the spirits of the underworld, exactly as the Gentiles worship the gods of the underworld.[31] D And yet, despite all that has been said, this dualistic-magical conception nonetheless managed to penetrate Rabbinic Judaism openly (albeit from a completely different direction) in a well-known midrash from late rabbinic literature that astoundingly was not rejected as heretical, a midrash from the end of the eighth or ninth century CE, Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (chapter 46). This midrash explicitly expresses the puzzling idea that this sacrifice is best understood as a bribe offered to the demon Azazel.[32] The text there reads as follows:[33] On the day the Torah was given, Samael[34] said before the Holy One, blessed be He, “Master of the World! You have given me jurisdiction over all the nations of the world, but over Israel do you not give me jurisdiction?” He replied, “Here, you have jurisdiction over them on the Day of Atonement if you find sin amongst them, and if not, you have no jurisdiction.” Therefore they [Israel] would bribe[35] him on the Day of Atonement, in order that Israel's offering should not be canceled,[36] as it says, “(and he shall place lots upon the two goats,) one marked for the Lord and the other marked for ‘Aza'zel”[37] (Lev. 16:8). The lot for the Holy One, blessed be He, was for a burnt offering and the lot for ‘Aza'zel for a goat-sin offering, and all the sins of Israel were upon it, as it says, “Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to a cut-off land; [and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness]” (Lev. 16:22). We can, then, at this point of this discussion, fully accept the observation of Israel Knohl with respect to this midrash: The description [in the Hittite sources] of the goat as an ornate gift, intended to appease the angry and sending-plague god, reminds us of the characterization of the scapegoat in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer chapter 46.[38] This astonishing midrash became quite well known, and was cited by Naḥmanides in his Perush Ha-Torah (to Leviticus 16:8) written in the 13th century. There, Naḥmanides turns first to the baffling commentary of R. Avraham ibn Ezra (1089-1164) on this verse, explaining that this idea (i.e., that we offer up the scapegoat as a bribe to Samael, Satan) is already present in the secretive way that Ibn Ezra commented on the verse in question.[39] And then, relying on the passage just cited from the Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, Naḥmanides explains openly that this bribe was given to Satan in order to prevent him from annulling the sacrifices of Israel on Yom Kippur.[40] E According to Maimonides' philosophical view, evil does not itself exist in reality but, rather is the absence and lack of good. Similar concepts, for Maimonides must be similarly understood: darkness is the absence of light; and the evil instinct, or the devil, is just the power of the imagination in man, which hides the true power - the intellect. In Maimonides' eyes, rational thinking would lead any sane person to deny the existence of forces and creatures that were commonly attributed to the "existing" world of evil, such as demons.[41] Maimonides did not know the commentary of Naḥmanides to the Torah, which was written only in the 13th century;[42] nevertheless, he certainly knew the idea itself that is mentioned in Naḥmanides' writings, since he was very familiar with the midrashic work Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer,[43] and he would obviously have been aware of the enormous difficulty of this odd midrash. Maimonides, as expected, ignores completely the concept that the Torah could conceivably be commanding that the goat be sacrificed to a demon, and explains this obligation as a sort of “pedagogical drama” whose sole purpose was to frighten the people of Israel—it seems as if Maimonides is imagining this as a kind of “shock therapy” here!—in order to drive them to repent: Inasmuch as the he-goat that was sent forth into the wilderness served wholly to atone for great sins, so that there was no sin-offering of the congregation that served as atonement in as great a measure as that goat, which was as it were the bearer of all the sins, it was not to receive at all such treatment as being slaughtered or burnt or sacrificed, but had to be removed to as great a distance as possible and sent forth unto a land that is cut off, I mean one that was separated from habitation. No one has any doubt that sins are not bodies that may be transported from the back of one individual to that of another. But all these actions are parables serving to bring forth a form in the soul so that a passion toward repentance should result: We have freed ourselves from all our previous actions, cast them behind our backs, and removed them to an extreme distance.[44] F The Zohar, however, in contrast to Maimonides, presents a completely different perception: evil, and the concepts involved in it, are not just absence, they have a real reality in the world. In general, there are two parallel systems: one, the system of the good, in which spheres and worlds belong to the 'sacred deity', and of which the good instinct is a part; and the second, the 'Sitra Aḥra'[45] structure, of which the devil and the evil instinct are a part. This system also includes the angels of destruction and demons. The world and human beings therefore are torn between good and evil.