Tractate Yoma – Elul 5783 – Lesson 1

Table of Contents

• The lecture framework and distribution of materials
• Parashat Acharei Mot as a procedure for entering the holy
• Atonement and repentance as a result of, and part of, the entry
• The two goats as the key to understanding the process
• Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides on the secret of Azazel and the goats
• The halakhic journey of the scapegoat and the disintegration of holiness
• Certainty, logic, and the argument against demanding absolute proof
• The 50 gates of understanding, the 49 gates of impurity, and cynicism as skepticism
• The scapegoat as going all the way to the edge and dismantling the structure
• The way to deal with skepticism and the comparison to a social experiment

Summary

General Overview

The lecture opens by laying out the framework for learning the eighth chapter of tractate Yoma, with an emphasis on the obligation to fast and practice the various afflictions on Yom Kippur. The choice is made to teach by topics rather than following the order of the Talmudic text, while at the same time recommending that people “run through” the eighth chapter. After the technical arrangements of the WhatsApp group and sending materials and recordings, the lecture moves to a conceptual introduction: the Yom Kippur service in Parashat Acharei Mot is presented first and foremost as a procedure for entering the holy, not as a process of repentance, and the atonement and purification appear as a result of that process or as part of it. From there, a central reading is built around the scapegoat through Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides, and then through a “halakhic journey” following the status of the scapegoat in Yoma, leading to a conceptual claim about dismantling illusions and criticizing approaches that accept only what is proven logically, to the point of skepticism, and about the need for a foundation that is not merely the product of proof.

The Lecture Framework and Distribution of Materials

The lectures take place twice a week and focus on topics related to the eighth chapter of Yoma, which deals with Yom Kippur, mainly the first part concerning the obligation to fast and the various afflictions. The mode of learning is by topics rather than by the order of the passages in the Talmudic text, with the aim of presenting a broad picture of fasting and affliction on Yom Kippur, beginning with the basic commandments of positive commandment and prohibition and what they do and do not include, and only afterward entering the details. The recommendation is to go over the Talmudic text in the eighth chapter in parallel, and if anything is needed before the next lecture, a notice will be sent. Updates and materials are sent in a WhatsApp group, with email also possible, and Zoom recordings and written summaries are sent as well.

Parashat Acharei Mot as a Procedure for Entering the Holy

The order of the Yom Kippur service in Yoma appears in Parashat Acharei Mot in the framework of the warning, “He shall not come at all times into the holy place,” following the death of Nadav and Avihu, so that the opening emphasizes entering the holy properly so that one not die. The description of the procedure includes the offerings, the garments, the sprinklings, and the goats, but at the beginning of the framework Yom Kippur is not mentioned at all, and the stated goal is entry into the holy without any explicit timing. At the end of the passage, the required timing appears: “In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls,” and “For on this day He shall atone for you to purify you,” and the matter is concluded as an eternal statute, “once a year,” together with the claim that the verses do not say not to do this on another day, only that on the tenth of Tishrei one is obligated. It is cited in the name of the Vilna Gaon that, at least in the wilderness, one could apparently enter the holy even not on Yom Kippur if the entire procedure were performed, and this is presented as the plain meaning of the verses.

Atonement and Repentance as a Result of, and Part of, the Entry

The central claim is that the service is not presented as a whole process of repentance and atonement, but as a process of entering the holy, and once a year on Yom Kippur “you have to do it,” and then “we also receive atonement.” The atonement, purification, and affliction of the public are understood as part of the process that enables the entry and as something that accompanies it, not as the goal that defines the entire service. In that framework it is said that even if it is clear that there is no atonement without repentance, one can still read the structure in such a way that repentance is “our part” in the process of entering, rather than the entry being part of the process of repentance.

The Two Goats as the Key to Understanding the Process

It is said that a unique and central aspect of Yom Kippur is the two goats, whereas the additional offerings and other elements are similar to other festivals. The inner goat atones for the impurity of the sanctuary and its holy things, while the outer goat atones “for everything,” and that gap is presented as not entirely clear and as requiring an understanding of what entry into the holy accomplishes and why atonement is generated as a result of it. The emphasis then shifts to understanding the sent-away goat as reflecting something about entry into the holy, especially through the exceptional features of the process of the outer goat.

Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides on the Secret of Azazel and the Goats

Ibn Ezra states that the sent-away goat is not an offering, and therefore there is no need to say of it that it is “for the Lord,” and he hints at the secret “after the word Azazel” and that “when you are thirty-three years old, you will know it.” Nachmanides responds that “Rabbi Abraham is of faithful spirit, concealing a matter,” while he himself “will begin to reveal his secret,” and he brings from Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer that on Yom Kippur they give “Samael” a bribe “so that he not nullify their offering,” based on “one lot for the Lord and one lot for Azazel.” Nachmanides describes that worshippers of other powers, “namely the angels,” would offer sacrifices to them, and the Torah forbade worship of them; but on Yom Kippur there is a commandment to send a goat into the wilderness “to the prince who rules over places of destruction,” without this being a sacrifice to him, but rather the doing of the will of the Creator who commanded it. Nachmanides explains that the reason for the lots is to avoid verbally consecrating something “to Azazel,” which would look like a vow or worship, and he hints to the verse, “And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons,” as the solution to Ibn Ezra’s hint about thirty-three, adding the remark about “those who are over-clever in nature and drawn after the Greek,” who “denied everything except what is perceptible to him.”

