Lesson 54: Yom Kippur

From the book Mida Tova: Articles on the Principles of Halakhic Thinking by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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With God’s help

On the Two Goats: A Homily for Yom Kippur

A Look at the Analytic and the Synthetic

Introduction

As the year draws to a close, we are dedicating this essay to the Sabbath of Yom Kippur, with a homily on the subject of the two goats and the Yom Kippur service. As we shall see, the medieval authorities hint at several secrets embedded in this matter, and in my view several highly relevant ideas lie behind them, touching on the question of the analytic and the synthetic, discussed in detail in Michael Avraham’s four-volume series. Because space is limited, I will not elaborate here on the philosophical aspects and implications, and will focus mainly on their relation to the Yom Kippur service. The rest is left to the reader to study.

This is also an opportunity to wish all our readers a good year and a favorable final sealing in the Book of Life. We should add that our plans for the coming year have not yet been finalized, and, God willing, matters will become clearer after this coming Sukkot.

A. The Commandment of the Two Goats

Introduction: The Secret of the Two Goats

The Torah, in the portion of Aharei Mot (Leviticus 16:7-10), commands that two goats be taken, one to be offered to the Lord and one to be sent to Azazel. The decision which goat goes where is made by lot. Ibn Ezra, in his commentary there, writes:

Rabbi Samuel said: “Although it is written of the sin-offering goat that it is for the Lord, the goat that is sent away is likewise for the Lord.” This is unnecessary, for the sent-away goat is not a sacrifice, since it is not slaughtered. But if you can understand the secret that follows the word Azazel, you will know its secret and the secret of its name, for it has companions in Scripture. I shall reveal to you part of the secret by way of hint: when you are thirty-three, you will know it.

Ibn Ezra comments on Rabbi Samuel’s words that the goat for Azazel is not truly a sacrifice, since it is not slaughtered like its fellow. He further adds that there is a secret here, and gives an obscure hint toward it. Nahmanides, in his commentary there, writes as follows:

Now Rabbi Abraham “is faithful in spirit and conceals a matter,” but I am the one who reveals his secret, since our rabbis have already disclosed it in many places… This is explicit in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer: “Therefore they would give Samael a bribe on Yom Kippur so that he would not obstruct their offering, as it says: one lot for the Lord and one lot for Azazel. The lot of the Holy One, blessed be He, was for a burnt offering, and the lot of Azazel was the sin-offering goat, and all the sins of Israel were upon it…” Thus his name and his action have been made known to us, and this is the secret of the matter: idolaters worshipped other divine powers, namely angels, and brought them offerings, which were to them a pleasing aroma… The Torah utterly forbade acknowledging their divinity or worshipping them in any way, but the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded that on Yom Kippur we send a goat into the wilderness to the prince who rules over places of ruin, for that is what is fitting for him, since that is his domain, and from the emanation of his power come drought and desolation, for he presides over the stars of sword, bloodshed, war, quarrel, wounds, blows, division, and destruction… The intention of the sent-away goat is not, Heaven forbid, that it be our sacrifice to him, but rather that our intention be to fulfill the will of our Creator, who commanded us thus… This is the meaning of the lots, for had the priest consecrated them verbally to the Lord and to Azazel, it would appear as though he were serving him and vowing in his name. Instead, he stands them before the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, because both are a gift to the Lord… Rabbi Abraham hinted to you that you would know its secret when you reach the verse, “They shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons” [a verse appearing thirty-three verses later, as Ibn Ezra hinted]… I cannot explain further, for we would have to stop the mouths of those who fancy themselves wise in natural science and follow the Greek, who denied everything except what he could sense, and in his arrogance thought — he and his wicked disciples — that anything he could not grasp by his reasoning was not true.

The Main Point of Nahmanides: The Secret and Its Meaning

We do not wish to enter here into all the details of Nahmanides’ explanation, but only into several points important for our purposes. Nahmanides proposes an explanation for Ibn Ezra’s secret, according to which the goat for Azazel is sent into the wilderness, to the demons and the princes of desolation and ruin. This is not an actual sacrifice, but the fulfillment of God’s command that we send the goat to them. As Nahmanides adds, this explanation is meant to stop Aristotle — “the Greek” — and his wicked disciples, who believe only in what they have seen or understood with their intellect.

To understand how all this relates to the goat for Azazel, let us briefly follow several legal details that accompany the goat along its route, and observe the surprising end of this legal path.

Following the Goat to Azazel

The Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 62, rules that one who slaughtered either of these two goats outside the proper place of sacrifice, before the lot had determined which one was to go where, violated the prohibition of offering sacrifices outside the Temple. At first glance, this proves that at this initial stage both goats possess sacrificial sanctity, and therefore may not be offered outside. That means they may not be eaten, used, or benefited from, like any other sacrifice.