[46] It will not come then as a great surprise that the Zohar seems to be passionate about the idea of sacrificing the scapegoat to Satan,[47] called the “Other Side,” the Sitra Aḥra.[48] In Zohar Vayeishev (vol. 1, 190a), for example, it is said that God had mercy on the people of Israel and advised them how to save themselves from the (celestial) prosecutor on Yom Kippur by bringing a sacrifice to the Sitra Aḥra. The Zohar then describes Satan as being so occupied with the sacrifice offered to him, similar to the way a hungry dog is busy with a piece of meat thrown to it,[49] that he forgets to step forward as the prosecutor of Israel. The Zohar, speaking in an especially clear voice, says also at Zohar Pinhas (vol. 3, 248a, in the inner-Zoharic text called the Raaya Meheimna, a later level in the Zoharic literature) that this sacrifice to the Sitra Aḥra is specifically meant to serve as a bribe. And in yet another intriguing and enigmatic passage, the Zohar (Emor, vol. 3, 101b) compares the fact that the Torah required that the High Priest use lots on Yom Kippur to determine which goat was to be a sacrifice to God, and which is meant to flatter Satan, to an aspect of the sexual relationship between married spouses: I have found in the Book of Enoch that he [Enoch] said that, just as on the first day of the month, the moon is purified to come close to her husband, so must one portion be given to the Sitra Aḥra and from the same type [this portion should be similar to the Sitra Aḥra himself, i.e., a goat is given to the Sitra Aḥra who has the form of a goat]; so also [in the same way] the woman when she is purified for her husband, one portion must be given to the Sitra Aḥra, and [should this portion – which is not specified – has to be as well] from its [i.e., the Sitra Aḥra] own type (Zohar, ibid.)[50] This concept of evil (the Sitra Aḥra) as an active force lived – on both in scholarly discussion,[51] and in some popular practices of ordinary observant Jews. For example, keeping strictly the ritual of mayyim akharonim (“last waters”),[52] an ancient Talmudic practice that involved ritual handwashing after eating, that was widely neglected in at least some places during the post-Talmudic era (cf., e.g., Shulkhan Arukh, Orakh Hayyim, 181:10), was now suddenly re-emphasized and was strongly maintained by those who took the special authority of kabbalistic sources seriously. Now, following the Zohar, it was explained that the water that washes the dirt from one's hands after a meal is actually an offering to Satan (Sitra Aḥra), who is content not to cause mischief once he receives his portion of filth and evil.[53] G Leaving aside the Zohar, the fact that Naḥmanides interpreted the Azazel ritual as a bribe to Satan caused, unsurprisingly a real shock to the leaders of modern Orthodoxy. For example, consider the comment of American Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, who wrote in the 1970's as follows: According to Nachmanides, Azazel is Samael, meaning Satan. This is a shocking idea, God help us! How could Nachmanides even suggest such a thing? Surely to sacrifice a goat to Satan is idolatry! This is indeed a horrifying explanation of the word Azazel. As a matter of fact, Nachmanides tarries and stalls until at least he “reveals the secret” to the reader. How it is at all thinkable that the Torah should command us to offer up a sacrifice to Satan? “And we give Samael a bribe on the Day of Atonement” is how Nachmanides phrases it.[54] H Now, if I may, I will offer my own suggestion regarding the way to explain this puzzling ritual. The assumption I will make is that: even if we accept the suggestion of many Biblical scholars that this ritual was originally adapted from the Hittite world as explained above, that does not prevent us from further considering how it underwent transformation in the era of biblical Israel. According to the suggestion I will now make, the Torah is well aware that man, even if he strives with all his might to overcome his “evil side,” often fails to do so and will therefore ultimately feel guilty about that failure.[55] Even if the Freudian theory to the effect that the unconscious acts in its own ways to thwart our attempts to do better was unknown in ancient times, I can still intuitively claim that the ancients also very often felt the fact of the existence of the unconscious as a sort of “dark material” within that can unexpectedly burst forth.[56] I believe, then, that the ancients understood very well, even without having a modern systematic theory to buttress their hunch, that these “dark energies” are the ones that hold us back and prevent us from reaching our perfect state of final inner correction. Following Maimonides[57] in a way (although my proposal is based on the Freudian method more than the Maimonidean),[58] I would therefore like to suggest that the Torah uses the image of the scapegoat to convey a message to the people of Israel, a message aimed to calm and ease the heavy guilty feelings experienced by an anxious people on Yom Kippur.