The Halakhic Journey of the Scapegoat and the Disintegration of Holiness

The Mishnah is presented as saying that the two goats must ideally be equal in height, weight, and value, and after consecration and the casting of lots, one is “inner” and one is “for Azazel,” with a crimson strip, being sent to the wilderness, and pushed from a cliff. In the Talmudic text in Yoma 62 it is said that one who slaughters either of the two goats outside is liable for slaughtering outside the Temple precincts, and from this there emerges a status of sacrificial holiness for both of them at that stage. A descriptive dispute is brought between the Gevurat Ari and Rashi as to whether one says only “for the Lord, a sin offering” or also “and this one for Azazel,” and the emphasis is that according to Rashi the lot is not just sorting but actually confers designation. The commentators’ difficulty regarding tying the crimson strip because of “performing labor with a sacrifice” is brought, from which emerges the view that the holiness continues even after the lottery, and there is also discussion of leaning the hands upon it, whether this is the leaning of a sacrifice as the Mikdash David holds, alongside the confession, which Rabbi Chaim describes as a process of repentance similar to the confession over a sin offering and a guilt offering.

Later, the description of the route emphasizes a sharp transition: the sending is done by an “appointed man,” who does not have to be a priest, similar to the idea that slaughter is valid when done by a non-priest because “slaughter is not itself a sacrificial service,” and from here begins an undermining of its status as a sacrifice, or of the idea that what follows is still “service.” Medieval authorities (Rishonim) are brought who maintain that the sending is not indispensable, and a reality is described in which along the way the appointed man is permitted to eat and drink and to go beyond the Sabbath boundary on Yom Kippur, and those standing in the booths along the road “pull at the goat’s hair,” acts that are forbidden with a sacrifice and on Yom Kippur, so that an “extraterritorial” zone is created in which “Yom Kippur is over.” It is said that in the end they push the goat from the cliff, and the Talmudic text explicitly says that the pushing is not indispensable; afterward, the goat’s limbs are permitted for benefit, and in the novellae of the Griz it is said that if it remained alive after the push it would be permitted to slaughter and eat it, and there are even commentators who say that it would not even require slaughter. The picture that emerges is a paradox: we begin at the height of holiness and intrinsic sanctity, and in the end it turns into a “bonfire hangout,” raising the question what removed the holiness, if “intrinsic sanctity does not simply lapse,” as in the Mishnah in tractate Nedarim 29, and what exactly effects the change of status here.

Certainty, Logic, and the Argument Against Demanding Absolute Proof

The continuation of the lecture presents a conceptual structure concerning deductive arguments as ones in which the conclusion is “already contained in the premise,” with the example, “All human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, Socrates is mortal,” and the assertion that every valid argument “begs the question” and therefore does not add information but only extracts what was already in the premises. By contrast, induction and analogy add information and therefore are not certain, and this is formulated as the “philosophical principle of uncertainty,” according to which the more new information there is, the less certainty there is. From this a critique is built of “logical positivism” as an approach according to which only a proven claim is acceptable, along with the argument that this leads to the result that someone who wants only certainty “will be left with no information,” because proofs depend on premises that themselves have no proof within that same framework.

A model of “three-stage maturation” is presented, in which the child in the dogmatic stage accepts things because “Dad said so,” the adolescent demands “prove it” and accepts only what is certain, and then discovers that “nothing is certain” because everything rests on premises. From here several possibilities are described: skepticism, which remains with those two insights and therefore concludes that “nothing is acceptable”; fundamentalism, which maintains that only certainty is acceptable but manufactures certainty from some other, non-critical source; and a third approach, which gives up the demand that only what is certain is acceptable and is willing to accept “intuitions, common sense,” while remaining open to criticism and willing to retreat in the face of good arguments. That distinction is identified with “faith / belief” and not with fundamentalism.

The 50 Gates of Understanding, the 49 Gates of Impurity, and Cynicism as Skepticism

It is said that in the kabbalistic world there is a distinction between wisdom and understanding, where understanding means “to understand one thing from another,” that is, logic, and the 50 gates of understanding are mentioned alongside the 49 gates of impurity as brought by Nachmanides and the Vilna Gaon, with reference to the Leshem’s discussion of the question of “this corresponding to that.” It is explained that a “gate” is a passage symbolizing the inference from premises to conclusions, but for a system to have meaning there must be a “first room” with no gate leading into it, meaning a set of basic assumptions that animates the whole chain; without that, the system becomes circular and lacks binding truth. From this, impurity is defined as a system with no root that gives it life, and this is linked to essential skepticism, which in the language of the Sages is called “cynicism,” not in the sense of telling jokes but as the stance of “who says so, prove it,” along with the connection to Amalek as “doubt.”

The Scapegoat as Going All the Way to the Edge and Dismantling the Structure

The proposed reading of the scapegoat presents it as an experiment in which two identical goats are sent to two opposite ends: one “into the innermost sanctum” and one “all the way out” to the wilderness, to the goats and demons and ruin and desolation. The outer process is described as revealing that at the edge “there is nothing there,” and so the halakhic phenomenon of the holiness disintegrating and the unusual permissions along the way and at the end, up to permission for benefit, is interpreted as saying that the purpose of the outward journey is to expose that the imagined structures on which sins and justifications are built are “built on nothing.” From this it is also explained how the outer goat “atones for all transgressions,” because it touches the root of constructing excuses and imaginary structures, and breaks the assumption that logical consistency by itself is the measure of truth.

