In Jewish ritual history, it was of great import to the Israelites, along with many people of the Near East, to maintain the spiritual purity of sacred spaces. This is why at the changing of the seasons, during the holiest time of the year, spiritual cleaning took center stage. To purify God’s dwelling place on earth, the holy Tent of Meeting, there was a dual goat ritual (Leviticus 16:7-23). One of the two goats was designated as an offering “to God,” as an animal sacrifice acknowledging sin. The second goat was “sent to Azazel”: Aaron, the high priest, placed his hands on the head of the second goat and confessed the Israelites’ sins, symbolically transferring the sins to the goat. Then the goat was sent alive, into the wilderness, to banish those sins forever.
Annie Levy’s A Kind Place for Scapegoats, a midrash told from the goat’s perspective, embraces several questions around the origin of scapegoats and scapegoating. Central to her brilliant exploration is the question, “Who is responsible?” As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel tells us, “Some are guilty; all are responsible” – a theme of his life’s work and a leitmotif of our Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur season.
Levy’s question reminds us that there are so many who are designated guilty, while those who actually perpetrated the wrongful acts wash their hands and walk away. As the founder of the “Survivor’s Shiva” (a project of www.wonderandrepair.org ), I am privy to the multitudes of stories in our Jewish communities of scapegoated children and adults. Professional and volunteer leaders are told through words and deeds that they need to hold the mistakes of others, to rid the community of responsibility for them. I see our community of survivors in Levy’s tale. And I believe in the scapegoat’s antidote she depicts. In her story and our work, I recognize the recurring truth: that we can never promise those who have been scapegoated that they will be healed, but we can, and as a Jewish community are responsible to, witness their pain in the hopes that it will lead them to a new and better place in the wilderness.
Picture this: You are a goat. An ancient goat. An ancient goat with the soul of a precocious, wide-eyed child.
You say things like:
Being pushed out of the only community that you’ve ever known isn’t the end of the world. Although, understandably, it feels that way.