The next stage in the path of the two goats is the lottery. When the lots are drawn, the author of Gevurat Ari (on Yoma 39, s.v. “veha-segan”) writes that over the goat that goes to the Lord one says, “For the Lord, a sin-offering,” whereas over the one that goes to Azazel nothing is said. It identifies itself. Rashi there, however, wrote that both lots must be taken up, because this is not merely a clarification but part of the sacrificial rite itself. According to Rashi, then, the goat for Azazel is still regarded as a sacrifice at this stage.

After the lottery comes the tying of a crimson thread to the horns of the goat for Azazel. The commentators asked how this is permitted, since this is making use of a sacrifice, which is forbidden.¹ In any event, for our purposes it is clear from this very question that in their view this goat still possesses sacrificial sanctity, and in principle making use of it is forbidden.

After the lottery there is the laying on of hands. The priest must place his hand upon the goat’s head. In Mikdash David (Laws of the Yom Kippur Service, sec. 6), proofs are brought that this laying on of hands is the same as the laying on of hands required for all sacrifices. If so, the goat for Azazel is still considered a sacrifice at this stage.

After that comes the confession recited over the goat that goes to Azazel. In Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik of Brisk’s novellae on the Talmud, in the section “On the Crimson Thread,” he writes that from this point onward the goat no longer has sacrificial sanctity.² See, however, Mikdash David there, where he shows that the medieval authorities dispute whether this confession is part of the priest’s act of repentance over the goat, or whether it belongs to the ordinary laws of sacrifices, which require confession. The root of that dispute, too, lies in the question whether at this stage the goat still possesses sacrificial sanctity, or whether it is no longer a sacrifice.

The next stage is the dispatch of the goat to the cliff. At this stage the goat is sent by the hand of a “designated man” — any person, not necessarily a priest — into the wilderness. Several commentators wrote that at this point the goat is already no longer a sacrifice, and therefore the dispatch is not considered sacrificial service, and therefore need not specifically be performed by a priest.³

At the end of the route, the goat is pushed from the top of the high cliff — the Azazel — down below. This pushing is not indispensable to the commandment of the goat; that is, it is not part of the commandment of dispatching it. Therefore, even if no pushing was done at all, the commandment of dispatch was still fulfilled.⁴

After the goat is pushed from the cliff, its limbs, which are usually smashed, are permitted for benefit (see Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 67). That is, all its sanctity, if it had any, has vanished, for with an ordinary sacrifice benefit remains forbidden even after its death.

In the novellae of the Griz — Rabbi Yitzhak Zev Soloveitchik, the son of Rabbi Hayyim HaLevi Soloveitchik — on Yoma 61, s.v. “ve-hineh,” he proves that if the goat remained alive after being pushed, it is permitted even to slaughter and eat it. Other commentators wrote the same, and some permitted it to be eaten even without slaughter if it had been pushed from the cliff, because its commandment has been fulfilled, and the pushing is like slaughter.⁵

At this stage nothing at all remains of the sacrificial sanctity the goat once had. As noted, it is permitted even to eat it. It has reverted to being an ordinary animal, as if the entire dramatic process we have described had never happened. It returns to the starting point it occupied before the lottery and before consecration. Like Alice in Wonderland, who wakes up and discovers that all the fantastic events she went through were only a dream.

Summary and a Preliminary Conclusion

To summarize: at the beginning of the process the two goats are two ordinary animals. At the first stage, they are consecrated with sacrificial sanctity. This sanctity remains in the goat for the Lord until the end, that is, until the completion of its sacrificial offering. By contrast, in the goat for Azazel the sanctity remains during the tying of the thread, the laying on of hands, and the confession. At the stage of dispatch, some commentators already begin to hold that there is no longer sacrificial sanctity. At the stage of the push from the cliff, everyone — perhaps except Rabbenu Tam — holds that this is no longer a sacrifice at all. From the standpoint of sacrificial law, there is not even an initial requirement to carry out the push. Finally, the commentators wrote that the goat may be eaten, whether by slaughter if it remained alive, and perhaps even without slaughter at all. The designated man could simply go down, slaughter the goat — even instead of pushing it from the cliff — and eat it. Here we awaken from the dream.

The Difficulty

Anyone with even a slight acquaintance with Jewish law can see that this is a very strange process. The goat for Azazel, which all along was holy and regarded as a sacrifice — the final stage, as we saw, is disputed — suddenly becomes ordinary and unconsecrated, just as it was at the beginning before the whole process started. Jewish law generally holds that “intrinsic sanctity does not lapse on its own” (Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 29a). Sanctity inhering in the object itself cannot simply evaporate or disappear. It is a reality that cannot simply be altered. Only if some act is performed can there possibly be a state in which the sanctity lapses, if at all. If so, it requires explanation: how is it that with the goat for Azazel its sanctity simply flies away, as though it had never existed?