The Way to Deal with Skepticism and the Comparison to a Social Experiment

It is said that the way to deal with skepticism is “to go with it all the way” and test whether a person is really an absolute skeptic or whether in practice he lives with beliefs that have no proof, and then move on to examine “what common sense says.” An analogy is brought from the Amish in the United States, who send their young people out to live “however they want” and then return only if they choose to, as a kind of “metaphysical experiment with courage,” together with the comment that most return and the reservation that age eighteen is still not enough, and that the social infrastructure makes it difficult to leave. The lecture ends with the notice that everything is recorded and that both the recording and the summary will be sent on WhatsApp.

Okay, first of all, hello. I’m not used to forums this wide. Wait, everything’s fine, this YouTube thing. Let’s see if I still remember how to do these things. In these classes — it’s two classes a week — we’ll study topics related to the eighth chapter in tractate Yoma. The eighth chapter in Yoma deals with Yom Kippur. I mainly want, in the first part, to deal with the various afflictions, the obligation to fast and the various forms of affliction. But since time is short and the work is great, and I’ve done this in the past too, I’m going to do it a little differently. Meaning, I’m not going to go in the order of the Talmudic text and study the passages one by one in sequence. Rather, I’ll teach different topics related to the afflictions of Yom Kippur. I’ll try to present some broad picture of this whole issue of fasting and afflictions on Yom Kippur, with the order being a thematic order. I’ll start with the basic commandments, the positive commandment and the prohibition, what exactly that includes, what it doesn’t include, and afterward we’ll get into the details a bit more. But at the same time I very much recommend going over the Talmudic text, over the eighth chapter, just running through the eighth chapter. If there’s something specific that I’ll need, say, for the next class, then I’ll let you know. Okay?

Now, how exactly to let you know — that’s also an interesting question, because I understand that at the moment we don’t really have a model. This isn’t a university course; we need to think how exactly we’re going to do this. Is there simply a WhatsApp group? A WhatsApp group or email, it doesn’t matter to me. Through Hananya maybe. What? Hananya passes it on to everyone. Hananya? Who’s Hananya? The one who handles the retirees. But then he passes it on to all the retirees, and not everyone here is one. Doesn’t matter. Whoever wants to read will read, whoever doesn’t want to won’t read. Yes, okay. Now there are also a few non-retirees here; all the same, we do want the average age to be lower than mine. So we also need to find the channel for how to reach them, the non-retirees. Yes, exactly, to advance them up the chronological ladder. So maybe I’d suggest that the non-retirees send me — maybe we’ll do it on WhatsApp. I think WhatsApp is better. All right? So send me a WhatsApp message. Anyone who wants to, including the retirees, is of course welcome. I’ll just open a WhatsApp group, and I’ll send the relevant materials there. Summaries too? Yes, so I’ll also send recordings of the class there; I record it on Zoom. It isn’t given on Zoom, but I just open Zoom in order to record. And also a summary. Okay? Written. Let’s write the number on the board. Let’s write the WhatsApp. So I’m saying, write down my number or… what, am I going to write it here before all Israel? All right? Can you see it? Not very well. There are retirees here after all; I have to be considerate. Never say never. The retirees see too. Even the people who aren’t retirees can’t see. We’ve reached a very bad state.

Okay. I allow myself to joke because I’m not far from that age myself, so it’s fine. So I hope you’re not taking it too hard. “Retiree” is also a legal category. It’s not just age, it’s not just a fact of reality; it’s also a legal status: retiree. Okay. You could be forty and get the legal status of retiree. It applies to the person, not the object. As I’ve said many times to students, the difference between a kollel fellow and a layman isn’t the question of how many hours you study, but what you do during the hours that you study. Meaning, a layman isn’t someone who studies an hour or two a day or two hours a week. The question is: do you study Daf Yomi, or do you study in-depth analysis? If you study two, four hours a week in-depth, then you’re a kollel fellow. Yes, where is it? Should I just read the number out? Zero five two three three — no, I need it anyway for later — zero five two three three two zero five four three. Start getting used to retirees’ pace, friends. It won’t go over well when I teach at that pace. You know here — the poor guy still hasn’t recovered. Ah, good, he’s probably a retiree too. Okay, fine.

So I suggest you send me a WhatsApp message; I’ll open a group with all the WhatsApp numbers I get, and I’ll send the materials there. That’s the most efficient. What? What about the general degree? Yes. Fine, did everyone write it down? WhatsApp — send me a WhatsApp to that number, okay. Okay, so I’m erasing it. What, now for the Yoma group, yes? Should that be the name? Yes, exactly. Really do write to me which class, because there are several classes — so for the Talmud class on Yoma.

Okay, what I want to do today is start with some kind of introduction, a more general look at Yom Kippur — and actually it’s a little more connected to another series I’m giving — but still, I think it places things in an interesting framework, and that’s why I decided to devote at least this class to that. Starting next class, we’ll begin getting into the actual material.

The order of the Yom Kippur service in Yoma appears in the Torah portion of Acharei Mot. I won’t read the whole portion, but just to get the impression: “And the Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they came near before the Lord and died. And the Lord said to Moses: Speak to Aaron your brother, that he not come at all times into the holy place within the veil, before the cover that is upon the ark, so that he not die; for in the cloud I will appear upon the cover. With this shall Aaron come into the holy place…” And now begins the description of how Aaron is to enter the holy place: “with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering; he shall put on the holy linen tunic…” sprinklings, all the things, goats, the whole process of the Yom Kippur service appears now. But this is the framework in which it’s presented.

