Yoma, Chapter 8, Lesson 2

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Anyone who isn’t registered on the mailing list—say retirees, or anyone who came in without being registered—no problem, send me an email. You should still send me an email, because I need to know that this is continuing; I don’t automatically carry people over from last year to this year. So anyone who wants to receive things—I send summaries, materials, and various things of that sort—should send me an email and I’ll add him to the mailing list. Anyone who’s registered here with me, I can already take his email; if he’s registered at the institute, then I can already take his email from there. Okay, so let’s move on. So now regarding Yom Kippur: we talked about the portion, in Parashat Acharei Mot, which is built in a very surprising way. Basically it begins with the way one is supposed to enter the sanctuary, and only at the end does it say that once a year, on the tenth of the seventh month, one has to do everything described here, right? The scapegoat, the inner goat, the sin-offering bull and the burnt-offering ram, and all the things that appear there in the portion, the High Priest’s service. And the Vilna Gaon really points out that what we’re dealing with here is actually the procedure for entering the sanctuary; this is not Yom Kippur service. Only afterward does the Torah say that in principle this can be done whenever one wants. If you want to enter the sanctuary, this is how you do it properly. But the Torah says that once a year this has to be done—that is, one must enter the sanctuary and do it. We talked about the different possibilities for understanding what that means. We saw the alternative: either that on that one occasion you have to do what is done all year—in other words, even on Yom Kippur the main point is entry into the sanctuary, not atonement. And atonement is a result, a side effect. And so if that’s really the case—and I think that’s the simple straightforward reading—then that explains even more this point about the essence of Yom Kippur as an encounter. Because basically the essence of Yom Kippur is entering inward. So why does that dictate refraining from pleasure, from labor, from all these things? Exactly what I said earlier: because an encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He, dictates cessation, requires a certain kind of cessation, and the atonement is a result—it is a result of the matter. And indeed in other portions of the Torah the atonement of Yom Kippur and the laws of Yom Kippur are mentioned without the service of the day—not like in Parashat Acharei Mot. “On the tenth of the month, you shall afflict yourselves; you shall do no labor,” but that appears without the service of the day. And that probably means that this encounter apparently is not dependent on entering the sanctuary—that is, it can be done even when the Temple is destroyed. And I actually brought an example from the renewal of ordination, if you remember—lashes. You need lashes in order to gain atonement, but you can also gain atonement without lashes; so why do you need the lashes? I brought that example. And therefore, on Yom Kippur too, the essence is the encounter, or entry into the sanctuary. The cessation is basically the backing that we give the High Priest when he enters the Holy of Holies. The public itself has to suspend itself, and then the priest can enter, and the atonement is a result. It is a result of the encounter—“O Hope of Israel, the Lord”—yes, we immersed in the mikveh. Once we immersed in the mikveh, we were purified. That’s what Rabbi Soloveitchik talks about in On Repentance, that there is a kind of atonement that is like immersion, that Yom Kippur is like a mikveh. Now, I talked about that last time. What I wanted to say here now is that the Yom Kippur service—and I already started to comment on this a bit last time—the Yom Kippur service, it seems to me, actually reflects this idea. I started with a few riddles: it seems strange that the main atonement depends on the scapegoat. We have two goats, one goes into the Holy of Holies and one goes out to Azazel in the wilderness. And the main atonement, the core atonement, depends on the scapegoat. Explicitly in the Torah: all the sins of the people of Israel—“and he shall confess over it all the sins of the people of Israel and send it by the hand of a designated man into the wilderness.” The inner goat atones for impurity of the sanctuary and its holy things, for oaths, and for specific matters, but the main atonement of the day depends on the scapegoat. In Maimonides this is a bit unclear—whether what is called “the very day itself atones” means the scapegoat, or whether the very day itself atones even when there is no goat. So there’s a certain confusion in Maimonides; Rabbi Soloveitchik too… The claim is that the scapegoat, as several medieval authorities (Rishonim) write, is not even an offering at all. We read Ibn Ezra, we read Nachmanides, and we saw that basically it isn’t an offering at all. It’s some kind of appeasement of Satan so that he won’t confuse things, won’t interfere with us, or things of that sort. So it looks like some kind of side issue, insofar as one can understand this strange thing at all. But even if there is something strange like that here, why is that the main atonement? Fine, so he won’t mess with our heads, and now we’ll deal with the real thing, and that is what will atone for us. Why is the scapegoat itself the main atonement of the day? A very strange matter. So the claim—well, we read Ibn Ezra, yes, I talked about that—and Nachmanides starts dragging Aristotle in here too, who had the gall to think that only what we understand exists and everything else does not exist. I asked what the connection is, and we’ll get to that later. To understand the matter better, let’s try to follow a bit what happens with the scapegoat. Let’s look at the two goats, and afterward focus on the scapegoat. The stages the goat goes through on the way to Azazel: there is the selection of the two goats, there is the consecration, which is still done together, there is the lottery—who goes inward and who goes to Azazel. Tying the crimson thread; it may be that there were two, apparently there were two, it’s not completely clear. Laying on of hands, where the priest places his hand on it; confession, where he says the confession; handing it over to the designated man; sending it, yes, to the cliff at Azazel; splitting the crimson thread into two, one part tied to the cliff and the other part tied to the horns of the goat; pushing it off the cliff when they get there, to the place—they push it, push it down; and if necessary, if it doesn’t die, then they go down and kill it. Right, going down below. Those are more or less the stages. Let’s now try to track these stages a bit more closely. Regarding the selection of the two goats, the Mishnah in tractate Yoma 62 says that two goats are selected that should be equal in height, in appearance, in weight, in value, in price, and so on. They have to be identical. Why do they have to be identical? By the way, this is not indispensable, but it is the law ab initio. In general, with sacrificial matters, you have to know that “we require that the verse repeat it in order to make it indispensable.” In other words, laws that are stated in the context of sacrificial offerings are in principle not indispensable, unless the Torah itself says that they are indispensable. How does it say that? Either it repeats the law again, which is redundant and therefore comes to say that it is indispensable, or it says “an eternal statute,” or there is some hint in the Torah itself that says that this law is indispensable. These laws about the similarity between the goats are not indispensable, but they do exist ab initio. What is the meaning of that? So about this there is a nice explanation by Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner in Pachad Yitzchak on Purim. He writes that on Purim it says: “A person is obligated to become intoxicated until he does not know the difference between ‘Cursed is Haman’ and ‘Blessed is Mordechai.’” So he asks: but the main service of the day is to distinguish between ‘Cursed is Haman’ and ‘Blessed is Mordechai.’ So what’s the idea of drinking in order to blur the difference? On the contrary—we’re supposed to sharpen the difference. So he explains there that the deeper the equivalence, the deeper the distinction. In other words, if we saw Mordechai and Haman as two creatures who looked different, were born differently, entirely different from each other, that would actually blur the essential difference between them. Why? Because then we would attribute the difference to inborn traits, personality, all sorts of external or secondary things. Whereas the real difference between Haman and Mordechai is the path they chose. Even given that the conditions and circumstances are identical for both these people, they chose differently. Haman chose what he chose and Mordechai chose what he chose, and that is the difference between them. He brings there the example of the two goats. He says that with the two goats too, basically one goat enters the Holy of Holies and one goes to Azazel. You might have said that the one entering the Holy of Holies was chosen because he is fat, beautiful, well-fed, something excellent, and the one going to Azazel is some skinny, scrawny, cheap thing that we send off to fulfill the requirement. He says no—that would miss the whole purpose. Because the purpose of the two goats is to make the distinction between the inner and the Azazel. If the difference were due to how the goat was born or its traits, that would miss the whole point. What we need to say is: the difference between them—it doesn’t matter that they look the same—the difference between them is only that this one was chosen to enter the Holy of Holies and this one was chosen for Azazel; that’s the whole difference. And therefore, in order to sharpen that difference, all the other irrelevant differences have to be blurred. That’s why they need to be equal in height, weight, value, and so on—in order to say that the lottery is what makes the difference, and besides that nothing. If I go back to Haman and Mordechai, then there too the point is that we have to distinguish between them not on the question of what their personality is and how they were born. That is not a relevant distinction; it doesn’t depend on them—they were born that way, they didn’t choose it. The relevant distinction is the question of what they chose, what their values are. And therefore precisely in order to sharpen the relevant distinction, we have to blur all the other aspects so that they won’t interfere, to create contrast, right? So that the background will actually be the same, and then it is much sharper to understand what really is the difference between Haman and Mordechai. Now in the context of the goats it’s the same thing—except that of course we’re talking about goats, not people. The goats choose nothing. So instead, what we do is a lottery. The function of the lottery is basically to represent the element of choice. Okay? And what we really want to say, what the Torah wants to say to us, is: take two people or two goats, they look the same, same traits, they were born in the same house, everything is the same—they are identical twins. Okay? But one chose evil and the other chose good. That is the essential difference between them. If one was born righteous in temperament, just naturally like that, that is no advantage over the other; he was born that way, he didn’t choose it. Therefore all the inborn, external, secondary, physical traits—we erase them, we blur them, in order to sharpen the point that we need to distinguish on the plane of what the person chose, where the representation of that in the context of the goats is the lottery. The lottery basically expresses the choice a person makes. By the way, this is connected to the ancient forefathers of Amalek and Israel—of course, Esau and Jacob. That’s why they were born twins, and so it matters who came out first; they’re always in the same situation. And that’s what the Talmud says: Caesarea and Jerusalem—“one will not be filled while the other lies desolate”; both cannot fall and both cannot rise—if one falls the other rises, if one rises the other falls. The same thing with Esau and Jacob: basically from the womb it was not clear who was who in principle. There are of course other midrashim—that one wanted to come out by study halls and the other by houses of idol worship—but even there it doesn’t say that Esau was this one and Jacob was that one. It says there was one like this and one like that. And therefore the Talmud indeed says that there was there some kind of Kafkaesque game, some kind of Job-like situation: basically it was preordained that one of these two fellows would be righteous and one would be wicked. That was fixed, but it was not fixed which one was which. They now had to decide who would take which position. One of them took one position, the other took another. It could not be that both would be righteous, and it could not be that both would be wicked—already at the midrashic level. Let’s leave aside for the moment what happened historically, but the way the Sages describe it, they basically describe it in the same way, and that is exactly the difference between Mordechai and Haman, Amalek and Israel. The claim is not “Amalek is the first among nations” and “Israel is the first of His produce.” Both are “first,” but what kind of first, in which direction? That depends on the question of what one chooses. Whoever chooses to be this kind of first will be that kind of first, and whoever chooses another kind of first will be first in that way. What distinguishes them is not the givens into which they were born, but the question of what they did within those givens. And therefore, the selection of the goats—right, after they take the two goats and select them, select them, sorry, not yet select between them, select them—they choose them in such a way that they will be equal, in order later to sharpen the element of the lottery. On the basis that both are identical, now we make a lottery: who is for inward and who is for Azazel. There is no difference between them. Each one could end up here and could end up there. The question is what he chooses, or what lot comes up, parabolically speaking of course. Okay? After that there is the consecration, after selecting the two goats. What is consecration? These two goats require consecration like every offering, which basically means that these two goats are now invested with the sanctity of an offering, sanctified with intrinsic sanctity of the body. Okay? Like every offering, you consecrate it. The Talmud says that at this stage, in Yoma 62, it says that at this stage, if either one is slaughtered outside, you violate the prohibition of slaughtering outside. In other words, we are dealing with two goats that both have the sanctity of an offering; they are offerings in every respect, and if you offer them outside, it’s not like slaughtering meat outside—slaughtering meat and eating it outside is permitted—but if you slaughter an animal outside, then that is offering consecrated things outside, slaughtering outside. And therefore with both goats, because there has not yet been a lottery, we still do not know which is for inward and which is for Azazel, both goats have the sanctity of an offering with all the relevant laws. You may not offer them outside. There are disputes about until when this sanctity continues—until the lottery, until the confession, until when—but we’ll still see that. The third stage: now we have two animals, both of which are holy, two goats both holy. Now we have to decide which is inward and which is for Azazel—that is the lottery. Plainly, regarding the lottery, the medieval and later authorities dispute what exactly this lottery is. Is it a service, part of the sacrificial service of Yom Kippur, or is it just some act for determining who goes where, but not itself a service? One of the implications, for example, is whether it requires the High Priest, because everything that is part of the service on Yom Kippur requires the High Priest. One possible implication here is a dispute among the commentators in Yoma 39. In Gevurat Ari, Shaagat Aryeh says that the lottery is only clarification; it is not a service. Therefore there are no rules for how to conduct the lottery: you can just draw one slip, and that will determine who is for Azazel; automatically the other will be the inner one, or vice versa—it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to draw a lot for each one. You only need it to be clear who goes there and who goes there. It’s clarification, not a matter whose details are indispensable. Therefore afterward too, the declaration “for the Lord, as a sin offering”—the verbal designation after the choice is made—is said only regarding the inner goat, not regarding the goat to Azazel. It does not receive its designation verbally. However, in Rashi there on 39b, it says that the lottery has to be done for both of them. In other words, even if I brought up one lot and it turned out to be the inner one, I still have to bring up the second one and say that the second goes to Azazel. And here some later authorities write that from Rashi it appears this is not just technical clarification, because after the first slip, if it were only technical clarification, we already know everything. Rather there are rules for it—this is how it must be done—it is part of the sacrificial service. So he takes the view that the lottery too is part of the offering. By the way, in Nachmanides, which we read yesterday, on Sunday, he indeed takes the position of Gevurat Ari. Nachmanides says that really you don’t need this; it’s enough to draw one of them in order to determine which is which. I said we would get to the possibility that this is a dispute. In Maimonides, in the Laws of the Yom Kippur Service, chapter 3, he explicitly writes that the lottery is not a service, and therefore it does not require the High Priest. Tosafot Rid writes that the lottery is indispensable and is a service and requires the High Priest—Tosafot Rid there on page 39, the same Talmudic passage I mentioned earlier. It could be that this is a dispute between two versions in the Talmud. Again, I’m saying this briefly here. Why is it important to me whether it is a service or not? Because I want to continue tracking the status of the two goats. At the first stage, after consecration, both are holy with the sanctity of an offering. We are dealing with two offerings. If the lottery is a service, then also at the stage of the lottery, after I have already consecrated both of them, they are still offerings; I still have to perform the service on each of them, and not only on the inner one. They are certainly offerings—but on each of them—because they continue still to be in the status of an offering. The Meiri on page 39, on that same passage, says that although this matter is only naming and not a service, it still implies that it is still an offering. It’s just that the lottery is not itself a stage that is service in this offering, but still one has to designate it, and in that sense it is still service in the offering. If so, both goats are still holy. This is important for our purposes, because then it turns out that both goats are still holy even after it has already been clarified which goes inward and which goes to Azazel. In other words, the goat to Azazel too—even now, now that we know which is which, after the lottery—the goat to Azazel is still holy with the sanctity of an offering. The fourth stage is tying the crimson thread. When they tie the crimson thread to its horns—there is a dispute whether they tie it on both goats or only on one of them—but on the scapegoat they tie a thread weighing two sela’im. And afterward on the inner goat as well, apparently; I said, of some weight. And there are those who say they don’t tie one on the inner goat at all. That too is a dispute; even in the liturgical poems, by the way, there is a difference—in Atah Konanta and Amitz Koach there is a difference between these two things. In Amitz Koach it isn’t mentioned that they tie one. Gevurat Ari on page 41 asks: why do they precede the scapegoat to the inner goat? After all, the holier one should come first. So why do they tie first on the scapegoat and only afterward on the inner goat? Absent Gevurat Ari—who as I mentioned earlier apparently understands that the lottery is no longer a service—he apparently understands that at this stage the inner goat is an offering but the outer one no longer is. But that is why he asks. In contrast, we saw that there are views that there is still sanctity for both goats, and then it is less difficult; still one has to understand why the one for Azazel is the more sanctified, but still, both are sanctified with the sanctity of an offering, and especially if we remember—it may well be that this is really connected to the fact that it is more sanctified, or more essential to the matter of the day. More than that: Gevurat Ari there also asks, how is it permitted to tie the crimson thread to the head of the goat? That is making use of consecrated offerings. This shows that it is not making use of consecrated offerings; the scapegoat is not.