[59] A clear example for this heavy guilt, which sometimes can haunt certain types of people, was kept in a rare piece of evidence from the second temple time in the Mishnah Keritot 6:3: Rabbi Eliezer says: A person may volunteer [to bring a] provisional guilt offering [Asahm Talui, which was brought not because of any sin, but rather just to ease the guilt feeling!] every day, and at any time that he chooses, [even if there is no uncertainty as to whether he sinned, and this] type [of offering was called] the guilt offering of the pious, [as they brought it due to their constant concern that they] might have sinned. They said about Bava ben Buta that he would [volunteer to bring] a provisional guilt offering every day except for one day after Yom Kippur [because of the atonement that have been already done in Yom Kippur itself].[60] Behind the ritual of sending the scapegoat to Azazel, therefore, according to my reading, stands the theological assumption that though human beings can strive to correct their virtues and actions as much as they can, full correction is not possible. Moreover, no matter how intensely we try, the truth is that any real mending of the inner state of mind is not in the end done by us; only the grace of God (ḥesed) can ultimately enable this correction to take place in our psychic reality. The insight of Martin Buber in this regard can be helpful because Buber argued that the basis for will and the basis of divine ḥesed are mixed together to the extent that it is impossible to differentiate one from the other given the real inner processes that are taking place and engender both: It is senseless to ask how far my own action reaches and where God's grace begins; they do not in the least limit each other. Rather what alone concerns me before I bring something about is my action and what alone concerns me after it has been accomplished is God's grace.[61] 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.[62] 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 connection between the "carrying [sins] goat" and the way we carry out our guilt feelings can be supported by the way Juan Cirlot presented in his Dictionary of Symbols the Scapegoat in regard to its symbolic function in the ancient Greek culture – as a symbol of the projection of one's own guilt upon someone else,[63] and of the consequent repression of one's conscience. Hence the traditional significance of the he-goat as an emissary, and its evil association with the devil".[64] In contrast to the Greek culture, however, in the Jewish tradition, these guilt feelings, according to my understanding, are going through two processes: a. One is commanded not to "throw" these guilt feelings on any other "scapegoat", but rather to take full responsibility for his/her own sins, in other words: to repent; and b. after he/she does what he/she can do in order to mend what should be mended, then he/she is guided to let the rest of the "load" of guilt feelings to be "sent to Azazel"; in other words, to surrender himself in trust to God as the atoner. These “remainders” of guilt feeling should now be then “thrown off the cliff” on Yom Kippur in order to symbolize the fact that those emotions are no longer carried on one's back from one year to the next—and thus, as a community do we enter through the gates of the new year cleansed of our sins and calmed of our anxiety. The transition here is a delicate crossing of a narrow bridge from one side (i.e., the one in which takes place the work of the daily life, involving the weighty responsibilities that we must shoulder to be active in the world) to the other side (i.e., the one in which the religious life unfolds), a crossing that can only successfully be completed once we let the heavy burden we bear be “thrown to the desert,” and take a more passive position in directing our hearts to God as the one who is responsible for the final correction. This is, as I see it, the main idea of the holy day of Yom Kippur: to cross from one side of the bridge to the other. This ritual therefore has a cathartic role, in that it is intended to soothe the minds of the people who believe they are not sufficiently pure (in this context, meaning unsullied by sin) to stand before God at all on that holy day. But it also has an educational function which aims to maintain the delicate balance in religious life between an individual's dynamic effort to self-correct (which might conceivably engender a sense of arrogance, in which the Torah declares at Deuteronomy 8:17: “And you say to yourselves, ‘My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me'), and a passive attitude towards one's flaws and sins, that could easily lead to despair and inability to act.[65] I My suggestion here corresponds nicely with the name of the day that the Torah itself uses at Leviticus 23:27: Yom ha-Kippurim. The key here is that kippur originally meant “covering”, as one can see from the first appearance of this root in Scripture at Genesis 6:13-14, where we read that “God said to Noah, ‘I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make it an ark with compartments, and cover it [ [וְכָפַרְתָּ אֹתָהּinside and out with pitch.”[66] Keeping that meaning in mind and applying it to our context yields, then, the suggestion that, when it comes to atonement for sins in the Torah, the core meaning has to do with covering and concealing (by forgiveness, by understanding that now it is in the hands of the Mercy of God—and not as one might think by repression!) the unwanted deed itself, and not necessarily in its perfect correction.