One might have said that its commandment has been fulfilled, and that is what removes the sanctity from the goat for Azazel. But the fact that the stage at which its commandment is fulfilled is itself vague and disputed, and that according to most opinions these stages are not indispensable at all, leaves the difficulty in place.

It seems that the explanation of this strange phenomenon lies in the conceptual layer of the passage of the two goats. To understand this, we will first offer a preliminary discussion regarding the nature of evil in the world, and then return to the issue of the two goats.

B. The Analytic and the Synthetic

Introduction: On Axiomatic Systems

In a logical system there are two kinds of propositions: axioms, which cannot be proved and proceed from direct recognition; and derived propositions, which are inferred from the axioms by processes of logical inference and proof, that is, reduction to axioms. Any proposition of either kind — axiom or derived proposition — is called a theorem. The totality of all these propositions, that is, the entire body of knowledge, is called an axiomatic system.

Many bodies of knowledge — perhaps all of them — can in principle be presented as axiomatic systems, even though we do not always know how to do so. Therefore, in what follows we will focus on such systems, though this is only an illustration of an attitude that is correct for every body of knowledge of any kind.

Wisdom and Understanding

In kabbalistic terminology, the primary propositions — the axioms — are called wisdom. The sefirah of wisdom represents all the knowledge known to us with certainty in a primary way, not derived from some more basic knowledge. This is the most basic knowledge we possess, and its truth is not dependent on prior knowledge.

Rules of derivation draw conclusions from premises. These logical rules are called the power of understanding. This is, in effect, analytic-logical thinking. The sages say that “understanding” means “to understand one thing from another,” and in our context: to derive conclusions from premises. These rules provide us with conditioned knowledge, whose truth depends on prior knowledge. This is not basic knowledge, for it depends upon earlier knowledge. Sometimes the term understanding refers to the derived propositions themselves, and not to the rules of derivation. In that case it does not refer to the power of understanding — the ability to derive propositions — but to understanding itself, namely the derived propositions.⁶ We should note that in Kabbalah, understanding is the force that brings wisdom outward from potential into actuality.

As stated, the collection of both derived propositions and axioms is called, in logic, the set of theorems. In kabbalistic terminology, the totality of wisdom and understanding together is called knowledge. This is the full body of knowledge accumulated in our possession; the faculty of knowledge includes both wisdom and understanding together.

The Other Side

It is interesting, in this context, to consider the relation between the kabbalistic sefirot of wisdom and understanding and what stands opposite them. It is well known that there are fifty gates of understanding, and corresponding to them fifty gates of impurity.⁷ The sages say (see Zohar Hadash, beginning of the portion of Yitro) that when the Israelites were in Egypt, God took them out before the completion of the four hundred years of bondage foretold to Abraham our father, because there was concern that if they tarried they would sink into the fiftieth gate of impurity, from which there is no return and no escape.

Now we find that the Vilna Gaon interprets the verse in Proverbs 16:4:

The Lord has made everything for His own purpose, and even the wicked for the day of evil.

And he says:

He said, “The Lord has made everything…” and also “even the wicked…” For fifty gates of understanding were created in the world, and the fiftieth gate will not be revealed until the coming of the redeemer, which is the secret of the world of freedom. The Other Side has only forty-nine gates of impurity; it has no fiftieth gate. When all its forty-nine are filled, it will be eradicated from the world, for it will be burned away as dung is burned away to its end. Therefore the fiftieth gate will be revealed, and it will be eradicated from the world. This is the meaning of “The Lord has made everything…” — this refers to the fifty gates of understanding. And “even the wicked” has the numerical value of forty-nine, corresponding to the forty-nine gates of impurity, for the day of evil, as in the verse: “When the wicked spring up like grass… it is that they may be destroyed forever.”

The numerical value of the word kol — “everything” — is fifty, and that is what the Lord made for His purpose, namely the gates of understanding. By contrast, the phrase ve-gam — “and also” — equals forty-nine, corresponding to the gates of impurity of the wicked for the day of evil.