Now we need to see a bit what the significance of this is, because in this framework, first of all, Yom Kippur isn’t mentioned here at all. What’s written here is that the two sons of Aaron approached the holy place in a problematic way, and what happened to them happened because of that. If you want to enter the holy place properly so that this won’t happen to you — here, I’ll tell you how to do it. This is how you do it. When do you enter the holy place? It doesn’t say. Whenever you want to enter the holy place, this is the procedure. Okay? We know that on Yom Kippur one enters the holy place, and therefore this procedure is done. But on the principled level, at least according to the description that appears here, you could also have done it on the fourteenth of Kislev. Okay? Whoever wants to enter the holy place on the fourteenth of Kislev has to do this procedure, and then he’ll be able to enter. This is how one enters properly.

You’re not allowed to enter drunk? Okay. The question is what counts as the holy place, yes. But the point is that there’s really no timing here; there’s a goal. The goal is to enter the holy place; it doesn’t say when. After this whole passage is completed, the completion of the service — not easy, you have to handle this process carefully, try to treat it carefully, not move this… that’s it. Let’s put it here so nobody moves it even by accident. I’m scrolling here; you probably wouldn’t get across the screen like that. Anyway, at the end — I hope we’ll get there in a moment — at the end of the passage it says: “And it shall be for you an everlasting statute: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves…” right, again, the tenth of Tishrei, “and you shall do no work, neither the native-born nor the stranger who sojourns among you. For on this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins before the Lord you shall be cleansed. It is a Sabbath of solemn rest for you, and you shall afflict yourselves. It is an everlasting statute. And the priest who is anointed and who is consecrated to serve in his father’s place shall make atonement, and he shall put on the linen garments, the holy garments, and he shall make atonement for the most holy sanctuary…” and so on, “And this shall be for you an everlasting statute, to make atonement for the children of Israel from all their sins once a year. And he did as the Lord commanded Moses.”

So that closes the framework within which the entire Yom Kippur service appears. It starts with: this is how you properly enter the holy place, not like Nadav and Avihu. It ends with: this must be done once a year, on the tenth of Tishrei, on Yom Kippur. It doesn’t say not to do it on another day. It says that on the tenth of Tishrei you must do it. Now if you want to do it on another day — in principle, possible; do the whole procedure and you can enter the holy place. In fact, it’s known that the Vilna Gaon, for example — maybe, it’s not entirely clear — really writes that in the wilderness at least one could enter the holy place not only on Yom Kippur, but one had to do this whole procedure, and that really is the plain meaning of the verses. Okay? So for us, whatever may be right now, that was in the wilderness; now it’s different.

But still, it seems to me that we can learn something from here. We can learn from here that this is not really a procedure of repentance at all. It’s not connected to repentance or atonement or anything of the sort. It’s connected to entering the holy place. Why enter the holy place? That’s another question. I don’t know; it doesn’t appear here. But to create a connection with the Holy One, blessed be He — I don’t know exactly what — but this is a procedure for entering the holy place, not a procedure of repentance. That casts the Yom Kippur service in an entirely different light. Meaning, when we look at the Yom Kippur service in the simple way, it seems like part of repentance, perhaps collective repentance, doesn’t matter — Rabbi Soloveitchik talks about these things at the beginning of On Repentance — but still, it looks like part of the process of repentance, accompanied by service — public service, of course, the public service of the High Priest in the Temple. But it’s part of the repentance process. Here it says not so. It says the opposite. There is a process of entering the holy place, and whenever you want to do it, you have to do the procedure in this way. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, you have to do it, and if you do it, then atonement is also achieved for us. And one could even perhaps read it as: if we do this, then atonement is achieved for us, but not because we’re doing it in order to gain atonement. Rather, that’s a side effect. I might even say that the repentance we need to do is part of the process of entering the holy place, not that entering the holy place is part of repentance. Rather, as part of the High Priest’s ability to enter the holy place, he has to do what is incumbent upon him, and the public has to afflict itself. But the goat — and maybe this is true of all the goats and the service connected to going inside — we also saw in the Mishnah in Shevuot that it atones for impurity of the Temple and its holy things — that’s the inner goat, not the outer goat. But the scapegoat? Well? It’s all repentance — what is it? “And it shall bear the iniquities of the children of Israel.”

First of all, I’m not talking about the goats; I’m talking about the Yom Kippur service, not the goats. What? Isn’t that part of the Yom Kippur service? It’s part of the service one enters with, isn’t it? It’s part of the Yom Kippur service, true, but for this I don’t need the goats. It says that “on this day atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you from all your sins before the Lord,” that we need to be purified and atoned for and do repentance — that’s written here. I don’t need to infer it from the goats. What I’m saying is that when you look at the service in the broad view, the service is not a process of repentance. The service is a process of entering the holy place. As part of entering the holy place, we need to repent, to be purified, and to attain atonement. Maybe the goats play a part in that, but the goats are part of the whole. The whole as a whole is not presented here as a whole of doing repentance or of atonement — absolutely not. It’s part of entering the holy place. Once a year on Yom Kippur one enters the holy place. There are two ways to read that: either we enter the holy place in order to be atoned for — but only then; in principle one can enter the holy place for other reasons and at other times too. The atonement also appears within the service, not only at the end of the verses. So what? Also on other occasions when one enters there is confession over sins and atonement, to make atonement for them. Of course. Of course. That’s why I’m saying: but atonement itself, even on Yom Kippur — and certainly outside Yom Kippur — can be read the other way round, even on Yom Kippur itself: that repentance is not the issue; entering the holy place is the issue. Repentance is part of what enables the priest to enter the holy place; it’s the part we do in the process. To draw close to the Holy One, blessed be He. Yes.