[Speaker E] What? If so, if it’s service, then it’s permitted?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the question is whether this is treated as service or not service—how one understands this tying. But I’m saying, for our purposes, he assumes a certain premise: that there is making use of consecrated offerings here, and as a result he reaches his conclusion—this is not service. At this stage the goat, in other words, it’s not service, but rather the goat is no longer holy, so it’s not making use of consecrated offerings. But according to the views that say yes, then that is indeed a question: how is it permitted to tie the crimson thread? Again, if the service is for the sake of the offering, then of course it is easier. In any case, at least there are such views that when they are standing opposite the Temple courtyard and now have to be directed inward and outward, and they tie the crimson thread, at that stage there are at least views that both are still holy with the sanctity of an offering, including the scapegoat. Fine, so there are all kinds of discussions here; look at them later, I’ll send you the summary, we won’t get into all the sources. The next stage is the laying on of hands. The priest would place his hands on the goat. And later authorities discuss—Mikdash David, for example—whether this laying on of hands is by the law of laying hands on offerings or not. If it’s an offering, that will depend on what we discussed earlier. If the scapegoat—the one on which the priest places his hands, the scapegoat—is an offering, then there is room for the question whether this laying on of hands is like the law of laying on hands in every offering. If it is not an offering, then there is nothing to talk about. Then clearly, by the laws of Yom Kippur, as part of the atonement, you place hands on the head of the scapegoat, but this is not laying on of hands on an offering, because it is not an offering. But if we raise the possibility that this is laying on of hands on an offering, that means that right now there is still at least the possibility that the scapegoat too is holy with the sanctity of the offering—it is basically an offering, and the laying on of hands follows the laws of offerings, the laws of sacrifice. After that, the next stage is confession. In the book Avodat HaMelekh he asks why the confession of the High Priest does not mention acceptance for the future. That is part of the conditions of repentance: regret, confession of the sins a person committed—but why is there no acceptance for the future? The Sefat Emet asks why the sins are not specified, since one is supposed to specify the sins verbally, okay? So the question is why that does not appear there. Whoever was at the second class on Sunday—not the opening class—there I spoke about the fact that there are two mechanisms of repentance. There is technical repentance, which requires the four stages: abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and verbal confession. But there is essential repentance: if a person truly undergoes an inner transformation, then it requires nothing. There are no halakhic rules about what is required there. If indeed the confession of the High Priest goes on the track of essential, sweeping atonement—and it is pretty clear that this is so—then all these questions fall away. So there is no need for acceptance for the future, and no need for verbal specification, no need for anything. Once there has been a turning over, there has been a turning over. But that is just a comment for those who were at the second class. For our purposes here, I want to argue that this confession is not confession by the laws of repentance but by the laws of the offering. And if so, the scapegoat is still an offering, and therefore the laws of repentance do not apply here. The confession is not part of the laws of repentance of Yom Kippur; the confession is part of the service performed on the scapegoat. And there the rule is that you do not need acceptance for the future, specification of the sins, and the like. There is in the book Avodat HaYom, section 32, a proof of this precisely from here—that basically we are dealing here with confession over an offering, and not confession as part of the repentance process of Yom Kippur. He proves it from other places too. But I’m saying for our purposes, this means that also at the stage of confession, which is already the sixth stage, there is still the sanctity of an offering on the scapegoat. In the seventh stage there is the sending away. Now with the sending away something very interesting happens. The Talmud explicitly says that the sending away is valid even if done by a non-priest. You don’t need the High Priest.