[67] J As a nice support for my reading of the biblical scapegoat ritual, it would be most appropriate, I believe, to end this essay with the magnificent poetic words of Yotam Benziman on the deep meaning of kapparah in the Tanakh, that I find corresponding so beautifully to my suggestion regarding the ritual of the scapegoat: The transition to the metaphysical meaning [i.e., from covering the ark in Genesis to atonement for the altar later in the Torah, and then atonement of the people of Israel themselves] allows us to speak about atonement for sin and not just for an altar. But the original meaning of the word remains the same. There is no atonement, only cover [i.e., only an act of sacred covering up] […] The past cannot be changed. He who atones for sin covers it. He spreads a layer over it of blood, of sweat, of tears. Who is the one who achieves atonement for a sin? In truth, the sinner. He is the one who is required to do something […] Yet not only him, but also the person, or entity, against whom the injustice was directed. This is why the people can call to God with the words: “When all manner of sins overwhelm me, it is You who forgive our iniquities [=For our transgressions – You will atone”]” (Psalm 85:4); Thus, one can say of God: “But He, being merciful, forgives iniquity”. Atonement is essentially similar to carrying it [...] The two who are involved in the atonement, the two who carry it, do not nullify the past; they cover it together. They apply layer upon layer upon layer. Every layer is another bit of suppression of the sin; at the same time, though, it is also another contact with the painful place, with the irreparable sin, with the injustice and with the sorrow included in it. In contrast to the longing to change and erase the past, there is in the atonement a remembrance of the injustice, of the shame and terror involved in it. It is difficult to find more poignant verses to describe this situation than the following: “Nevertheless, I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish it with you as an everlasting covenant. You shall remember your ways and feel ashamed, when you receive your older sisters and your younger sisters, and I give them to you as daughters, though they are not of your covenant. I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD. Thus, you shall remember and feel shame, and you shall be too abashed to open your mouth again, when I have forgiven you for all that you did – declares the Lord God” (Ezekiel 16:60-63). Here she [=Israel] remembers and is ashamed. But he [=God] is atoning her. He offers her an everlasting covenant. This covenant will be based on a willingness to live with the past. She [=Israel] will be built from shame. It will be a joint conversation of layer after layer. The mutual carrying [=of God and Israel together] is also a joint activity. So where is the difference between carrying [נשיאה, תִּשָּׂא חַטָּאתָם][68] and atonement? I believe that the atonement can be described as occurring at the same time as the carrying. The shared burden establishes a renewed relationship. Both carriers discuss past sins and deal with the burden. This coping gradually covers the wounds. It is the atonement, the covering, the covering the matter. This is the embedding of the scars [...]. The wounds crust over slowly, but the scars remain.[69] * Supplement 1: (to footnote no. 7): Why was the Sacrificial Animal a Goat? One can ask at this point of our discussion: why was the sacrificial animal specifically a goat? The answer seems to be quite obvious: in the Tanakh, and not only here, the goat is called śa‘ir or plural śeʿirim (e.g., Isa. 13:21) which "describes a group of creatures which are usually identified as 'hairy demons, Satyrs".[70] The following sources, which are coming from post-biblical periods, obviously do not explain this fact in the Bible itself; however they explain well why this fact, i.e., that the goat was considered as having demonic characteristics, was accepted by many commentators as a natural and evident fact. The goat as demon was well-known in Greco-Roman culture.[71] This ancient attitude viewing the goat as a creature that is demonic and harmful, might have somehow inspired even the later rabbinic sources.[72] The Zohar, however (Wa-yeshev, vol 1, p. 185b), describes the goat, whose blood is perceived to be similar to that of humans,[73] as emerging from the “side of judgment” (sitra de-dina), meaning the side of harsh judgment, which is the source of the punishment meted out to Jacob, symbolized by the goat that his sons slaughtered and whose blood they “offered” to him (see Gen. 37:31-32). In another homily in the Zohar (Shemini, vol. 3, p. 38a-b), the question is asked why the Torah requires a goat (śeʿir ʿizzim) as a sin offering (see Lev. 9:3). The answer given is that in the past Israel offered sacrifices to goats, meaning to the demons that ruled in the high mountains using their demonic powers. To purify themselves from this sin, they were required to offer goats as sacrifices at that time. In a different homily in the Zohar (Wa-yiqra,vol. 3, p. 