At the end of the chapter it says, “And he shall not come at all times into the holy place,” as if the chapter is already saying: I’ll tell you in a moment when he may. No — “he shall not come at all times into the holy place” means not to enter freely; rather, there has to be this procedure. Not every moment you feel like it can you enter the holy place. There’s a process you have to do before entering. When? Do it whenever you want. “At all times” means at any time. Don’t enter the holy place at every moment; there’s a process you need to do before you enter. It doesn’t necessarily speak about a date or timing. Afterward, at the end, there is the timing — but again, the timing doesn’t appear as something exclusive, to the exclusion of anything else; rather, then you have to. Okay?

So I’m saying again: maybe the Vilna Gaon is right, maybe he’s not right. In the period after the wilderness that certainly was no longer so; even according to him it was no longer so, but only on Yom Kippur. But what does emerge from the passage — and I think this remains — is that this truly is not a procedure of repentance. It is a procedure of closeness to the Holy One, blessed be He, of which repentance may be part; the result of it is atonement. Part of the role we play in entering the holy place — we, meaning the public — in entering the holy place, is repentance and atonement and purification and so on. But it doesn’t seem to follow from here necessarily that that is the goal of the matter. It doesn’t look as though this whole process is part of a process of repentance and atonement. That’s a first remark.

Now I want to look a bit at entering the holy place and understand what it does, yes — and from that to understand… wait, so there is an element of repentance here, but it isn’t the goal — that’s what the Rabbi is claiming? Yes. There’s a process here; even repentance itself isn’t really mentioned here — atonement, purification, and so on are mentioned. Yes, but it’s pretty clear that there’s no atonement without repentance. Correct. So our part in the process of entering the holy place is repentance. It doesn’t say — maybe also closeness to the Holy One, blessed be He. Yes, I don’t know, because even that isn’t written. “Entering the holy place” I understand almost geographically. Closeness to the Holy One, blessed be He, is the obvious interpretation, but it isn’t written. Nothing is written. I don’t know why one enters the holy place; I don’t know.

The issue in this passage — there’s something in the two goats that is presented, certainly by the Sages but maybe even here you can see it a bit, as holding in some sense the core of the matter. The two goats. That’s something special. The additional offerings and the other things, more or less, also exist on other festivals. Something in these two goats is very unusual on the one hand and very central on the other. So I want to understand a bit what the goats are doing, mainly the outer goat. The inner goat, again, isn’t really all that different from ordinary offerings. The inner goat atones for impurity of the Temple and its holy things, for very specific things. The outer goat atones for everything. And there’s something here that isn’t entirely clear. What is this thing? And I want to claim that it is part of, or reflects, something about entering the holy place. What does entering the holy place do? Why, ultimately, is atonement also achieved as a result of entering the holy place?

So I want to get into this a bit. And I want to begin maybe with a very well-known Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides. I’m reading here from a summary that will be sent to you later, so I’ll also show you the sources from there. The goats and company? Yes.

“And Rabbi Shmuel said: although it is written regarding the sin-offering goat that it is ‘for the Lord,’ the sent-away goat is also ‘for the Lord.’” And you don’t need that — says Ibn Ezra — because the sent-away one is not an offering. So you don’t need to say it is “for the Lord.” If it were an offering, you don’t offer a sacrifice to someone else, but this is not an offering, and therefore you don’t have to say that it is “for the Lord.” “And if you can understand the secret that follows the word Azazel, you will know its secret and the secret of its name, for it has companions in Scripture. And I will reveal to you a bit of the secret by way of hint: when you are thirty-three, you will know it.” A fascinating riddle. Yes, exactly — to sharpen the… oil the gears a little. So he’s giving us some hint as to what the secret of the scapegoat is. First of all, he says it isn’t an offering, the sent-away goat. Second, he says that if it isn’t an offering, then there’s no need to say it is “for the Lord.” So for whom is it? I don’t know. There’s some addressee here, but not the Lord — something else. But since it’s not an offering, then it’s not so terrible. A somewhat strange thing.

And what about the “thirty-three” and “after the word Azazel” — what’s the meaning of that? So Nachmanides there writes as follows: “Rabbi Abraham was trustworthy in spirit and concealed the matter, but I will somewhat reveal his secret.” Meaning, this is already Rabbi Akiva, yes, who reveals the secret of the Holy One, blessed be He, which our rabbis have already revealed in many places. Probably a little jab at Ibn Ezra. What are you making such a big secret of it for? “And this is explicit in the chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great,” in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer. “Therefore they would give Samael a bribe on Yom Kippur so that he not nullify their offering, as it says: ‘one lot for the Lord and one lot for Azazel.’” Yes, they appease the Other Side with some kind of quasi-offering so that it won’t interfere with us when we draw close to the Holy One, blessed be He. “As it says, one lot for the Lord and one lot for Azazel. The lot of the Holy One, blessed be He, is for a burnt offering, and the lot of Azazel is the sin-offering goat, and all the iniquities of Israel are upon it.”