[Speaker B] Seemingly at this stage it stops being a service.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the sanctity evaporates. Basically the scapegoat stops—it stops being an offering. Everything that is part of the Yom Kippur service requires the High Priest. If here you don’t need the High Priest, that means that at this stage the service suddenly ended. Now this is a very strange thing. Because seemingly all the preparations we made until now are basically preparations for what really needs to be done with the scapegoat. Until now we only prepared it for our purposes. But from now on—now you have to do it. What do you do? The scapegoat has to be sent away, right? That’s the point of the whole thing. And that is valid if done by a non-priest. No issue. Everything until now was High Priest. From here on, valid with a non-priest. So the truth is that some of the medieval authorities want to claim that with the scapegoat, first of all there are technical reasons, because the High Priest has to perform the service on Yom Kippur, and if he goes on this whole walk it’s a complicated story. But beyond that, in the end the Mishnah says that the designated man returns—the designated man means even a non-priest—and says to him, “My lord, High Priest, we have carried out your mission.” And then there is a claim that says that he is still acting as the agent of the High Priest, and therefore the sending away is still a service. It’s just that this service can be done by an agent. That is a very great novelty, because basically the claim is that the other services in the Temple too could in principle have been done by a non-priest whom the priest appoints as his agent. It just can’t work technically, because the non-priest cannot enter the place where it is done. But on the conceptual level it is possible. Where do we see such a thing? Slaughtering is valid if done by a non-priest, for example. And there’s a big question whether slaughtering is a service or not a service. Slaughtering, for all offerings in general, all year round, for all kinds of offerings—slaughtering is valid if done by a non-priest. Now the question is whether the non-priest there acts as the agent of the High Priest, and basically the slaughtering too is a service. Because there are even Talmudic passages that imply—and the later authorities formulate it more explicitly—that slaughtering is not a service at all, since it is valid if done by a non-priest. In light of what we see here, that is not a proof. Because if the non-priest really acts as the agent of the priest, then it could be that this is indeed a service. And all that prevents a non-priest from doing the other services is simply that they are performed in a place where a non-priest cannot enter—that’s only a technical issue. But in principle a non-priest can act as the agent of the High Priest. Afterward it says, the Mishnah says that frivolous people would pluck at the hair of the messenger, right, along the route—frivolous people would pluck at the hair of the messenger during the sending away.

[Speaker B] Of the messenger or of the goat?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of the goat, sorry, yes. The wool. There were also some who did it to the messenger. But in the Mishnah it says of the goat during the sending away. And they discuss there—Tosafot Rid asks there: but isn’t this the prohibition of plucking on Yom Kippur? If it is a festival, if it is a complete Sabbath rest, how is it possible to pluck? Why doesn’t he ask about making use of an offering? Beyond the prohibition of plucking on Yom Kippur. It seems that he understands that at this stage it is no longer a problem of misuse of an offering or making use of an offering, but only a problem of Yom Kippur prohibitions. So it seems that at this stage it stops being an offering. That fits with what we said—that it is valid by the hand of a non-priest, by the hand of the designated man, right? So little by little we begin to see that the sanctity—where first of all it was clear that the goat had the sanctity of an offering—little by little it dissipates. By the way, there are more views among the medieval authorities as the stages progress forward—more commentators say that it is no longer an offering. I’m not going now into a description of all the views at every stage, but that is the general picture that emerges.

[Speaker F] Can’t you infer from the plucking that it is still an offering? What? From the fact that it’s permitted to pluck, that it’s still an offering?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t say it’s permitted to pluck; they were frivolous people—it was forbidden. I’m only asking about Tosafot Rid. Tosafot Rid asks what about the prohibitions of Yom Kippur—how can they allow such a thing? So I’m saying: why don’t you ask how they allow them to make use of an offering? Rather, it appears from Tosafot Rid—I’m not proving from the frivolous people, I’m proving from Tosafot Rid. Understood? Rashi on 65a says something even more far-reaching. He says that the sending away is not indispensable at all. Which is unbelievable. You do the whole procedure, the centerpiece of Yom Kippur, the essence of the Yom Kippur service, everybody trembling in fear, the core of the day, all the preparations, lotteries and this and confession and in the end—don’t send it, no problem. You did all the preparations? Excellent, everything’s fine, go home. The sending away is not indispensable. It’s astonishing. Not only is it not a service, not only is the goat not holy—you don’t need to do it at all. You should do it ab initio, but it is not indispensable. That’s amazing. What? It doesn’t bind the priest—you don’t need it at all. Not only don’t you need a priest, you don’t need to send it away at all. A dispute among the medieval authorities, but that is Rashi’s view. The Meiri brings it, a dispute; it’s already in Torat Kohanim as well. Fine, that is the second stage. By the way, the designated man is also permitted to eat on Yom Kippur. They permit him to eat on Yom Kippur when the sending away is not indispensable at all. He doesn’t need to—he doesn’t need to send it away. So if he is so tired and can’t do it without eating, then let him not send it away—what’s the problem? It isn’t indispensable. To permit him a Yom Kippur prohibition, which carries karet—to permit him the prohibition of eating on Yom Kippur for this? A very puzzling thing. The whole business—there is something completely strange going on here. The eighth stage after the sending away is the pushing from the cliff.

[Speaker B] The splitting of the crimson thread comes first?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that—we talked about it at the beginning. The pushing, the pushing from the cliff is according to all views not indispensable—that’s in the Talmud. And of course it is done by a non-priest, because the non-priest takes the goat. It is not indispensable at all. Again, that’s strange. Seemingly that is supposed to be the climax—it is the sacrifice of the offering. The parallel to sacrificing the offering is pushing it from the cliff; that is where it dies, right? No. You don’t even need to send it away according to Rashi. According to the other medieval authorities, yes. But when you get to the cliff and push it, you certainly don’t need to. So then what—what was the point of bringing it there? You don’t need to do anything with it there. I’ll tell you more than that: after the pushing, the Talmud says that once you pushed it, the limbs are permitted for benefit. What about the offering? What about “we do not say: send forth to cause a stumbling block”? You know this idea from the birds of a metzora. There they ask whether one may eat the birds that the metzora sends away. So the Talmud says of course yes. Why? Because we do not say: “send forth to cause a stumbling block.” What does that mean? You sent the birds away. Now somebody may catch that bird somewhere else in the world, and he doesn’t know that these are birds that a metzora sent away. It cannot be that the Torah would permit sending away a bird that is forbidden for benefit—that would be causing the public to stumble. Therefore, from the fact that this is permitted, and you don’t need to mark it or anything like that, it is a sign that it is permitted, that one may eat it. We do not say: send forth to cause a stumbling block. The Talmud says the same thing here.

[Speaker F] Even though it’s a doubt. What? That whoever takes it—it’s a doubt, and if a doubt is permitted by Torah law, then there’s no problem for him. A bird is just a bird. So for him it’s only a doubt; he has no problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but aren’t you causing him to stumble? For him it’s a doubt, but for you it’s certain. You are causing him to stumble by sending it away. But even though he will eat it as a doubt, still—from your perspective, if you could definitely prevent it, you should definitely have prevented it. The fact that for him it’s a doubt is a different discussion. That’s an interesting question. Since you mention it, there is the Ran at the end of the first chapter of tractate Kiddushin. The Ran says that with orlah outside the Land of Israel, you can cause someone to stumble with definite orlah, because doubtful orlah outside the Land of Israel is permitted—that is a law given to Moses at Sinai. Okay? So if someone is taking a fruit and for him it is doubtful, he is allowed to eat it—that’s a law given to Moses at Sinai—even though it is a Torah-level doubt. Orlah outside the Land of Israel is a law given to Moses at Sinai, but if it is doubtful one may eat it. So the Ran says: according to that it turns out that if I take definite orlah outside the Land of Israel and give it to you to eat, that is permitted for me; I have not violated “do not place a stumbling block.” Why? Because from your standpoint it is doubtful, and you are allowed to eat it, so I have not caused you to commit a transgression, and therefore I have not violated “do not place a stumbling block.” Okay? Rabbi Elchanan wants to claim that the same is true regarding all doubts whose rule is leniency by Torah law. There are several such cases, right? A doubtful firstborn, a mamzer, a doubtful mamzer, a doubtful mourner—there’s a whole series of things that are doubtful, regarding which the rule is that a Torah-level doubt is treated leniently.

