Two Goats and Two Wolves: Yom Kippur Morning Sermon 5775

I was paying close attention to the Torah reading today, because Yom Kippur has high stakes, and I want to make sure we do it right. Luckily the Torah portion gives us detailed instructions for how to observe Yom Kippur, or at least how the very first Yom Kippurs were observed.

So I was paying close attention, and I read that to do this right, I’m going to need two goats. The Torah says I should change into a white linen tunic, with linen pants, and a linen sash and a linen turban, and you all will bring me two goats, two identical goats. And then we’ll place them up here on the bimah, and we’ll draw lots to see which will be for Adonai and which for Azazel. The Goat for Adonai, we will keep here, on the bimah (Howard, you’d hold it, right?), and the one for Azazel, we’ll place our hands on his head, and confess our sins, and then we will open the door and send him away, to wander down Westchester Drive, carrying our sins on his back.

If this tradition sounds weird to you, you’re not alone. It sounds weird to me, too, and it’s no wonder why we no longer do it. Even our ancient commentators thought it sounded weird. Animal sacrifice was a normative part of Judaism during the periods of the First and Second Temples. The Talmud deals regularly with the minutia of the sacrificial cult even though sacrifice was no longer practiced by the time that text was written. Yet even in the Talmud and other texts, the custom puzzles the commentators. Who or what is Azazel and why does he, she, or it, need a goat?

Azazel is only mentioned here in the Torah, so it’s hard to say what it means. The Mishnah thinks that perhaps Azazel is a place. Rambam says it is a high mountain. The Septuagint translates it as “escape,” implying that the goat is set to free. Modern biblical scholars argue that Azazel was likely the name of a demon or a demigod, and we see references to him in early post-biblical literature and midrashim. Perhaps Ibn Ezra, the 12th century commentator sums it up best when he cryptically says, “the truth is a matter of mystery.”

To all these commentators, the practice of the two goats on Yom Kippur stands out as strange and worthy of note. But regardless, it’s a powerfully evocative ceremony. The priest stands dressed all in white linen, ready for the Yom Kippur offerings. Two goats are brought before him. It’s made very clear in the Talmud that these goats must be identical. It must be impossible to distinguish one from the other. The High Priest produces an urn containing two lots. On one, the words “For Adonai” are written. On the other “For Azazel.” The priest puts both hands in the urn and pulls out the lots, indicating which goat will be offered up to God and which will be sent to Azazel. He ties a piece of crimson wool around the horn of Azazel’s goat and another around the neck of the one Adonai. The goat for Adonai becomes part of the sacrifice that the priest performs at the altar. He offers it up to God, the same as any other sacrifice. But after that, he returns to the other goat, he places his hands on its head, and confesses all of Israel’s sins. Then the animal is taken away without a blessing or any further ritual. It is sent off into the wilderness, escorted by another priest. What happens next is unclear. In some versions the goat is just sent out to wander in the wilderness. In other versions, it is taken to the top of a craggy mountain, and either the priest lets it fall or pushes it off. In any event, the goat is never seen or heard from again.

The ceremony is puzzling but haunting. There is grandeur and magic in it. It is dripping with symbolism, which is, I think, what makes me envious of it this morning. It seems like today we could use a striking ceremony like this to add meaning to our observance. But since we probably can’t get anyone to lend us their goats, let see if we can imagine what the function of the ceremony might be.


Today is the day of extremes. Life and death, good and evil. Everything hangs in the balance. And we feel this tension inside of us. If we were perfect, if we were people who never sinned, then we would not need a Yom Kippur. But nobody is perfect. Everyone misses the mark. And everyone arrives at this day and takes stock. We acknowledge what we have done wrong and strive to be better. We know that there is good in us, and that there is evil too, and we strive to aim for the good, to overpower our baser urges. A Native American elder described his inner struggle, saying, “Inside me there are two powerful wolves. One wolf is kind and good. The other is mean and evil. They fight each other in my heart all the time.” When asked which wolf wins, he responded, “The one that wins is the one that I feed.” This year, we pray that we will feed the kinder wolf.