Difficulties in the Vilna Gaon’s Remarks

Rabbi Elyashiv, in his book Derushei Olam HaTohu from Leshem Shevo ve-Ahlamah (see there, part 2, homily 5, branch 2, sec. 5), discusses these words of the Vilna Gaon at length. In the Mosad Harav Kook edition of the Vilna Gaon’s commentary to Proverbs, note 36 cites his words (in the name of Sha’arei Leshem, part 2, sec. 3) as follows:

Concerning the fiftieth gate of the gates of impurity: although the Ramak also mentioned it in Pardes, Gate of the Gates, chapter 1, nevertheless the Vilna Gaon, on Proverbs 16:4, on the verse “The Lord has made everything for His purpose,” says there that the Other Side has only forty-nine gates of impurity and no fiftieth gate. When all its forty-nine are filled, it is eradicated from the world, as explained there. This is what we said: had they remained slaves to Pharaoh any longer, there would have been no remedy for them, Heaven forbid, and they would have perished, for they had entered the forty-ninth gate and stood there, as cited above from my revered father-in-law at the beginning of Yitro. Had that entire gate become full, they would have perished, Heaven forbid. In any case, the point is that the Other Side has no fiftieth gate at all, and even the full completion of the forty-nine cannot endure at all. Although I am not worthy to decide the matter, the truth may be written: the main view appears to be that of the Vilna Gaon, that the Other Side has no fiftieth gate at all. Although God made one thing corresponding to the other, this is only up to forty-nine, namely the forty-nine aspects of purity and the forty-nine aspects of impurity, as stated in Midrash Tehillim, Psalm 12, sec. 4, and elsewhere. But the fiftieth gate is on the level of the Infinite, as stated in Tikkunei Zohar, Tikkun 72, near the end, and the Other Side has no corresponding level at all, Heaven forbid, as is known.

He raises several difficulties regarding these words of the Vilna Gaon — and we will add one more of our own:

1. According to him, how are we to understand the midrash (rabbinic exposition) cited above, that the Israelites in Egypt were on the verge of sinking into the fiftieth gate of impurity? According to his view, no such gate exists at all.
2. Beyond that, one may also ask why what stands opposite the gates of understanding is specifically the gates of impurity, and not, say, the “gates of foolishness.” At first glance, impurity is not the natural opposite of understanding.
3. Usually we assume that the two opposing sides — good and evil — stand in exact correspondence to one another. Yet here we see that there are fifty gates of understanding, but only forty-nine gates of impurity.

What Is a “Gate”?

To understand all this, let us reflect a bit on the concept of a gate. A gate is something one passes through, for example from one room to another. By contrast, a room is a place in which we simply are. According to what we saw above, the gates of understanding are the ways in which one infers one thing from another; that is, not knowing some concrete fact, but understanding how a conclusion is derived from a premise. It is therefore clear why the metaphor of a gate is used to describe understanding. Just as the rules of understanding carry us from premise to conclusion, or from one thing to another, so the gate in the metaphor carries us from one room to another.

As we have already seen, unconditioned thinking, parallel to being inside a room rather than passing through gates from room to room, is symbolized by the sefirah of wisdom. Therefore the symbol of wisdom is a room, not a gate: “The king has brought me into his chambers.”⁸

The purpose of passing through gates is to arrive somewhere. The purpose of all these passages through the gates of understanding is ultimately to arrive at a room, within which wisdom resides. Just as every passage must lead to some place that is the goal, so every process of understanding must end in a room, the dwelling place of wisdom.

The Structures of Understanding and Impurity as a Problem of Boundary Conditions

In fact, when we speak of gates of understanding, we are looking at a chain of forty-nine gates, with various rooms between them. The question is what lies at the end of the whole process, after the last gate. One may formulate the question mathematically: given forty-nine gates, each of which leads from one room to another, how many rooms are there in the chain?

This question, which in mathematical terms is a problem of boundary conditions, has only two possible answers:

1. The linear solution: at the beginning and at the end of the process there are rooms to which only one gate leads. This yields a picture of forty-nine gates and fifty rooms. In our terminology: the last gate leads to a room, that is, to wisdom. This is the level of unconditioned knowledge, from which everything issues.⁹
2. The circular solution: the last gate indeed leads to a room, room number forty-nine, but that room, surprisingly, itself has a gate. Yet this seems impossible, for have we not already counted forty-nine gates? The only way out is that we have returned to the first room, from which one again exits to the first gate. According to the picture presented by this option, the chain is circular, and at its end we find ourselves back at the point of departure. In this chain there are indeed forty-nine gates, but unlike the linear chain it contains only forty-nine rooms.

These are the only two possible ways to complete the process, and mathematically there is not, and cannot be, a third.

Two Solutions: Analyticity and Syntheticity¹⁰

As we shall now explain, the choice between these two possibilities is the choice whether to adhere to an analytic position or to a synthetic one.

The gates lead us from room to room. These are the rules of inference, or derivation, which lead us from one proposition to another. The whole chain is a chain of logical inferences taking us from premise to conclusion, and from that conclusion to another conclusion, and so on.