[Speaker H] It’s really a stumbling block before the blind, but what? What? It’s really a stumbling block before the blind.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so he says it’s not a stumbling block, because he did something permitted. Once it is a permitted act, then it isn’t a stumbling block.

[Speaker H] Because he doesn’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, but if he doesn’t know, it’s permitted.

[Speaker H] But the person giving it to him does know for certain that it’s orlah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what if he knows?

[Speaker H] What, so he’s not just setting a trap for him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not a trap—he isn’t trapped. After all, he didn’t do anything wrong. So what’s the problem if I know but he doesn’t know? Rabbi Elchanan wants to claim that in all these matters—it’s a novelty. By the way, I haven’t seen this article myself. I once heard Rabbi Asher Schechter mention it in a lecture; he brought the article. It’s an article in Merbei Torah that Rabbi Elchanan edited, but I looked and didn’t find it. So for the moment, for me, this is oral Torah—I haven’t seen it. But he says that Rabbi Elchanan argues that in all places where the Torah permits a Torah-level doubt—usually a Torah-level doubt is treated stringently; whether that is Torah law or rabbinic is a dispute among the medieval authorities, but it is treated stringently—and there are places where the Torah itself permits a Torah-level doubt, like the examples I brought and others: doubtful impurity in a public domain, doubtful orlah outside the Land of Israel, doubtful mourning, doubtful mamzer, doubtful firstborn. There are several such laws. In all these places, the prohibition is not a prohibition on the act itself that you do; the prohibition is a prohibition on consciousness. You may not eat something that you know is orlah; you may not become impure when you know that you became impure in a public domain. But if you don’t know, even if you definitely became impure, you did not transgress. Awareness is not a condition of your being blameworthy. Awareness is a condition in the definition of the prohibition itself. Do you understand? In other words, if I am not aware, it’s not that I failed to meet the condition and therefore one cannot hold it against me. Rather, if I am not aware, then I did not violate any prohibition at all. In other words, awareness is a condition in the definition of the prohibition, not in the guilt of the transgressor. Okay? That’s his claim.

[Speaker I] Why didn’t he sin by giving non-kosher meat and carcasses and a doubt—by the very fact that he handed it over?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly yes, because there we are not dealing with one of the prohibitions whose doubtful cases are treated leniently. There is only a closed list of prohibitions whose doubtful cases are treated leniently, and that is the list Rabbi Elchanan is talking about. In all the other matters, a Torah-level doubt is treated stringently, and there indeed the definition is not that—it’s the prohibition itself regardless of awareness.

[Speaker C] He definitely didn’t transgress, that person who ate it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The person who ate it didn’t transgress? What do you mean, if he wasn’t certain?

[Speaker C] But I caused him to stumble—I gave it to him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I caused him to stumble. In those prohibitions, once he didn’t know, it’s not that he isn’t guilty; rather, he did not do any prohibited act at all, because awareness is part of the definition of the prohibition.

[Speaker J] But the matter of orlah isn’t a consciousness-based prohibition—it’s a reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if he ate something that is kosher or not kosher, that is a matter of the object itself and not a matter of consciousness. Therefore there—there, causing him to stumble is forbidden. But in all the prohibitions from the closed list I mentioned earlier, the prohibition is a consciousness-based prohibition, and once the person does not know, he did not transgress any prohibition at all. And consequently, even if I caused him to stumble with a definite prohibition, as long as in his consciousness he did not know, he did not transgress, so I also did not cause him to stumble.

[Speaker K] So wait—outside the Land of Israel, then all that has to do with orlah is a consciousness-based prohibition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course. That’s exactly what the law is innovating.

[Speaker K] We would say that it really is permitted to eat?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a matter of the basic law. It is the basic law, but the basic law was stated about consciousness and not about reality. That is what the law given to Moses at Sinai innovated regarding orlah outside the Land of Israel. That is exactly the novelty.

[Speaker B] It’s hard to grasp.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what he argues. He says more than that. According to Rabbi Elchanan, if I know of a definite mamzer and I suggest him as a match to a fit Jewish woman who is forbidden to marry him—but a doubtful mamzer, “the Merciful One said definite mamzer, and not doubtful mamzer” by Torah law. Rabbinically they imposed an extra stringency regarding lineage, but by Torah law a doubtful mamzer is permitted. I can matchmake a fully fit Jewish woman to a definite mamzer, as long as I make sure that she does not know he is a mamzer. That solves the whole problem of mamzerut. Wow—amazing. So Rabbi Elchanan—I don’t know how much one can rely on this in practice as Jewish law, but that is his claim. Okay? How did we get to all this?

[Speaker D] Because of the question of the doubtful birds, the birds. How does he know that he is definitely a mamzer? Was he a witness?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say it is known; a religious court determined that he is a mamzer.

[Speaker D] It can’t determine that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The religious court really determined that he is a mamzer, yes. I’m saying, generally the view is—by the way, the Ran is indeed accepted by many halakhic decisors—that one can cause someone to stumble with definite orlah outside the Land of Israel. The extension by Rabbi Elchanan, that this is true for the whole list of prohibitions whose Torah-level doubtful cases are treated leniently—that extension, I don’t know how much one can rely on it. But this statement of the Ran is in general accepted. I don’t remember right now whether there is anyone who explicitly disagrees with him.

[Speaker D] But regarding mamzer, it seems strange to me, because all the descendants from now on will be mamzerim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they won’t.

[Speaker D] If she is fit, then they also won’t—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They won’t be known, and they too will be doubtful mamzerim and will be permitted.

[Speaker D] But that follows the disqualified side.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t understand. It follows the disqualified side if you know. Right, it follows the disqualified side if you know, but the disqualification is a consciousness-based disqualification. If you don’t know, there is no disqualification.

[Speaker B] And if later she finds out?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She would have to get divorced. It could be yes. I’m saying, on the conceptual level—I’m not talking right now about practical guidance of what to do—but on the conceptual level, that is what comes out.

[Speaker D] I understand, we just said definite mamzer as an example.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, you’re in good company; this is strange to a lot of people. Fine, and from a minority? What? A certain mamzer? Yes, I’m saying, I also didn’t see this written explicitly, I heard it as oral tradition, but I’m saying, the Ran says it—regarding orlah he says it. It’s written explicitly in the Ran, and the halakhic decisors agree with him. So there is logic to asking: what is so special specifically about orlah? Why specifically there is it like this? Rather, anywhere the Torah innovates that its doubt is treated leniently, apparently what it’s saying is that this is a consciousness-based prohibition. And if that’s the case, then you can cause stumbling even with something definite. Fine, so the claim is that the limbs are actually permitted. Now, the Rabbi of Brisk in Yoma, the Griz on page 61, proves from the Gevurat Ari that if the goat remained alive, you could slaughter it and eat it. Slaughter it and eat it. And the Minchat Chinukh discusses this there as well—whether it is permitted to eat or forbidden to eat. Pri Chadash in Avodat Yom HaKippurim also writes this. Fine, they say one has to go down after it and kill it, so they discuss there as well how its prohibition was permitted. Taking a life on Yom Kippur—if it’s not part of the service, then what permits doing that? Fine, I’m leaving that aside for now. In any case it is permitted to eat. All right, in any case, if one slaughtered it—there are those who say you don’t need to slaughter it, it’s enough just to kill it, because the killing is the slaughter for the sent-off goat, and there are those who say it needs slaughter—but it is permitted to eat. In short, something very, very strange is happening here. Here I’ve more or less finished the halakhic excursion following the goat. What is the meaning of this picture? An incredibly strange picture. We begin with two goats that are holy with the holiness of an offering. Little by little one of them goes into the innermost sanctum, is offered, everything as usual, a regular offering. The second starts going through stages toward being sent into the wilderness—the one sent off into the wilderness. At some stage the holiness of the offering leaves it, and in the end you can basically have a barbecue with it. Meaning, the entire Yom Kippur service and all the atonement of Yom Kippur, which is really centered in the sent-off goat, in the end comes down to this

[Speaker G] that there’s nothing here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, you can take it, slaughter it, and eat it for your own enjoyment, put it on the grill. Okay, maybe even on Yom Kippur. The designated man is allowed to do that on Yom Kippur, after all he’s allowed to eat on Yom Kippur. I don’t know whether he’s allowed to take the sent-off goat, slaughter it, and eat it on Yom Kippur itself. All the people of Israel are waiting for atonement, and the guy is out there making barbecue with the sent-off goat. There’s something here that’s simply inconceivable. It can’t be such a thing.

[Speaker D] Even if you say that in the slaughter all the stages are done, and in the end the slaughter itself basically didn’t

[Speaker F] do anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right, basically nothing at all. It’s all a façade. Nothing happened here.