“And behold, he has informed us of its name” — I’m skipping here — “and behold, he has informed us of its name and its deed, and this is the secret of the matter: for those who worshipped other gods — that is, the angels — would offer them sacrifices, and they would be for them a pleasing aroma. And behold, the Torah utterly forbade accepting their divinity and any service to them” — yes, service to intermediaries, what Maimonides discusses at the beginning of the laws of idolatry. “But the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded that on Yom Kippur we send a goat into the wilderness to the prince who rules over places of desolation, and it is fitting for him because he is their master, and from the emanation of his power come drought and devastation, for he presides over the stars of the sword and blood and wars and quarrels and wounds and blows and separation and destruction. And the intention with the sent-away goat is not that it should be an offering from us to him, Heaven forbid” — now they’re deciphering Ibn Ezra: so it isn’t an offering — “but rather that our intention be to do the will of our Creator who commanded us so.” We want the will of God. But this sacrifice is not an offering and it is not for the Lord. It is offered to the satyrs, to desolation and devastation, to the one who rules there in the wilderness. But we do this by command of the Holy One, blessed be He, okay, and it is not an offering.

“And this is the reason for the lots: for if the priest were to sanctify them verbally ‘for the Lord’ and ‘for Azazel,’ it would be as though he were serving him and vowing in his name.” We want to show that this isn’t an offering to the satyrs. “But he would stand them before the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, for both are a gift to the Lord. And Rabbi Abraham hinted to you that you should know its secret when you come to the verse, ‘And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the satyrs.’” Why? Because thirty-three verses after the verse about the scapegoat comes that verse, “And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the satyrs.” So the “when you are thirty-three you will know it” of Ibn Ezra means this verse. He says that if we do this process of the goat with the lots — the inner goat, the scapegoat — then we will no longer offer sacrifices to the satyrs. And that will be the result of this whole matter.

“And I cannot explain further,” says Nachmanides — he too makes somewhat of a secret of it, not only Ibn Ezra — “for we would need to shut the mouths of the sophisticates in nature who are drawn after the Greek, Aristotle, who denied everything except what was perceptible to him, and became arrogant, he and his wicked disciples, to think that every matter that his reasoning did not attain is not true.” So there’s basically a claim here aimed at what we might call the heresy of Nachmanides’ own time. Obviously he did not live in Aristotle’s time, but as is known, Aristotle lived until roughly the sixteenth century — meaning, his doctrine lived and ruled until the sixteenth century. And when Nachmanides confronts what he sees as a heretical position — though he himself was actually Neo-Platonic — he talks about Aristotle. Okay, and basically this whole business comes to shut Aristotle’s mouth. What is Aristotle’s problem? That he thinks whatever his reason does not grasp is not true. And this somehow comes to shut his mouth.

Okay, good, but we need to understand how exactly this shuts Aristotle’s mouth. To say: do something that has no rational explanation — does that shut the mouths of those who think one must be rational? Not necessarily. I think practically speaking it would achieve the opposite result. Okay? Therefore, when Maimonides writes “for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations,” Maimonides explains there that precisely for that reason one must explain everything, because things that are not understandable do not project wisdom and understanding; they project senselessness. So the tactic here does not seem clear. This thing you’ve presented — some sort of sacrifice-that-isn’t-a-sacrifice, some service toward the satyrs that has no logic although the Holy One, blessed be He, commands us to do it, some kind of magic so they won’t disturb us in our service of the Holy One, blessed be He — this shuts the mouth of Aristotle, who thinks that only what we understand is true? So we need to understand a bit the meaning of these things.

I want to suggest an explanation. And just as Nachmanides allowed himself to be a thinker, maybe I will too. I want to suggest some sort of explanation for this, and I’ll do it in our language, because in our world I think this is much more on the table. But in a certain sense it isn’t entirely anachronistic. I think the idea existed long ago already; it just became sharpened in the twentieth century, and maybe until our own day.

All right. So I want to begin perhaps with a little track. The first time I gave this class was in Yeroḥam, in the yeshiva. So I told them that people usually take tours with the Bible — the people who do Bible tours and show places — but I do tours with Rabbi Chaim. So we’ll go on a tour with Rabbi Chaim — not necessarily Rabbi Chaim specifically, Rabbi Chaim as a symbol. So I’ll begin with the process the scapegoat goes through as against the inner goat, and I think this will give us some hint or indication of what lies behind this whole story.

The Talmud in tractate Yoma 62 says — actually before that, first of all, the process. The process is that we take two goats. They need to be equal in height, in weight, and in value — that’s what the Mishnah says. That isn’t essential after the fact, but that’s how it should ideally be. Then one places hands, conducts a lottery: one inward, one to Azazel. A strip of crimson wool is tied, it is sent to the wilderness, more or less pushed there, okay, that’s the process. Now I want to go along this path with the scapegoat and see — a journey with Rabbi Chaim — what happens to it halakhically. Not to identify locations, but to see what happens to this goat halakhically along this route. Something very strange happens there, and I think it may be a hint that can help us understand the meaning of this process.