The great question is how we are to relate to our basic premises, that is, to wisdom. The derived propositions are reasoned and proved, for we have a logical proof that uses the rules of understanding to derive them from the axioms. But the axioms themselves do not follow from anything prior. On the face of it, they are arbitrary. Yet if the premises are arbitrary, it is clear that the conclusions derived from them are equally arbitrary. They are nothing but products of the premises, and cannot have greater validity than the premises themselves. The conclusion is that if wisdom is arbitrary, then understanding too cannot teach us anything. If the axioms of geometry are arbitrary, then the theorems derived from them are equally arbitrary. For example, if the axioms of geometry are arbitrary, then the theorem that the sum of the angles in every triangle is 180 degrees does not make a claim about actual triangles in the world. It makes only a claim of implication: if we assume such-and-such premises, then the conclusion we must adopt is that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180. But after the whole process, we still cannot truly say what the sum of the angles is in any actual triangle. That depends on whether our axioms are true.

Thus a process of analytic derivation cannot teach us anything. At most, it can expose what is implicit in the basic premises. If those premises are arbitrary and not true, then understanding cannot add any information about the subject under discussion. The significance of our entire body of knowledge depends on our attitude to the axioms. If they are arbitrary, then the whole structure is arbitrary. If they are true, then the whole structure has meaning. Wisdom is the root of knowledge, and our attitude to wisdom determines the meaning of knowledge as a whole.

Analyticity — the Circular Solution

An “analytic” conception maintains that only propositions that have proof are acceptable. According to this approach, perhaps rules of inference have the status of truth — though why, exactly? — but the axioms are arbitrary. Consequently, the conclusions derived from them are also arbitrary, for we have no proofs for them. The whole structure is empty of information and content; it is nothing but conditioned truths that can never be verified and confirmed. The analytic conception chooses, of the two solutions presented above, the circular solution. There is no truth in wisdom, that is, in the first room, and therefore the whole structure is circular and non-informative. After all the movement, we find ourselves back in the first room, at the point of departure. The gates lead nowhere.

The analytic conception holds that unproved principles are not true. But thereby it empties all the theorems, and the entire structure, of informative content.

A conception of understanding as the sole thing, without the layer of wisdom at the beginning of the chain — the circular solution — is a futile churning of water, mere intellectual play. It is a circular process of moving from premises to conclusions, but the results of the process have no meaning, at least not in the sense of acquiring knowledge.

Syntheticity — the Linear Solution

By contrast, according to the synthetic position — for an explanation of the term, see the book cited above — there is a room with no entrance gate at the base of the structure. This approach holds that the basic premises are true, even though we have no reasons for them; they are not derived from any other room, and no gate leads to them. If so, the faculty called understanding, which serves us in deriving various conclusions from these basic premises, leads us to the acquisition of knowledge. If the axioms of geometry are true, then the theorem that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees is also true.

Thus, in the synthetic picture, knowledge is not merely conditioned; it accumulates. This is precisely the linear solution presented above. Our attitude toward wisdom changes our attitude toward knowledge as a whole from one end to the other.

Resolving the Three Difficulties Above

In light of this, we can understand all the difficulties we raised above. If there are gates of understanding without a root of wisdom at their base, they lead nowhere — or, in other words, they lead to destruction. These are precisely the gates of impurity into which the people of Israel were about to sink, without any ability to emerge, had God not taken us out of Egypt — metaphorical Egypt, not necessarily historical Egypt.

Indeed there is no fiftieth gate, because the fiftieth place in the chain is a room, not a gate. One who thinks there is no such room, and sees only a circular chain of forty-nine gates, will never be able to escape that structure. In the allegory, one who is unwilling to accept anything without proof will never escape this trap, and no proposition on earth will ever be acceptable in his eyes.

The analytic conception is something like a black hole. By natural means it is impossible to get out of it. The reason is that every change of position is based on some fundamental assumptions. Those assumptions are the firm fulcrum on which we can lean in order to alter our state. If nothing is firm, there is nothing to lean on. It is like Baron Munchausen pulling himself out of a pit and running home to bring a ladder by which to escape the pit. Israel’s anticipated sinking in Egypt, without any ability to emerge, would have occurred had they sunk completely into the analytic picture of understanding without wisdom. That is what it means to sink into the fiftieth gate of impurity. There is not really any such gate, but sinking into a conception of gates of impurity — that is, forty-nine gates without a room at their base — is a conception from which there is no exit.

According to the Vilna Gaon, there are indeed only forty-nine gates of impurity, and the “sinking into the fiftieth gate” means sinking into a vacuum from which one cannot emerge. The fiftieth gate of impurity is the conception according to which there is no fiftieth gate — or room — at all. Sinking into such a conception blocks the possibility of escape from the analytic vicious circle. This explains the first difficulty above.