[Speaker F] Maybe it shows that if, say, we compare it to a sin—that a sin which looks substantial is actually nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think exactly that. I mean, I started with the question: how can the sent-off goat, which is not an offering, atone for all Israel? What is the point of sending it to the goat-demons—what we read in the previous lesson in Nachmanides, right? “When you are thirty-three years old, you will know it.” So it says, “And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons”—that’s the verse, the thirty-three after the goat to Azazel. What is the meaning of this whole thing? It seems to me that what—do you know Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll? Things happen there—the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts and all those stories—and in the end, of course, she wakes up on the lakeshore and it turns out it was all a dream. Right? The whole story is really a description of her dream. That’s basically what we have here. We do the sent-off goat, choose two goats, everything at the center of the holiness of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, everyone completely ceases all activity, all eyes are fixed on the crimson strip. Okay, and things are happening there, and the priest runs and sprinkles this and that and slaughters and receives the goat and the bull and here and there, and they send, and the crimson strip, and everyone is looking to see what happens with that crimson strip, and they send it to the wilderness—or maybe they don’t send it, everyone thinks they send it—and at the very end, there is nothing. No sent-off goat, nothing at all. There’s just a nice little sheep here that you can put on the grill. That’s all. I think the natural interpretation is what you said earlier. What? The natural interpretation is that what they really want to tell us here—the sent-off goat and the goat to Azazel—are really telling us: yes, this is a choice between good and evil. The lottery is the expression of choice; I spoke about that earlier. And what they want to illustrate to us is the difference between the inner goat and the sent-off goat. The question is: what are you choosing? Now why do you choose to do evil? It always seems like some fateful thing. The Talmud says that the wicked, when they look back, it seems to them like a hair’s breadth, and the righteous, when they look back, it seems to them like a high mountain. Meaning, after you’ve already failed, you understand that you failed over nonsense. Before you fail, it looks to you like some impassable barrier, some imaginary picture forms for you that places you before terrible trials, and you have considerations and all that, and in the end you fail and fall because you didn’t manage to stand up to the enormous challenge of failure. When you look back, you basically say it was all nonsense. Something here was absurd, a stupid picture—how did I fall for that at all? It was simply nonsense, it doesn’t exist, it’s just a façade, some illusion, an optical illusion, an appearance. And that’s really what they want to tell you. In the end, how is it that they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons? They will stop sacrificing to the goat-demons when? When they see that there are no goat-demons. There simply aren’t. There is no such thing. You go to the wilderness, demons and goat-demons and all kinds of things, and it’s all terrible. What do Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides say? Heaven forbid there are not two authorities here. We are not sending a goat to another authority, to Satan. You go and arrive at the goat-demons there in the wilderness, and you see that there is nothing there. Nothing at all. It’s all appearance. These are the fantasies you live in; there is nothing there. And when you discover that, then they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons. And that is the atonement of Yom Kippur. The atonement of Yom Kippur is that the moment we understand this appearance, when we dissolve it, that can bring us to a state where we will no longer sin, and in that we are atoned. And therefore the goat to Azazel—even though nothing happens there, not despite that but because nothing happens there, because in the end this whole dream dissipates—that is ultimately what brings us atonement. And therefore it is the essence of the day. The essence of the day is to show you: one goat goes all the way inward, into the innermost sanctum. You—we, you claim there are two authorities, right? There are goat-demons there in the region of Azazel and the wilderness and so on, and there is the Holy One, blessed be He, in the innermost sanctum. And now we’re in a dilemma whom to follow. Follow Him, follow—like Elijah on Mount Carmel: is the Lord God, or is Baal? If Baal, then go after him; if the Lord is God, go after Him, right? So let’s do an experiment now, okay? Let’s do an experiment. We’ll send one goat all the way inside to the Holy One, blessed be He, and one goat all the way outside. And we will offer a sacrifice to idolatry—by authorization of the Torah, by command of the Torah, not just by authorization of the Torah—we’ll offer a sacrifice to idolatry in order to reveal that there is no one to whom we offered it. There is no such thing. You want to offer a sacrifice to idolatry? Fine, we’ll go with you. Go ahead, it’s a commandment on Yom Kippur to offer a sacrifice to idolatry. Go with it to the very end. When you meet the goat there at the cliff, give it the sacrifice too. And you won’t meet it, because there isn’t one. It’s fear of an illusion. And therefore, in the end, the atonement of Yom Kippur comes from the fact that you think there are two authorities—the inside and Azazel—and you discover that there is only one. And that is what Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides wrote there: don’t think there are two authorities here; this is all really service of the Holy One, blessed be He, who commanded that this goat be given there and that goat be given there. It’s not just because He commanded giving it to Satan; rather in the end you discover there is nothing besides Him. There is no other authority besides Him. It’s not that there is someone else but the Holy One, blessed be He, controls him, and He is the one who gives him the sacrifice, and this is some kind of superiority of the… It’s not superiority of the Holy One, blessed be He; it’s exclusivity. Meaning, the other authority that you think exists doesn’t really exist. It’s an illusion. And the dissipation of that illusion—that is the atonement of Yom Kippur.

[Speaker D] So the fact that the next year it happens again—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It comes back. After a year we live in that illusion again, one that

[Speaker D] never ends.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How is it that after we’ve repented, we go back and sin again and need to repent another year? That’s not difficult. Rather, after we go through this process, assuming we also understood and internalized it, we’re human beings. Afterward we go back into our fantasies, and once again there are authorities and hesitations and hard choices, and we fail, and again next year we need to remind ourselves of the same thing. And of course it would be best if we internalized it more and didn’t need this—but we know ourselves, and apparently usually that doesn’t happen, certainly not fully. Yes, right, all the world’s a stage. But the repair for that is not to play correctly on the stage, but to understand that it is only a stage. To understand that it’s only a stage—if you’ve understood that it’s only a stage, then you’ve basically already fixed it. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t need to live a whole year this way. A whole year we have real struggles, and during the year we’re forbidden to offer sacrifices to idolatry. No games. It’s forbidden to do these metaphysical experiments during the year. But once a year we need to understand what is really happening here. The situation exists; idolatry does not. The situation exists—only it doesn’t. We do indeed go through this matter and there is such a prohibition, but they want to tell us that this whole business is a façade. There isn’t really anything there. If you look all the way through, you’ll see there is nothing. When you enter the innermost sanctum, you meet the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s the story with Elisha, who saw the Holy One, blessed be He, as it were sitting there. And a High Priest who was not successful—if he was unworthy, he died, and they pulled him out with a rope. Meaning, inside there, terrible things happen, because when you go inside you discover that there is real reality there. And when you go all the way outside, you discover there is nothing. You find yourself back at the starting point, like Alice in Wonderland. You started with two nice goats prancing around here, and you chose them. You did the whole service all the way through, and where did you end up? At the starting point. You come back to having some nice little sheep that you can put on the grill. Nothing beyond that. You went through a hair-raising journey and found yourself back at the point of departure. You woke up from the dream. Because that, really, is the atonement. The atonement is to understand that these things are often a dream. That’s the point. Now I think this connects… connects to what I spoke about in the previous lesson. Because what we have here is a resetting of what exists outside the Holy One, blessed be He. It’s part of that same cessation I spoke about—that we cease from labor and from pleasures; we are essentially saying that the world that pulls us after it, this external world, is ultimately not an end in itself. You can’t make it into something that competes with holiness, with the Holy One, blessed be He. When we go to encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, we have to reset everything else—pleasures and labors and everything we spoke about; that is the cessation of Yom Kippur. And in terms of the sent-off goat, that is the metaphysical root of this resetting. And the metaphysical root of this resetting is basically to understand that there is not really some authority that underlies the mundane. There is the mundane, but there is no one, as it were, competing with the Holy One, blessed be He—some kind of entity, right? Someone else who is the basis of the mundane world. There is a basis for the world of holiness, and is there someone else who is the basis for the world of the mundane? No. The basis of the mundane world is also the Holy One, blessed be He. There are not two authorities. And very often our sin actually stems from our giving some power to imaginary entities. Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner writes in his book on Purim, Pachad Yitzchak—he begins with this, at the start of the book—he says that all mockery is forbidden except mockery of idolatry. What does that mean? Why is it permitted to make fun of idolatry but forbidden to do so in other contexts? To show that it is nothing. Because in idolatry, the root of the sin is to assign importance to something that has no importance at all, right? To take something ordinary—wood and stone, something utterly devoid of meaning—and turn it into something of great intrinsic importance. The only way to deal with such a thing is mockery. Mockery is basically to cheapen something, right? To turn something important into nothing. Okay? In a place where the problem is attributing importance to something unimportant, the way to deal with it is to pop the balloon, meaning to dissolve the importance of the thing. And that is exactly the same here. Therefore it isn’t only idolatry; in this case I’m claiming this is the root of all sins, not only idolatry. When we have some dilemma whether to sin or not, there are always two things on the scales. The question is whether we go in the positive direction or the negative direction. And it’s hard for us to decide. It’s a difficult test. And why is it difficult? Because we think there are other kinds of importance too. This is important and that is important, and we’re supposedly in a dilemma. Now sometimes there are real dilemmas, where there really are two important things and there is a genuine dilemma what to do. I’m talking about the unreal dilemmas. The unreal dilemmas—the dilemmas whether to sin, not the dilemmas how to serve God; those are real dilemmas. The dilemma whether to sin or not is a dilemma rooted in fiction. It’s a dilemma in which there really is no second side on the scales. We create it as an illusion, but it doesn’t really exist. And therefore the way to deal with it—”they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons”—is by sending a goat to Azazel. That’s the idea.