There is a Jewish term for this. The Rabbis believed that within each of us live two inclinations, a yetzer harah – an inclination towards evil – and a yetzer hatov – an inclination towards good. Like the wolves, they battle inside of us and we choose which to listen too. We are like the classic cartoon of Donald Duck with an angel and a devil on our shoulders. And it’s an apt image, because in the cartoon, the angel is a tiny Donald, and the devil is a tiny Donald. Both are expressions of him, and he must choose which side of himself to listen to. He is both his yetzer harah and his yetzer hatov.

The two goats are like our yetzer harah and our yetzer hatov. First, they are identical. It’s impossible to tell them apart. And there are actions that we do where we cannot tell which inclination is driving us. What in one instance might be a mitzvah, might in another be a sin. Take for example gossip. Lashon Harah, or the evil tongue, is strictly forbidden in the Torah and rabbinic literature. The rabbis are clear: saying something about someone else – true or untrue – is a sin. Yet there are times when it is required. For instance, if someone is entering into a business relationship with someone you know to be untrustworthy, you are supposed to warn the person. And honest testimony in a court of law is a mitzvah. The same act can be a sin or a commandment. Let’s imagine I said, “He’s a crook.” If I say it to a friend, it’s Lashon Harah. If I say it to a potential client, it’s a warning. If I say it to a judge, it’s a mitzvah. The exact same words. The two inclinations inside of us are identical, just like the two goats, and we have to listen very carefully to know who is speaking. We have to carefully consider our intentions. Is what I’m saying for my benefit, or the listener’s? Will it harm someone if I say it? A friend has three questions she tells her children to think about before they speak: “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?” The two goats remind us that all of our actions are suspect on this day. All must be considered. Maybe there were sins we disguised as mitzvot. Maybe there were difficult decisions we had to make for which we are beating ourselves up but which we made for the right reasons. Just as we cannot tell at the start of the ceremony which goat is destined for God and which will be sent to Azazel, we do not always know how our actions will turn out. Situations we entered into with the best of intentions turned rotten. In dark places, we were able to do some good. The two goats call us to examine our actions deeply, for we know they can look the same.

The Hebrew word Yetzer – intention --- comes from the some root as yatzor – to create, to form. The priest stands before the goats and in the moment before he reaches his hands into the urn, either goat could take on either role. There is an infinite amount of creative potential in the moment. It’s like Schrödinger's famous thought experiment about the cat in the box: The moment before you open the box, the cat can be simultaneously alive or dead. What enormous potential. Every day, every decision, every moment, we get to choose. And before each choice, there is infinite creative potential. Will I choose to listen to my yetezer harah or my yetzer hatov, my kind wolf or my angry wolf? Judaism says that in every decision there is a reset, a chance to do good. Maybe yesterday we leaned a little too heavily on the yetzer harah. Today there is just as good a chance we could choose good. In every decision, we are Yatzor, re-created anew. Perhaps last year, the goat on the left went to Azazel. But this has no bearing on this year. Every year, we choose a new.

Rabbi Eli Schocet tells a story of his childhood. He grew up in Chicago, where his father and his grandfather were both rabbis. One Shabbat afternoon when he was a young boy at his grandfather's home, a big Cadillac pulled up. Three burly guards stepped out with a well-known Jewish gangster. The man walked in and laid an envelope on the rabbi's table filled with cash. "This is for my mother's yahrzeit.” Then he left.

It is a special mitzvah to give charity on a Yahrzeit in memory of the loved one. But Eli was angry at his grandfather. "How can you accept money from that man? And on the Sabbath of all times?"

His grandfather softly answered, "Don't you understand what happened? This man is a criminal who lives an ugly life. But for one brief moment he looked on a calendar and saw that it was his mother’s yahrzeit. He remembered his mother’s dreams for him, that he grow up to be a Jew, that he grow up to be a mentsch. For one brief moment, he wants her memory to live within. That was a sacred moment, and I did not want to take away from it."