What emerges from our discussion is that the gates of impurity are not gates different from the gates of understanding. The lack of belief in the existence of a room within all those gates — that is, the adoption of the circular solution to the mathematical problem — is what turns those very same gates from gates of understanding into gates of impurity. The room within the structure is what gives the whole thing its meaning — or its lack of meaning.

If so, these two structures really do stand exactly opposite one another: forty-nine gates of understanding, and opposite them forty-nine gates of impurity, which are the very same gates. The difference lies in the room, not in the gates. One’s attitude toward the room determines the meaning of the entire structure. One who believes that at the base there is a room — wisdom — has gates of understanding; he can understand one thing from another. But one who does not believe in the room, but only in the gates, does not truly have gates at all. Those very gates become for him gates of impurity. This explains the third difficulty above.

According to this, it is also clear that the fiftieth gate of understanding is not really a gate, but a room. The most basic stratum of theorems is essentially different from the rest of the theorems. An axiom is acquired by direct cognition, not by proof and reasoning. This is unlike derived propositions, which are acquired through proofs from the axioms, that is, by derivation of understanding out of wisdom. And indeed Nahmanides, in his introduction to his commentary on Genesis, writes:

Our rabbis have already said that fifty gates of understanding were created in the world, and all were given to Moses except one, as it says: “You made him but little less than God”… Their number was received by tradition that they are fifty lacking one. It is possible that this gate is knowledge of the Creator, exalted be He, which was not given to any creature. Do not focus on their phrase “were created in the world,” for they speak in general terms. That one gate was not created…

Thus Nahmanides too, when presenting the analogy between the gates of understanding and impurity, distinguishes between the two pictures in their relation to the fiftieth gate. Our proposal above is a possible explanation of his words.

It remains for us to explain the term impurity as opposed to understanding. In Jewish law, impurity is an expression of death. A corpse is the supreme source of impurity. A leper, too, who is impure, is considered like the dead. A woman who gives birth becomes impure because the life that was within her has departed from her. Impurity is the absence of life, or death.

More broadly, impurity is something cut off from its source. It has no connection to that which gives it life. A dead body, severed from the soul that animates it, is the supreme source of impurity. For this reason, the structure opposed to the gates of understanding is called the gates of impurity, not the gates of foolishness. The analytic conception, according to which the entire chain of gates and rooms has no root that animates it — that is, there is no room in its interior — is a severing of the structure from its root. Thinking without a root of certainty and truth that animates it is something dead. Impurity. Thus the opposite of the gates of understanding is precisely the gates of impurity. This resolves the second difficulty above.

Impurity, like analyticity, has no firm foundation. Impurity is the illusion of life. An impure person appears to be a living person, but in fact something within him is dead. The analytic conception is an illusion of life, of an alternative truth. But because it does not end in a room at its end, it does not present a real alternative.

The Great Illusion

The analytic conception leads to the conclusion that there is no truth in the world at all, and that everyone may go with “their own truth” — what contemporary jargon calls postmodernism. The premises are arbitrary, and therefore there is no point in arguing about them, and each person is as right as his fellow. Such a conception is disastrous, for in principle there is no way to escape it, as explained above. It is therefore the evil that underlies all other evils.

It is worth noting that in the Passover Haggadah the opposite of the wise son is not the foolish son, but the wicked son. Wickedness, too, is severance from the source of life and certainty, which is God. An analytic approach without a synthetic root of certainty is wickedness, or impurity, because it has no root at all and is nothing but illusion. The opposite of wisdom is not foolishness but wickedness, or impurity. Foolishness does not claim to be a true antithesis to wisdom, and therefore it is not what stands opposite it and fights against it.

That illusion itself is what it means to sink into the fictional fiftieth gate: to sink into the outlook that the fiftieth place is a gate rather than a room. As we have seen, this is the root of all evil, and one from which there is no way out. The fear that Israel would not leave Egypt in time and would sink into the fiftieth gate of impurity was a fear of utter ruin. Once one has completed the first forty-nine gates of impurity and then thinks — mistakenly — that there is a fiftieth gate, the illusion has taken hold of that person completely, and he is lost from the world. It is only an imaginary gate, as the Vilna Gaon likewise writes in his commentary to the above verse in Proverbs.

Perhaps one may compare the analyticity that prevails in our world today to a grand museum of dazzling devices, full of technological and other means — gates and rooms — all intended to display a single picture — wisdom. One enters ever further inward, gate within gate, until the innermost place in the museum, and there discovers that the picture is a mirage. In such a case, the entire museum, with all its accessories and mechanisms, immediately “disappears.” It ceases to be a museum and becomes a mere collection of objects. Once one touches the mirage and realizes that it is only an illusion, the whole picture vanishes at once. It is the inner picture that gives the whole structure its meaning. When it does not exist, the whole structure loses its meaning.