[Speaker D] But all along the way the Holy One, blessed be He, warns us not to worship idols.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s throughout the year. So what? That’s throughout the year, true. Throughout the year the way to deal with the façade is to warn us not to surrender to it. That’s the regular method during the year. One day a year they tell us: let’s deal with it differently. Let’s go with it to the end and discover that behind it there is nothing, that it’s only a façade. One day a year we need to, and are allowed to, do that. The rest of the year you have to live with prohibition and permission and everything properly. By the way, Purim also follows this track. Purim and Yom Kippur are like the two goats. Yes, Yom Kippur is like Purim, right? What happens on Purim? On Purim too we break a lot of things that during the year we are forbidden to do. To get drunk until one cannot distinguish between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai.” The Lithuanian halakhic decisors who argue there say not to get drunk there, but in the plain sense of the Talmud it is certainly to get drunk, to get drunk until one cannot distinguish. Okay? And why? Because we are really breaking certain frameworks that during the year we are forbidden to break. You need to function properly: this is forbidden, this is permitted, be careful, what yes and what no. But two days a year—on Purim and on Yom Kippur—we break this whole framework. And we break it in order to understand that the prohibition doesn’t really have a foundation. And that will also help us during the year not to fall there. But one day a year we are allowed also to deal with it differently. If you can’t beat them, join them. Let’s go with it, let’s offer idolatry, let’s offer a goat to idolatry, let’s see what happens. Just like Elijah says to them, right? What does Elijah do? It’s exactly the same experiment. Elijah says to them: let’s offer a sacrifice to Baal. How? It’s the prohibition of idolatry. Let’s offer a sacrifice to Baal. He’s trying to show them that there is no Baal. He gave them a Yom Kippur in the middle of the year. He basically did this kind of experiment at a moment when the people of Israel were sinning. Elijah understood—by emergency decree—that he needed to give them some sort of Yom Kippur. So that’s what he says to them: let’s offer a sacrifice to Baal, let’s see whether there is anyone there who receives this sacrifice. Maybe he’s asleep? He mocks them there. Right? Maybe he’s asleep? Shout louder, maybe he’ll wake up? It’s exactly the same thing. He’s basically trying to show them: friends, you’re living in an imaginary world, in the Matrix—wake up. There is nothing there. Now, during the year it’s forbidden to do this. An ordinary person is forbidden to offer a sacrifice to idolatry. He needs to be careful—it’s forbidden, he must guard himself from it and not do it. Once or twice a year, yes, it’s permitted to do it in the opposite way. Let’s offer it and see what comes out; we’ll see that no fire comes down from heaven and it doesn’t receive this sacrifice—there is no one there to receive it. And that, I think, is the service of Yom Kippur. That is the service of Yom Kippur, and that is perhaps the metaphysical meaning of the cessation required of us. One day we are supposed to live in a kind of consciousness in which there is only holiness. That’s not a consciousness it’s right to live with during the rest of the year. But on one day of the year we are supposed to suspend everything else. Apart from holiness, nothing exists. Not pleasures, not labors, not creation, nothing. Everything is suspended. And the metaphysical focal point of the matter is this experiment of the two goats. So is the goat to Azazel an offering or not an offering? Let’s return to the starting point. It begins as an offering, but it is an offering to idolatry. It is an offering, holy with the holiness of an offering. The Holy One, blessed be He, tells us: consecrate it as an offering on My behalf to idolatry. In the end you discover it was not an offering. It was all in the imagination; it’s a mistaken consecration, like a mistaken transaction. I consecrated it to idolatry on the assumption that there is idolatry; it turns out to me that there is no idolatry, so it becomes clear retroactively that this consecration was not a consecration. Sit down, eat it, do whatever you want with this goat—nothing happened. Usually bodily sanctity does not lapse for no reason—the Talmud in Nedarim 29. The Talmud says there that if something has bodily sanctity, it does not lapse for no reason. You cannot consecrate something with bodily sanctity for two days, and after two days it will lapse. Or conditionally—you cannot make a condition on bodily sanctity. Why? Because if the condition is not fulfilled, the sanctity lapses, but bodily sanctity cannot just lapse like that. How does bodily sanctity lapse? Maybe through misuse of consecrated property; it depends whether these are altar offerings or not, but in principle misuse can perhaps remove the thing from its sanctity—but that’s through an act. Sanctity doesn’t lapse on its own. Now here it lapses on its own, against the rules. How does bodily sanctity lapse on its own with the sent-off goat? Because it was never holy. It doesn’t lapse; it turns out retroactively that it never was. It was never holy; this is not lapse. It reminds me a bit, by association only, but it reminds me: there’s a Talmudic passage in Nedarim 50. The Talmud discusses terumah—whether terumah is something that can become permitted. You understand that something that can become permitted has stringencies: in a rabbinic-level doubt its doubt is treated stringently, it is not nullified by a majority, and so on. Is terumah something that can become permitted? In principle one can go to a sage and ask to revoke the terumah, and then the terumah becomes ordinary produce, like a vow. Okay? About this, the Rosh brings there that the Jerusalem Talmud—the Rosh in his commentary, not in his rulings; he has a commentary on the page in Nedarim—he brings in the name of the Jerusalem Talmud that the Jerusalem Talmud asks: why is this called something that can become permitted? If you go to a sage and ask, then it turns out it was never terumah. Not that it was terumah and once you ask it lapses—rather, it never was. On the side that it is terumah, it is terumah forever. It may turn out that it never was terumah, but as long as it is terumah, how can you call it something that can become permitted? Never mind what the answer is—but does it lapse on its own? Like an egg that was laid on a Jewish holiday.

[Speaker F] No, it doesn’t matter whether it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whether on its own or not on its own—but it lapses retroactively, not from now on.

[Speaker F] No, that’s the other side of it. Something considered as having a way to become permitted lapses on its own, like an egg.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, who said such a thing? That’s one of the answers there, maybe yes maybe no—that you need to ask in order for it to lapse; it doesn’t lapse on its own.

[Speaker F] No, on the other hand fine, because it’s something that can become permitted. The holiday ends and it lapses on its own, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And who says only something that lapses on its own counts as something that can become permitted? If I can remove it by an act, who says not? There is such a Rif.

[Speaker F] No, that it turns out retroactively, as you’re suggesting—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An answer—so it depends. There is such a Rif that tries to claim something like that; it’s not so simple.

[Speaker G] So all these offerings became holy, right? How did the goat become not holy?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: it didn’t become not holy. It turned out retroactively that it had never become so. They consecrated both of them, obviously. They consecrated it for idolatry, for the sent-off goat.

[Speaker G] No, they consecrated both of them—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But from the outset they knew that one goes to the innermost sanctum and one goes to Azazel. So they consecrated them with that in mind. Then the lottery comes and says, okay, this one is holy for the innermost sanctum and this one is holy for Azazel. Then the process continues, and suddenly it turns out that no—the one that went to Azazel was never holy in the first place. Sit down and make a barbecue out of it. Okay? What you have here is not bodily sanctity that lapsed on its own; rather, it simply wasn’t holy at all. It turned out that it had never been holy—that’s the point.

[Speaker D] If in one of the stages of the sent-off goat process I did something not according to Jewish law, then I’m liable, I’m liable… so is he liable? Liable for what? He didn’t do the confession—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then he didn’t fulfill it—

[Speaker D] They didn’t do the sent-off goat process here. What does it mean to be liable? He’s liable for nothing. Is a priest who didn’t throw the blood liable? He’s liable for nothing. He has to throw it. It’s not a prohibition not to throw it; there is an obligation to throw it, otherwise you didn’t offer the sacrifice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you ate without the throwing—

[Speaker D] that’s a different discussion, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The very fact that you didn’t throw it—for what are you liable? You’re liable for nothing. You have to throw it; that’s part of the sacrificial service. If you didn’t do it, then you didn’t do the service of the sent-off goat.

[Speaker D] Apparently there won’t be atonement. And if a non-priest did the actions—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] those actions and not a priest, is he liable?

[Speaker D] After all that’s not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s liable for nothing; the actions weren’t done. A non-priest who performs service in an offering is liable because the offering is holy, and a non-priest who performed the service in it—that’s not service, but if it’s not service then he did an action with a holy thing, it is not service, so he is liable. But here a non-priest is valid for the sending.