25a), Rabbi Simeon is even quoted as stating that the word, ʿez (goat) is a “bad name,” indicating that it comes from the “side of evil” (sitra bisha). For that very reason, it is necessary to offer it as a sacrifice to God (“And if his sacrifice is a goat, he shall bring it before the Lord,” Lev. 3:12). If an individual is invaded by an impure spirit, then his sacrifice must come from the same “kind” of animal that belongs to the level of impurity that infected him. In another interesting comment, the Zohar (Tetsaweh, vol. 2, p. 185a-b) assumes (without any linguistic basis) that a śaʿir is younger than a mature ʿez. (In reality, both Hebrew words are synonyms for goat). On this basis, the Zohar asks why the Tanakh commands to offer a śaʿir and not an ʿez as a sacrifice on the New Moon and on Yom Kippur. The answer is that the hair of a young goat, a śaʿir, has yet to grow long, indicating that it had yet to be deeply immersed in the side of evil, the Sitra Aḥra. On the other hand, the long hair of a mature goat, an ʿez, symbolizes its deep immersion in the impurity of the evil side, the Sitra Aḥra. (See Zohar, Aharei mot, vol. 3, p. 79a for a further discussion of hair as an expression of the elements of punishment and impurity). Consequently, it is possible to understand why the Zohar Ḥadash (Toldot, p. 27a) concludes that there is no apparent danger in herding sheep, while the goatherd is in danger of meeting the forces of judgment while tending to them.[74] It is interesting also in this respect to note that in the modern period, R. Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook's approach reflects that of the Zohar, refracted through the prism of his own modern understanding that seems to be influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer. R. Kook posits that the goat symbolizes the lowest level soul that causes certain people to choose to act in a base manner. In addition, he sees the goat as a general representation of a “cosmic thanatos” that functions constantly below the surface to destroy the reality of existence (in keeping with a hidden agenda) in an effort to repair it – in order to allow for a loftier renewal in the future.[75]
Supplement 2: (for footnote no. 56): Pre-Freud Perceptions of the Unconscious: Several Examples It is not hard to find evidences for the simple fact that, even before Freud, ancients and later scholars learned in one way or another about the unconscious, as Simon Goldhill summarizes in a general way regarding the Greco-Roman world: There have been some serious attempts to look at the history – back to antiquity – not just of madness but also of how the mind's structure is imagined. Although it is evident that the term ‘unconscious' has no equivalent in Greek or Latin, and that the function of the unconscious is inaugurated as a theoretical concern only in Freud's writing, it is nonetheless possible to excavate how the hidden recesses of the mind—its blindness, self-deceptions and misprisions—are articulated either in the extensive medical and philosophical discussions of antiquity or in the broader literary representations of mental life. If dreams provide a royal road to the unconscious, there are both the ancient dream books, from which archive Freud focused on Artemidorus, and plenty of literary and philosophical versions of dreams and their analysis to explore. Above all, there is much recent critical investigation of ancient engagement with a theory of memory.[76] Many have written about this topic, and not solely with respect to the world of classical antiquity. I will refer here, however, in the interest of brevity, only to three pre-Freudian examples from the context of Jewish thought: A. Regarding Spinza and his notion of the unconscious, see Isidor Silbermann, “Some Reflections on Spinoza and Freud,” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 42:4 (1973), pp. 601-624, esp. pp. 611-612. B. Regarding the notion of unconscious in Hasidism, see: Gershom Scholem, Habilti-muda umusag 'kadmut hasekhel' besifrut haHasidit, in Gershom Scholem, Explications and Implications: Writings on Jewish Heritage and Renaissance [Hebrew], ed. Abraham Schapira (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 351-360; and see the list of publications regarding this topic in Aryeh Wineman, “Hasidic View of Dreams, Torah-Text, and the Language of Allusion,” Hebrew Studies 52 (2011), pp. 353-362, at pp. 355-356, esp. at p. 356, n. 16-17. C. Using the idea of “kokhot kehim” (“dark energies”), which in Mussar Movement texts bore the same meaning exactly as the unconscious of Freud; see, for example, letter no. 6 of R. Israel Salanter [1809-1883] in Izkhak Blazer [ed.], Or Israel (Vilna, 1900), pp. 24b-26a at p. 25a, regarding several Biblical figures (as they were perceived, of course, in the rabbinic tradition). R. Yaakov Kamenetsky (1891-1986) explained the behaviour of these figures by the idea of kokhot kehim; namely, that these figures were moved unconsciously by those “dark energies”. See, for example, Yaakov Kamenetsky, Emet leYaakov on the Torah [Hebrew] (New York: Emat leYaakov Institute, 1996), pp. 88-89, on the question of why Lot chose to live in Sodom, and the gap between his conscious-rational explanation and his unconscious desires. (For several similar additional explanations, see Akiva Weisinger, “The Hidden Motives of Biblical Characters and Their Interpreters: On the Possibility of Freudian Readings in R. Yaakov Kamenetsky,” available at https://yeshiva.academia.edu/AqibhaEtc 2.