C. Returning to the Goat for Azazel

The Purpose of the Two Goats and the Yom Kippur Service

Through the two goats we are meant, on Yom Kippur, to enter to the furthest possible point in both directions. One enters to the place that is not entered at any other time of year except on Yom Kippur, the holiest place of all — the Holy of Holies. The other is meant to go all the way to the other side. It is devoted to Satan and the goat-demons, and sent to them. This is the extreme side of evil and impurity.

But, as we saw above, going all the way in the direction of evil leads to a vacuum. In the circular chain of the gates of impurity we end at the point of departure, as though waking from a dream. On Yom Kippur we take one step further along the route: it becomes clear that evil does not truly exist. There is no real inner root to evil — there is no fiftieth gate, that is, no inner room, for the gates of impurity. Evil is only the absence of good. As we saw, the belief that reality, truth, values, and desires have no root is itself the evil.

Evil and Ways of Confronting It

Some thinkers — see, for example, Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Part III, chapter 10 — formulate this differently. Everything flows from God, and therefore genuine reality can only be something good whose root is in God. All the other figures in the system are only illusion, without a true ontological root. They are gates of understanding without an inner room. There is not, and cannot be, a Holy of Holies on the other side. The forty-nine gates of impurity are layers of onion skin with no inner core.

But if the whole problem of evil is based on the illusion that one can build an entire structure out of sheer nothing, and that this is an alternative to genuine structures, then the solution is also simple: to expose the fraud. We must uncover the illusory character of this conception. There is no need to destroy evil. The moment we truly try to touch it and expose its inner root, it will simply disappear on its own, like a mirage.

That is exactly what we are meant to discover when we follow the goat for Azazel. It begins as an ordinary goat. Then it is consecrated as a sacrifice to evil, and indeed enters “within the innermost chamber” of evil — the wilderness, the place ruled by destructive forces, in Nahmanides’ formulation cited above. What it discovers there is precisely that everything is illusion, there is nothing there, and the whole road and route it traveled simply dissolve on their own. It reached the root of evil and discovered that in fact there is no such thing at all. It found itself standing again at the point of departure. It is once more an ordinary goat, just as it was at the start of the process. The entire process left no mark on it. One can simply take it and eat it. Even the dispatch is not indispensable. It is as though the Torah says to us: if you insist on going to check, then please do so. Once we act on that, we discover that there is nowhere to go. The dispatch was unnecessary. There is no fiftieth gate on the side of the gates of impurity. If we try to go all the way in, we will discover the vacuum.

In the passage of the two goats, we see from the legal perspective the parallel relation between analyticity and evil and impurity. The root of evil is faith in a fictitious reality, seeing illusions as pseudo-certainties, as substitutes for genuine certainty. Evil itself is a fictitious reality without a root. It has no substantive standing as an alternative. The only possible alternative is to live in illusions.

There is also an encouraging aspect here. The struggle against this kind of evil is carried out through books and ideas, whose purpose is to dispel the analytic-postmodern illusion. There is no need, and no justification, for a crushing and destructive war of annihilation. After the clarification, it will become clear to all that there is no one to fight.

Amalek and Mockery

Let us add one more angle. According to the Torah’s outlook, the only entity that has no real root in the world is Amalek. Therefore it is said of him, “his end shall be utter destruction” (Numbers 24:20), meaning that in the future nothing at all will remain of him. That is why the Torah commands us to destroy him. According to quite a number of commentators, Amalek’s defining feature is doubt; see, for example, throughout Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner’s Pahad Yitzhak on Purim. This is the familiar aphorism that “Amalek” has the same numerical value as “doubt.” In several places Amalek appears as one who believes in chance — see Deuteronomy 25:18, “who happened upon you on the way” — rather than in a guided world.

Midrash Exodus Rabbah 27:5 expounds the verse in Proverbs 19:25, “Strike a scoffer and the simple will become shrewd”: “Strike a scoffer” — this is Amalek; “and the simple will become shrewd” — this is Jethro. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, at the beginning of his Pahad Yitzhak on Purim, elaborates on the description of Amalek as a scoffer. For a fuller treatment the reader is referred there. Here I will explain only one aspect of mockery relevant to our subject.