[Speaker D] And if someone else did stages up to—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the sending, then what did he do? What, he confessed over it? Let him confess—it’s just muttering with no value at all. It’s not a prohibition. Let him do whatever he wants; he can also dance around it if he wants. I just want to add one more comment—I see this has taken me a little time—to add one more comment touching on Nachmanides. Last time we read Nachmanides, and Nachmanides says there, Rabbi Abraham was faithful in spirit and conceals a matter, while I am a talebearer who reveals secrets. So he revealed the secret of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra—what the sent-off goat is. And afterward he suddenly moves to “the Greek and his wicked disciples,” and “I cannot add more, I must conceal because of the Greek and his wicked disciples who had the audacity to think that only what they grasped with their intellect exists,” or something like that. Okay? What—how is that connected here at all? What does that have to do with our topic? And why, if he decided to reveal, does he not reveal it all the way but conceal part of it? So I don’t know. Here I really said—I am a bit unsure where I am on the two sides of the line between interpretation and homily. But in this context I’ll maybe add another piece that’s a little homiletic, but I still think it contains truth. That same façade I spoke about before in the context of good and evil also exists on the intellectual plane. You know the division of the ten sefirot: wisdom, understanding, knowledge; kindness, strength, beauty; endurance, splendor, foundation, and kingship. So wisdom, understanding, knowledge are in the head. All right? Kindness, strength, beauty are the heart, the traits. Wisdom, understanding, knowledge are the intellectual. Kindness, strength, beauty are the traits. Endurance, splendor, foundation are the legs, and kingship is below, action; endurance, splendor, foundation are the limbs of action and kingship is below. The same structure of façade that exists in the context of good and evil, of kindness, strength, beauty, of the traits, also exists on the intellectual plane of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. And there too there is the same façade, and sometimes you need to do the same kind of work to overcome it. And sometimes it is the root of the façade we saw here in kindness, strength, beauty—it is higher. What do I mean? In Proverbs it says—one moment before that—we know there are fifty gates of understanding, and corresponding to them fifty gates of impurity. Okay? Opposite understanding stands impurity. Why? Opposite understanding there ought to be foolishness—why impurity? Or opposite impurity there ought to be holiness—why understanding? Why is the contrast between understanding and impurity? By the way, in the Passover Haggadah too it’s not written explicitly, but in the plain sense the opposite of the wise son is the wicked son, not the simpleton. The opposite of the wicked is the wise one, not the righteous one. There is some sort of link here—do you notice?—between the intellectual and the traits, or between actions and thought, in both of these cases. So that’s the basis for what I want to say here. The Vilna Gaon writes on the verse in Proverbs, “The Lord has made everything for His own purpose, and even the wicked for the day of evil.”

[Speaker B] Again?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “The Lord has made everything for His own purpose, and even the wicked for the day of evil.” The Lord made everything for His own purpose, and even the wicked for the day of evil. So the Vilna Gaon says—every… I don’t know if it appears by you, if I brought it—

[Speaker B] again or not, I don’t

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] remember anymore, I didn’t mark all the sources. Yes—

[Speaker B] at the bottom of the first page. Yes, you said—just read the wording for a second, because by me it doesn’t appear. “And he said, ‘everything made’ and ‘even the wicked,’ because 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. And that is because the other side has only forty-nine gates of impurity, and it does not have the fiftieth gate. And when all its forty-nine are filled, then it will be eradicated from the world, for it will be burned away as dung is burned away until it is consumed. And therefore the fiftieth gate will be revealed and it will be eradicated from the world. And this is ‘everything made’—everything made, and so on—it is the fifty gates of understanding. And ‘even the wicked’ has the numerical value of the forty-nine gates of impurity, ‘for the day of evil,’ for when the wicked flourish and so on, they are to be destroyed forever and ever.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Everything the Lord made”—”everything” has the numerical value of fifty, right? And “even” has the numerical value of forty-nine, right? “Everything the Lord made” is the fifty gates of understanding. “Everything the Lord made for His own purpose.” And “even the wicked for the day of evil” is the gates of impurity. And the gates of impurity are forty-nine. The gates of understanding are fifty. Why? The Vilna Gaon says the fiftieth gate was not revealed. What does it mean it was not revealed? The one of impurity was not revealed, or the one of understanding was not revealed? What is this fiftieth gate? Nachmanides too, in his introduction to his commentary on Genesis, says similar things. He claims that the fiftieth gate among the gates of understanding is different. It’s not a gate like the regular gates of understanding; it’s something else. And basically it seems to me that what stands behind this—come, try to think for a moment about the metaphor of a gate. I’m a little in homiletics these two times; it’ll pass, don’t worry. Think about the metaphor of a gate. What is a gate? A gate is something that transfers us from one space to another. From room to room, or from outside to inside, right? Something like that. If there are forty-nine gates, okay? How is it arranged? There is a room, a gate, a room, a gate, a room, a gate, and so on, right? Forty-nine gates. How many rooms are there?

[Speaker B] Fifty. Sure? A room… oh,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There could be a gate—

[Speaker B] maybe a courtyard at the beginning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no courtyard. Let’s say it’s all just rooms.

[Speaker B] Before the first gate is there a room? Yes, because it has to transfer from place to place. Fifty… so fifty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are truly righteous people. It’s either forty-nine or fifty, depending on the language conditions. Right? If it’s a ring, then there are fifty gates—forty-nine gates and forty-nine rooms, right? If it’s a straight line, then there are fifty rooms and forty-nine gates connecting them, right? What’s the difference between the two? There are forty-nine gates of understanding. What is understanding? In the Sages—or really the Ari explains this—that understanding means understanding one thing from another, deriving one thing from another. Therefore gates of understanding means gate. A gate is from one room to reach another room. To understand one thing from another—the metaphor is a gate. Why do we use gates of understanding and not spheres of understanding or vessels of understanding? Why gates? Because understanding by definition is a gate. It takes me from one room to another. Okay? Now if I have forty-nine gates of understanding, then I basically have tools that help me derive a conclusion from an assumption, and from that conclusion I derive another conclusion, and from that conclusion I derive yet another conclusion. Where do the first assumptions come from? Turtles all the way down, as the joke says.

[Speaker F] So in the ring, from the end.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One of two things: either at the beginning there is some room into which no gate enters, only a gate exits from it, or we have a circle here, right? The conception that there is a circle here is basically saying that there is nothing that is true by virtue of itself. All I have is only: if this is true then this is true, and if this is true then this is true. Think about geometry, okay? In geometry I have axioms; from them I derive conclusions; from the conclusions I derive more conclusions, and so on. That’s how the theorems of geometry are built, right? How do I relate to the axioms? There are two possibilities. One possibility is that the axioms are arbitrary. They are neither true nor false. I posit them, and if they are true, I can derive all kinds of conclusions from them. According to this conception, geometry basically teaches us nothing. Nothing there is true, because after all you don’t know that the assumptions are true; you posit them arbitrarily. If the assumptions are true, then the conclusion is true, and if not, then not. Now I ask you: what is the sum of the angles in a triangle? One hundred and eighty. Depends on your assumptions. If you assume Euclidean geometry, flat space, then the sum of the angles is one hundred and eighty. Assume other assumptions and the sum is different. In other words, in my hat as a mathematician I cannot answer that question. A mathematician doesn’t know what the sum of the angles in a triangle is. All he knows is that if the assumptions are such and such, then the sum of the angles is such and such. Right? Now I’m asking you: but what is the sum of the angles in a triangle? I’m not asking you if-then. What is the sum of the angles in a triangle? I don’t know. In my hat as a mathematician I’m not authorized to answer. That’s what a responsible mathematician ought to answer in such a situation. And we know the sum of the angles in a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees. Why? Because we know our space is flat. How do we know that? Because we know. How do we know the axioms of geometry—that one straight line passes between two points, or that two parallels do not meet?

[Speaker F] Euclid said so.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Euclid—and how did he know? He observed. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. That’s what I’m asking: how do the sages know?

[Speaker F] The axioms seem reasonable in reality, but you can’t prove them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, you can’t prove them, but in geometry only something proven is admissible. And if it seems reasonable to you, so what? It seems reasonable.

[Speaker L] But in the world of physics it’s accepted as a rule. In construction, in electricity, in everything, all these axioms are accepted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Excellent question, but that’s already physics, not mathematics. That’s already physics, not mathematics. Physics basically tells us—physics tells us—that between two points there passes one straight line and two parallels do not meet. That’s a result of observation. True, it’s not a simple observation—by the way, you can never observe that there is no other straight line between those two points—but it sounds reasonable from what I see that there isn’t another straight line; there is only one. But that’s not admissible in mathematics. “Sounds reasonable,” “it seems to me,” “I saw”—among mathematicians that’s not legal; among physicists fine. And the foundation of mathematics, from the mathematician’s perspective, is arbitrary, arbitrary. And now you have to decide how to relate to the axioms. The axioms are not proven; they sound plausible, they seem reasonable, but they are not proven. You can approach this in two ways. You can say: as far as I’m concerned only what is proven is admissible. Then you are left with nothing. Because the axioms are not admissible since they are not proven; consequently everything proven on their basis is also not admissible, because your infrastructure is not admissible. So basically you know nothing. In the metaphor of the gates, that’s the circle. The circle basically says: there is no room at the beginning; it’s fiction. Every room is built on the previous room; everything is conditional. Nothing is accepted in an unconditional way. So I close the gates in a circle, and then I can spin around there forever; I will never discover anything stable, anything true. For these gates to have meaning, I need to assume a model of a straight line, not a circle. At the beginning there is a room. That room does not come through any gate; it is not proven on the basis of something prior. It is true from within itself. If I accept that—the axioms of geometry, say—I say: this is true, period. Not proven, true without being proven. If I accept that, then all the gates of understanding can add a great deal of information for me. But everything depends on how I relate to the first room. All the gates and rooms formed afterward draw their meaning from how I look at the first room. If I see the first room as something true by virtue of itself—there is no proof for it, there is no gate entering it from somewhere else—then everything proven on its basis is also true. And if they ask me what the sum of the angles in a triangle is, the answer is: one hundred and eighty. How do you know? I know because it is true. I have no proof, but it is true. On the other hand, if I do not accept the first room as a room—there is no first room really—then all I know is that if this is true then this is true, and if this is true then this is true, and if this is true maybe because that one is true, and you close the circle. Nothing is true by virtue of itself, and therefore nothing is true. In short, one who accepts only proven things is left with nothing. And one who wants to adopt any claims whatsoever has to compromise and accept things as true even though he has no proof for them, or accept the existence of a first room. Without that, all the rooms are meaningless. If you think of a set of nesting dolls, or a huge palace decorated and beautiful, wonderful architecture, everything magnificent, with gardens and rooms—you go in, in, in, finish, reach all the way inside, and find yourself at the entrance gate. That palace is nobody’s palace. A palace gets meaning if inside sits a king, or some work of art, it doesn’t matter—something for the sake of which the whole business was made. Otherwise that whole palace is a façade. It loses its meaning. Now one who has the audacity—the Greek, Aristotle—who has the audacity to think that only what he grasped exists, or only what he has proof for exists, is left with nothing. Basically what he is saying is that there are forty-nine gates of understanding and the fiftieth is not a gate, it is a room. There is no room; there are only forty-nine gates of understanding. Those are gates of impurity. There is no difference between the gates of understanding and the gates of impurity. They are the very same gates. If there is a room at the beginning, then the gates are gates of understanding. And therefore there are fifty gates of understanding. If there is no room at the beginning, then those very same gates are gates of impurity. What is impurity? The ultimate source of impurity is a corpse. What is a corpse? A corpse is a person like me and you, except for something missing from him that none of us can point to. Right? He is disconnected from the point that animates him. There is one point that takes the whole body and turns it into something alive: the soul. If that does not exist, the whole body is here, but it is dead. It says nothing. Impurity—when a person dies, by the way, death—worth a homily. The three severe sins are idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed, right? Each one corresponds to an aspect of being. Forbidden sexual relations is a sin of the body, right? Idolatry is an intellectual sin, meaning a sin of the soul. And murder—what is that against?