So I’ll begin with the Talmud in Yoma 62. The Talmud says that one who slaughters either of the two goats after they have been sanctified — they take the two goats, sanctify them, now they are holy — at this point, anyone who slaughters either of them outside violates the prohibition of slaughtering outside the Temple. That prohibition applies only to offerings; an offering may not be offered outside. Meaning, at this stage it seems that both goats have the status of an offering. Ibn Ezra wrote that this isn’t an offering — okay, we’ll soon see whether that’s really… Before the lottery? No, after the lottery, after sanctification. After sanctification both have the sanctity of an offering; you may not offer them outside, obviously you may not use them, derive benefit from them, do anything with them; they have bodily sanctity, the sanctity of an offering.

At the next stage they conduct the lottery. When the lottery is conducted, the Gevurat Ari — that is, the Tur Even on Yoma — says that over the goat that goes “for the Lord” they say the words “for the Lord, a sin offering,” and over the one that goes to Azazel they say nothing. Consequently, if this one is “for the Lord, a sin offering,” then the other one is to Azazel, so why do I need to say this one is “for the Lord, a sin offering” and this one is “for Azazel”? But in Rashi it is not so. In Rashi it says that over this one they say “for the Lord, a sin offering,” and over that one they say “and this one is for Azazel.” And the meaning of this apparently is that Rashi understands that the lottery is not merely for sorting. If it were only sorting, it would be enough to say, okay, this one goes to the Lord, and obviously the second one goes to Azazel. There is something here that is part of the service we are doing with these goats: there is some designation of “for the Lord, a sin offering” and some designation of “for Azazel.” In fact, at this stage it is a sacrifice offered to Azazel.

After the lottery we tie the strip of crimson wool to the horns of the goat. Some commentators asked: how is that permitted? It has the sanctity of an offering, and this is effectively labor with an offering. Is that part of the service? That’s the question. They assume it is not part of the service. The crimson strip is only for our sake, so that we know our status, and therefore they ask. For my purposes, the question matters more than the answer. They ask: how is it permitted to tie the crimson strip? In any case, what they are saying, in effect, is that even after the lottery they still regard it as having the sanctity of an offering. One may not perform any labor with it, one may not derive any benefit from it, use it — it bears the sanctity of an offering. You could say maybe this is part of the service, so there’s no problem; that’s an answer. But the question shows that they understood that even after the lottery both goats still had the sanctity of an offering.

After the lottery I leave the inner goat alone; it’s already headed inward. I go with the scapegoat. After the lottery there is the placing of hands. The priest has to place his hand on the head of the goat. Now here one has to see: the Mikdash David claims that this placing of hands is like the law of placing hands on offerings, just as one does placing of hands on any offering, one does placing of hands on the scapegoat. And that is the simple reading; the plain meaning of the term “placing of hands” in the context of offerings. And since there is also a placing of hands that is part of repentance, that is something else — maybe we’ll note that later. But if this really is the placing of hands of an offering, then we continue to see that at the stage of placing of hands too it is really an offering, like any other offering. Meaning, the priest who places his hands on the offering is doing so as part of the service. It isn’t like an owner placing his hands on the offering in order to gain atonement, but part of the service. Okay?

Now comes the stage where they confess over the scapegoat. Why isn’t that part of the atonement? What? In the same way it is part of the atonement. You can say that, but the Mikdash David claims not. The Mikdash David claims it is the placing of hands of an offering. Yes. I said, one can understand it differently. Now, afterward they confess over the goat that goes to Azazel. So Rabbi Chaim — yes, in the stencils, in his discussion of the crimson strip — there he says that this confession is indeed by the law of repentance that the priest performs over the goat. But again, repentance is also done over offerings, sin offerings. With sin offerings there is confession, which is a process of repentance, but it is part of bringing the sinner’s offering. In any event, from here on it probably isn’t like the Mikdash David, but it still seems that we’re doing this parallel to the process of bringing a sin offering, like a sin offering, like a guilt offering, okay?

The next stage is sending the goat to the cliff. Okay? At this stage they send it by the hand of an “appointed man.” The Talmud says “appointed man” means just some person, not necessarily a priest. Here — what? One who was designated beforehand. But not a priest. “An appointed man,” not necessarily a priest. What? Literally. Fine, but not necessarily a priest. You know that, for example, slaughter is valid even by a non-priest. Why? So the commentators say — the Talmud itself basically says it somewhere — that slaughter is not considered service. What is not service can be done by a non-priest. Fine? So we have to see exactly how they do it; it doesn’t matter now how the non-priest gets in there. A bit of a complicated story, but in principle, something that does not require a priest is not service. Now this already begins to destabilize the status of the scapegoat, because at this stage suddenly the continuation of the handling is no longer done by a priest. So maybe already here it stops being an offering? Or perhaps it’s an offering, but this process is no longer a process of service performed on an offering? Meaning, here some undermining of its status as bodily sanctity, as an offering, already begins. And there are commentators who claim that at this stage it is no longer an offering. Tosafot in Shevuot 13.