Doubt is the foundation of mockery. At the beginning of the portion of Toledot, the Torah writes: “These are the generations of Isaac son of Abraham — Abraham begot Isaac.” Rashi, following the midrash, explains the repetition:

Because the scoffers of that generation would say: Sarah conceived from Abimelech, for she had lived with Abraham for many years and had not conceived by him. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He fashioned Isaac’s facial features to resemble Abraham’s, and everyone testified: Abraham begot Isaac.

The scoffer casts doubt on everything that lacks proof. Since the identity of the father of a newborn child is not known with certainty, one can cast doubt and say that Sarah conceived from Abimelech. One should note that among those scoffers, the claim that the conception was from Abimelech is itself not put in doubt. In the terms of the first book, this is the phenomenon of Bokononism. The alternative idol, though born from placing everything in doubt, is itself accepted with absolute certainty.

A similar attitude appears in the Talmud. In the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 30, the fool to whom one must not answer according to his folly is described as follows:

There was a man who came before Rabbi Judah the Prince and said to him: “Your wife is my wife and your children are my children.” He said to him: “Would you like to drink a cup of wine?” He drank and burst.
And there was another similar case: a man came before Rabbi Hiyya and said to him: “Your mother is my wife and you are my son.” He said to him: “Would you like to drink a cup of wine?” He drank and burst.

In both cases a man comes and challenges the legitimacy of an upright woman on the basis of a baseless claim. Since there is no proof in either direction, one can say anything. With such a person there is no point in opening an argument. He must be brushed aside with a straw — offer him a cup of wine — and he bursts on his own. It is an inflated balloon; a pinprick lets all the air out.

Rabbi Kook, in his book on talmudic aggadah, Ein Ayah (sections 106-107), explains these stories along these lines at length. He goes on to argue that a person’s trust in his wife and in the lineage of his children is not based on rational proofs — what Jewish law calls the presumption that most sexual relations are with the husband — but on a natural and simple feeling of sound common sense. Doubt is the mockery or foolishness that opposes that sound common sense and goes looking for proofs. It is a stance that believes no fact without proof. In our terminology, this is precisely the analytic position.¹¹ Usually doubt is directed against various certainties and mocks them. The skeptical challenge “How do you know?” or “Prove it” expresses scorn and mockery. It assumes that no claim should be accepted without proof, and that itself is analyticity.

This can be seen in another form at the beginning of Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner’s work cited above, where he explains that the essence of mockery is lowering the importance of something. When the thing in question is indeed unworthy of importance, mockery is a justified tool — “all mockery is forbidden except mockery of idolatry.” But when mockery is directed at something whose importance is real, it serves as a weapon in the hands of doubt. Instead of substantive discussion, one uses the weapon of mockery, to which it is very hard to respond and against which it is very hard to defend oneself.

Amalekism, or mockery, is pure analyticity, which thinks that each person has his own truth. Within it there is no room for development or open dialogue, nor for real tolerance. Therefore, according to the Talmudic passage cited above, one does not answer such destabilization at all. A truly consistent analyticity of this sort has no root and no justification for existing. Therefore “his end shall be utter destruction.”

It seems that genuine evil, like genuine analyticity, does not really exist at all. If such a thing did exist, we would arrive at a common pagan, non-monotheistic conception of two powers ruling the world — one good and one evil — rather than the one God. It cannot be that both powers possess a genuine, unconditioned root, for that would be dualism. The belief in divine unity teaches us that there is one root of everything, and therefore evil has no genuine root. It is an illusion that does not truly exist. This is a two-way equation: evil is illusion, and illusion is evil.

As we saw, according to some of the commentators, at the stage of the lottery the goat for Azazel does not need a separate definition of its own. It is defined by being the opposite of the inner goat, the one for the Lord. Evil is not a substance in its own right; it is the opposite, or the absence, of good. When one asks what its own essential nature is, one arrives, as noted, at emptiness. It may be that Rashi, who requires a separate definition for the goat for Azazel, also agrees in principle, but holds that on the journey to the wilderness we are commanded to treat the goat as though it had substance, and as though it too were a sacrifice. The great revelation appears only at the end of the journey.

Nahmanides explains that thirty-three verses later the verse appears: “They shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons.” Once we have understood the secret of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra — namely, that the goat teaches the fact that there is no real evil with a root in the world, that all is illusion — then indeed we are in a state in which we will no longer offer our sacrifices to the goat-demons, as Nahmanides writes. Goats and demons, in kabbalistic terminology, are imagined entities without a root. At the end of the journey we are meant to recognize this, and to stop deceiving ourselves into thinking they have substance.

It is no accident that Nahmanides concludes by saying that his words are intended to stop the mouths of the Greek and his wicked disciples, who arrogantly thought that only what they attained through their analytic reason has substance. Our analyticity was born in Greece, and therefore the Greek is the symbol of this approach.

Footnotes