[Speaker B] The life-force? The living soul, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Against connecting them, against the hyphen. Murder does not destroy the body, nor does it destroy the soul; it only severs the two from one another. Right? It simply disconnects them. Now of course, the moment you disconnect the soul from the body, the body dies. It’s here. Everything is there. Nothing is missing from it. But it is dead because it has been cut off from the point that gives it life. Therefore impurity—since, in fact, a corpse is the ultimate source of impurity—impurity is disconnection from the root. That is impurity. So the gates, when you sever them from the first room, which is the root that gives them vitality, those are gates of impurity. And these are the very same gates. It’s not gates of understanding and opposite them gates of impurity. They are the same gates themselves. The only question is whether you close them into a circle and say there is no room at the beginning, or whether you leave them in a line and say yes, there is a room at the beginning that is valid by virtue of itself. And after the room there is a gate, and another gate, and another gate, but at the beginning there is a room, not a gate. That is why the metaphor is one of gates. That is why it is forty-nine and fifty. Why are there forty-nine gates of impurity and fifty gates of understanding? Is this “God made one corresponding to the other”? No. “One corresponding to the other” is forty-nine against forty-nine. The fiftieth exists there too; the only question is whether you acknowledge it or do not acknowledge it, whether you recognize it or not. It is there. If you do not acknowledge it, then from your standpoint there are forty-nine, and they are those same forty-nine, but they are gates of impurity. That is why Nachmanides says that of the fifty gates of understanding, only forty-nine of them are actually gates. The fiftieth is something else. And those forty-nine, if you do not acknowledge the existence of the fiftieth, are gates of impurity. This is what the Vilna Gaon says: evil explains itself away once you reveal the fiftieth gate. Why? Because you do not need to destroy the gates of impurity. The moment there is a fiftieth room, the very gates of impurity themselves become gates of understanding. They simply—this just disappears. You simply discover that all along you were living in illusion. Does that remind you of the picture I described earlier? It is exactly the same thing. That is why Nachmanides says it here. After he explains the secret of the scapegoat, he then goes up from kindness, might, beauty, wisdom, understanding, knowledge. The first room is what is called wisdom. The Ari of blessed memory calls it koach mah. The gates are the gates of understanding. Understanding means deriving one thing from another. What is the sefirah above understanding? Wisdom. Why is wisdom called wisdom? Koach mah. It is valid by its own power, not by the power of something prior to it. Okay? That is why it is called wisdom. The first room is wisdom. After it, the gates are understanding. Understanding, when there is—when there is no wisdom at the beginning, when it is cut off from the root-point, that is impurity, that is gates of impurity. The crown is above that. What? The crown is a different presentation. Meaning, you can speak about the ten sefirot as wisdom, understanding, knowledge, kindness, might, beauty, endurance, splendor, foundation, and kingship. And you can also speak about crown, wisdom, understanding, without knowledge. It is simply a different presentation. The crown is on top, and then wisdom and understanding. I am talking about the presentation without the crown. Crown is another issue. So what Nachmanides is really saying is that the confrontation with—yes, what is this Greek approach really? Today we know it better. The Greek approach in our time is that only something proven is admissible. When we discover that only something proven is admissible, we very quickly discover that nothing is admissible. Because axioms are never proven, and every proof is built on axioms. And if you do not accept anything that is not proven, then you will not accept axioms, and automatically you also will not accept the claims built on them. You will know nothing. Those are gates of impurity; there is nothing. It is dead, it is a carcass.

[Speaker F] If you say that only what is proven is admissible, then that itself is a claim you do not know how to prove.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. That is one of the arguments against this approach. But I think one can speak more about it. This approach basically says that they are not prepared to accept anything that is not proven. How do you deal with such an approach? In principle, you cannot deal with it. The only way to deal with postmodernism, the only way to deal with it, is to take it all the way. To go into it with the scapegoat all the way and discover that there is nothing there. Many times these people live under some illusion that they have an alternative world, that there are two wagons, one full wagon, another full wagon, right? The well-known story. Right, there are two… But that is not true. There are not two; there is only one. One is full and the other is empty. But in order to discover that it is empty, you have to go all the way. And when you go all the way with them, you will show them that they assume so many things for which they have no proof, that all their proofs are based on assumptions for which the assumptions themselves have no proof. Including those who treat science as the be-all and end-all, but forget that science rests on a great many axioms that have no empirical evidence whatsoever, like the principle of causality, like induction, and like many other things. Now this façade, as if there is an alternative, as if there is another full wagon, yes? That Greek and his disciples, who think that only what they have attained exists and everything else does not exist—the only way to deal with them is the way we deal with the scapegoat. To go with it until the end—to go with them, not to fight them, not to prove things to them; you cannot prove it. All you can do is go with them all the way, and then you place them before one of two possibilities, Sophie’s choice: they have to choose one of two possibilities. Either to give up and say, okay, we are skeptics—and then there is nothing to be done; if someone is a skeptic, there is nothing to do with him—or he understands that he is not really a skeptic. It turns out he is living inside a bubble, he is living in a dream, and he wakes up from the dream. That is the only way. In the end, the scapegoat will do the work; he will wake up from the dream. And if not, then he will go on having barbecues all his life; that is the only thing he will do. By the way, maybe one last sentence: it is written that… one of… the Leshem cites the Vilna Gaon on Proverbs, and he asks: but in Egypt the midrash says that they sank into the forty-nine gates of impurity, and the Holy One, blessed be He, skipped over the mountains and leaped over the hills so that they would not sink into the fiftieth gate, and He took them out before that. So you see that there is a fiftieth gate of impurity. That is how he challenges the Vilna Gaon, who says there is no fiftieth gate of impurity. And he says that this is not a difficulty. Why is it not a difficulty? Because to arrive at the fiftieth gate of impurity means essentially reaching the conclusion that there is no room, closing the circle. In such a state there is no way out. There is no way out of consistent skepticism. Someone who is consistently skeptical all the way through—you cannot get him out of it. There is no… Anything you say to him, he says to you: who says? Maybe not. Maybe the opposite. He will accept nothing. There is no way to get a person out of that. Okay? Therefore the fiftieth gate of impurity—there is no such gate. It is a metaphorical expression meaning that the fiftieth gate of impurity is the arrival at a positive conclusion that there is no fiftieth room, that even the fiftieth is a gate, or really that there is no such thing. And then it is impossible to get out. From that Israel would not have been redeemed.

[Speaker B] Did you read Bialik’s poem?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, read Bialik’s poem there. Bialik’s poem says this in a beautiful way, I think. I do not think he intended everything I said here, but it does not matter. Read it. He says in a beautiful way what I said here.

[Speaker B] Which one? “He Glanced and Died.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Send it to us by email. I’ll send it to you by email if you want. I sent it in the… I duplicated it on the page I handed out last time. So the moment you enter into this situation and you turn a question mark into an exclamation mark—you know, there is a question mark, you stretch it, it becomes an exclamation mark. Meaning, they ask you a question and you say, right, but who says? Maybe the opposite, maybe… You remain with the “maybe the opposite” as a thesis that you adopt as an independent thesis. You are basically saying: I live in the world of illusions, I remain in fiction, nothing is true, everything is fictitious, and that is it, I stay there. Then there is no way out. From that there is no redemption. If Israel had entered that imaginary fiftieth gate of impurity, they would simply have disappeared. And therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, takes them out from there before they enter it, and reveals to them: no, there is a room there at the end. And that means that afterward all forty-nine gates have… they have the meaning of gates of understanding; they are not gates of impurity. Okay, that is enough of the homiletics; afterward we will start going through this here.

[Speaker B] It really sounds like The Matrix.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, Matrix really is…

[Speaker B] I’m not sure I have the Rabbi’s email, so can I—?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, M-I-K-Y,

[Speaker B] M-K-Y, yes.