The two goats stand there, reminding us of our immense creative potential, the yatzor in each of us. Perhaps last year we were not the people we wished to be. Today, as every day, God reminds us that we stand like the two pure goats, waiting to choose to be for Adonai.
                                                       

And then the lots are cast, the decision is made. One goat goes for Adonai, and the other for Azazel. And so it is with sin and mitzvah. When we listen to the yetzer harah, we are like the goat sent to Azazel. We wander in the wilderness alone and afraid. We are on a high mountain, and the rocks below are jagged and menacing. Maimonides says that the function of the goat for Azazel was symbolic, meant to “impress the mind of the sinner that sins must lead him to the wasteland.” In ancient times, on Yom Kippur, the whole Jewish world faced toward the Temple but their sins were sent away, out the back door, to wander through the treacherous wilderness alone. What a powerful, visual reminder that yetzer hatov draw us into Jewish life while our yetzer harah separates us from the community and puts us in moral, and sometimes mortal, danger. Perhaps this is the meaning of the Unataneh Tokef prayer, when we say that today is the day we decide who shall live and who shall die. Who shall be like the goat who lives for God and who shall live for Azazel, and walk the treacherous path alone for the rest of their days?

When we choose to listen to our yetzer hatov, we are like the goat for Adonai. We are drawn closer to God. Why would we want to leave? What can we do to stay this close to God? Pirke Avot says, “Mitzvah Goreret Mitzvah – One good deed leads to another.” When we feel the radiance of listening to our yetzer hatov, it makes us want to listen more, to feed that wolf more. We come to synagogue on this Yom Kippur, ready to feel that closeness. We are ready to be forgiven of the mistakes we made in the last year, the times we missed the mark, so we can be like the goat for Adonai, drawn close to God. This is the function of Yom Kippur, to let God wipe the slate clean, so we can draw back to God. The word for sin is “chet.” It literally means “to miss the mark.” When we sin, it pulls us away from God, and T’shuvah – repentance – is our opportunity to return. The high priest would only enter the Holy of Hollies, the innermost part of the Temple on one day a year – Yom Kippur. On this day, when he and Israel were forgiven for their sins, he would enter into God’s inner sanctum. At no time in the whole year is humanity closer to God than on the day of repentance. When we repent and are forgiven, we feel closer to God, and that nearness urges us to do better, to try harder, to feed to the good wolf more.

The goat that is sent to Azazel is called the scapegoat. He carries the sins of the people. This is actually the root of the term, but I think we misuse it today. Today, to scapegoat someone is to blame them for your problems, to offload responsibility on to them. It’s a negative. Anyone who has ever had someone at work who gets blamed for the team’s mistakes knows that this is not a position of respect. But in the Torah, there is honor in the ceremony. The community comes together to recognize the goat as a sacred vessel for their misdeeds. This is not an excuse or an easy-out. It is a necessary ritual, commanded by God, to relieve the Jewish community of the burden of their sins. And why would we need such a vessel? God knows we have a habit of holding on to things, of carrying them with us longer than we should. The scapegoat ritual allows us to let go. We watch our sins walk off into the sunset. We see them leave. We look at the goat, acknowledge what we need to let go of, and then we let it go. This is why I wish I had two goats here today. Yom Kippur needs a ritual like this. Rosh Hashanah has tashlich, but Yom Kippur does not. There is no visual symbol, no physical reminder that we need to let go. So our prayers will have to do. Our job over the next 8-or-so hours is to figure out what we need to let go of and figure out what how we are going to let go. The machzor reminds us that God remembers what we forget, and God also forgets what we remember. God has already let go. The slate is wiped clean. Our job today is to make sure we also let go, so that tonight, we can step forward into the new year, refreshed and rejuvenated, knowing that when we break the fast, we will resolve to start feeding the good wolf.


G’mar Chatimah Tovah – May we be sealed for a blessing in the book of life!