Supplement 3: (for footnote no. 58): On the Freudian Reading of the Scapegoat Ritual of Géza Róheim In a completely different way, Géza Róheim suggests[77] that we should view the element of repression as central to the Yom Kippur scapegoat ritual – while I, in contrast, interpret that ritual not as an instance of simple avoidance or repression, but rather as one expressive of mindfully conscious welcome. In his essay, Róheim proposes a psychoanalytic explanation for the duality that one finds in this ritual—one goat to the devil and one to God—as related to initiation ceremonies, where there is a built-in duality, according to his Freudian perception, between, on the one hand, punishment for the sin of Oedipal lust of the child towards his mother and, on the other, the desire to push the child through the initiation rite into a new world of sexual activity as an adult male. Róheim believes that the Biblical ritual should be understood to be expressing of the sense that the “rebellious child” must be punished, i.e., must “go to hell,” that is, his desire must be repressed into the unconscious, since it represents the sense of sin. On the other hand, the child now is entering into a new stage of adulthood that symbolizes the child's readiness to be consecrated unto God. From now on, he is to represent the values and virtues appropriate to a mature man in his society. Being sacrificed on the altar to God means, then, according to Róheim's Freudian psychoanalytic reading of the Torah, being from now on the victim of his own controlling super-ego. According to his explanations, the “goat” in this Biblical ritual symbolises both sides, and therefore the duality of two "goats". On one hand, the goat "to God" leads to the ego-ideal (the “Ichideal”), meaning that the child must henceforth become identical to his father (mature, a man); but at the same time there is also "a goat to Azazel" that is “led into the desert” – which means that the ancient, wild instinct of incest, is thrown into the desert, “the land of repression”. Concerning Róheim's psychologically dualistic way of interpretation, I will only comment briefly here by saying that, in principle, I do not oppose this way of reading our ritual. My disagreement is only with the tone of absoluteness with which it is presented in his writing – which seems to negate any other way of reading the ritual. Róheim's approach is of course that of the typical Freudian, suggestive of psychological reductionism.[78] On the other hand, interestingly enough, the modern rabbinical apologetic approach can also be interpreted against the background of the same stand of psychological dualism. For example, I will summarise here shortly what is stated in regard to our discussion by R. Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888). Hirsch argues that the goat sacrificed to God symbolizes the person who decides to dedicate himself to God—in contrast to the “scapegoat,” which symbolizes the person who refuses to hear the voice of God. The power is given to man, as Hirsch explains, because man can surrender himself to the authority of God, and this means to resist all internal and external stimuli that tempt him to depart from the path that God commands us to walk. But man can also decide to be like the “scapegoat,” that is, to use his power of will in order to be in opposition to God, simply by refusing to hear His voice. Hirsch explains that God gave man the power of resistance, but man is the one who decides whether to direct this power towards the choice of good, namely by resisting the evil inclination, or, vice versa, to use it in order to oppose God and indulge in sensuality, symbolized here by the scapegoat.[79] I, nevertheless, believe that true respect for the ancients' text must not derive only from the dualistic perspective (whether psychanalytic or rabbinic). Instead, I am trying to present a monistic, non-dualistic, interpretation of this ritual, one which, at least in my eyes, can make sense. Even if one is not willing to accept this suggestion in regard to the Torah itself, perhaps it can be still accepted at least as the preferred explanation for the reading of the Talmudic sages on this topic. In addition, it is essential for me to emphasize that in reading any texts of the ancients, I—as a person who comes to the text from literary point of view—do not see any a priori obligation to accept one way and reject the other. Nor does the way of reading the text that I present here necessarily contradict the one offered by Róheim.[80] It is permissible to say that both options exist at the same time in reading this text; and perhaps—in a mysterious way—we have personally touched on those two options again: for God and for Satan… Supplement 4: (for footnote no. 62): On “Quietism” and Activism in Religious Life and Different Examples from the Jewish Tradition for this Tension David Macarthur defines quietism in these words: In its original use for a form of heterodox Roman Catholic theology, ‘quietism' referred to a withdrawal from worldly affairs and intellectual activity together with a doctrine of self-annihilation. Religious quietists held that through the constant contemplation of God one could overcome the self and merge with Him.[81] Macarthur also cites in his discussion Patricia Ward's definition of quietism: Quietism emphasized the abandonment of self to God, annihilation of the will in union with God, pure love, and a form of inner prayer.[82] This tension is indeed one of the difficult issues in the study of religions. I cannot deal with this topic specifically in Judaism at length here, therefore I will only mention here three central crossroads from three different periods of time in the history of the religious ideas in Judaism that were connected powerfully to this tension: A. According to Alexander Rofé, the Ephraimite school in the Tanakh (referring specifically to the ancient Ephraimite text that stretches itself from Joshua 25 to 1 Samuel 12) tended to endorse quietism by stressing that the only king Israel has is God, not any flesh and blood king.[83] This Ephraimite school opposed any preparation for war against any enemy as they held an extreme passive position out of a deep sense of trust in God as the one who protects the righteous on earth. On the other hand, Rofé claims, the Deuteronomistic school advocated an activist view, arguing that the people of Israel must establish an army and fight against their enemies. According to the Deuteronomistic school, then, God will only help one who dares actively to act on his own behalf. This school perceived the institution of monarchy as positive (with limitations, of course), for the first role of the king was to lead the army into battle.[84] B. Between early Judaism and early Christianity, this tension manifested itself in the disagreement that in the end tore one from the other, that is the tension between Pauline doctrine and the opposing view of the Sages. In contrast to the Pauline view of works (the law) and grace as mutually exclusive, and grace as the sole effective means of achieving justification (i.e., freedom from sin), the Sages (and even the members of the Qumran sect) understood both works (law) and grace (Ḥesed) to be essential elements of the divine-human relationship. But, as opposed to the people of the Qumran sect and the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, who meticulously observed the Torah commandments, Paul took this idea of the “choice of grace,” which emphasizes divine activity and human passivity, to the furthest possible extreme, and taught that a person chosen by a primordial decree from God is already protected by divine grace and is thus no longer required to observe the commandments.[85] C. The third interesting case I would like to present here regarding the way this debate was argued within Jewish circles has to do with the way Hasidism was understood by Martin Buber, versus the way it was understood by Gershom Scholem and his students. I will shorten the long discussion that was held in this respect by numerous scholars later, by citing here only the summary of Israel Koren, who describes in his consideration the main point which is important for our discussion here. In order to justify Martin Buber's interpretation of Hassidism against the severe attack of Gershom Sholem and Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer, Koren writes: The sources I have brought [=in his book earlier] from the Baal Shem Tov's disciple, R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoye, as well as the description of the life of the Baal Shem Tov in Shivhei ha-Besht, the teachings attributed to him (such as the doctrine of alien thoughts), and the mystical experiences of the Baal Shem Tov (‘aliyat neshamah), are all indicative of great activity. Even if we agree with Scholem's claim that the Hasidic doctrine of sparks referred to the redemption of the sparks and not to that of the concrete world […], extended activity in the realm of sparks per se indicates that it is impossible to identify Hasidic mysticism exclusively with passivity or with an all-inclusive desire to arrive at a state of annihilation. The perception of mystical experience as one thing and its practical derivatives as another, as suggested by Schatz, is artificial and has no real basis. It does not take into consideration the different fields in which the mystic acts, as from the outset she [=Schatz] defined mysticism in a narrow way, and thereafter assumes her conclusions on the basis of this narrow definition. But if there is in fact a certain tension in the soul of the Zaddik between his spiritual enterprise and his earthly activity, or between times of greater consciousness (gadlut) during prayer and times of more limited spiritual awareness (katnut) when he is among people in the marketplace, this tension is itself a basic component of his spiritual enterprise, and there is no reason to see one as secondary to the other, or to designate the one as mystical and the other as external to the definition of mysticism. An artificial separation of this type characterized Buber himself during certain periods of his life, although, as I have shown […] he recognized the activist and concrete component of Hasidic mysticism in his essay 'The Baal Shem Tov's Instruction' (1927).[86]
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