So then how can one not be liable for misuse of sacred property? What? In principle yes, yes — its sanctity no longer exists, it’s no longer an offering. In a moment we’ll see this even more strongly. And if so, the sending is not service with an offering, and therefore it may also not require a priest. There are medieval authorities, for example, who claim that the sending is not indispensable. That’s completely bizarre. This whole story, why are we doing it? In order to send the goat, right? That’s the service we do with the goat. Right — what do we do with the goat? We send it to Azazel in the wilderness. That’s what all the preparations are for. No — do all the preparations, but the sending isn’t so crucial; you can leave it undone. Some medieval authorities say so. It won’t reach Azazel. It won’t. You don’t need to send it. It isn’t indispensable. All right? Incidentally, it somewhat reminds me of the menorah: with the menorah, arranging the lamps is service and is done by a priest, but lighting is valid even by a non-priest. Even though ostensibly arranging is preparation for lighting; the goal is to light. No — arranging itself is really the main issue, and what happens afterward is not really the central point there. Huh? That with the menorah there are five lamps and two lamps? What do you mean? In the arranging. Yes. In the morning they always prepare five. Ah, that matters less, but arranging is by a priest in any case.

Now, along the way, the appointed man eats and drinks and even violates the prohibition of Sabbath boundaries. All that for something which according to some of the medieval authorities isn’t indispensable at all. So they permit him to eat and drink and violate Sabbath boundaries for something you don’t even need? Just do nothing. Fine? So what if he’s in the wilderness? So what if you put yourself there? It’s not even indispensable. This whole story is, from his point of view, a weekday story. We’re talking about Yom Kippur, and he can now eat, drink, Sabbath boundaries — everything’s fine, Yom Kippur is over. The appointed man is not a priest, not on Yom Kippur — over, finished. A bit strange, kind of extraterritorial, yes? That wilderness is something.

Now, the people standing there on the way — it says they set up booths along the route; the Mishnah in Yoma says they set up booths along the route — they would tug at the goat’s hair. Now you’re not allowed to do that to an offering. What’s written in the verse — are you plucking hairs from an offering? You can’t do such a thing, not to mention on Yom Kippur. You can’t do that on Yom Kippur either — “a Sabbath of solemn rest.” Something here is very strange. They’re describing for us a process where you reach the peak of holiness, Yom Kippur, “a Sabbath of solemn rest,” the center of Yom Kippur, the scapegoat that atones for all the sins of the people of Israel — do whatever you like. It’s not Yom Kippur, no priest is needed, it’s not indispensable, they tug its hair, Sabbath boundaries, eat, drink, everything’s fine, nothing happened. You don’t even have to send it out at all; it’s not indispensable. What? It’s bizarre. There’s a real riddle here.

At the end of the route they push the goat off the cliff, yes, they push it off the cliff. In the Talmud — what? Push it off the cliff. Yes, yes, the appointed man pushes it. “They push it” means, yes, that’s what they do. The appointed man then returns to the High Priest and says, “My lord High Priest, I have carried out your mission.” And you see that he is our agent, so we push — we push by means of the… So the… it says explicitly in the Talmud that the pushing is not indispensable. Meaning, regarding the sending there is a dispute among the medieval authorities; regarding the pushing, the Talmud explicitly says it is not indispensable. Ostensibly that is the very purpose for which the whole thing is heading. No, not indispensable.

More than that: after the push off the cliff, the limbs of the goat are smashed, and they are permitted for benefit. The Talmud says, Yoma 67: make a bonfire gathering afterward with this goat. Meaning, all its sanctity has of course completely vanished. In the novellae of the Brisker Rav — Rabbi Chaim’s son, the boy is on this tour with Rabbi Chaim too — he says that if the goat remains alive after the push, it is permitted to slaughter and eat it. There are commentators who claim that one doesn’t even need to slaughter it. Just carve it up and eat it as is. This whole story seems utterly bizarre, something completely outside all the rules we know. Of course at this stage there’s no trace left of its being an offering. There’s nothing. Its sanctity is gone. Do with it what you like. Eat it without slaughter. Become a gentile already, not just a Jew on a weekday. By now you’re a gentile. Meaning, there’s nothing — nothing remains of all the ordinary rules we know. It all seems a little like Alice in Wonderland, yes? After all the dreams and the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter and all those things, in the end she wakes up and the whole story was a dream. And this whole huge story, this great catharsis we went through — in the end, nothing. Nothing at all. We go and sit and make a bonfire gathering. That’s the whole story.

So what is all this holiness and noise and crimson strip and tension — yes, were we atoned for or not — and sanctification and Yom Kippur and the whole process of entering the holy place that envelops this matter of the two goats? What is this thing if in the end — nothing, there’s nothing there? We make all the preparations with the height of trembling and at the very center, yes, the center of the year, the holiest and most stirring day of the year, and in the end — bonfire gathering. Yes, whoever wants to, of course. Whoever doesn’t want to doesn’t need to do anything. And whoever wants is invited to the bonfire gathering. Or to dance in the vineyards? Yes, or to dance in the vineyards. Whoever is not busy dancing in the vineyards can join the bonfire gathering, whoever has already found his match.

All right. So what does this thing really mean? I want to argue that there is something here that the Torah is trying — or Jewish law, the Torah and what we learn from it is trying — to teach us around this whole matter. Here, please — yes, transmitter.

Maybe to sharpen the point I’ll mention another Talmudic passage, in Nedarim 29. The Talmud brings there a dispute between Abaye and Bar Pada whether bodily sanctity lapses on its own or not. And the practical ruling is that bodily sanctity does not lapse on its own. What that means is that if something is holy, its sanctity doesn’t just vanish by itself, for no reason. Its sanctity can lapse — for example, if I commit sacrilege, then its sanctity lapses. Why? Because I performed an act of sacrilege. So the sanctity didn’t lapse for no reason; it lapsed because of an action. Meaning, there are actions — or if its commandment has been fulfilled: “there is nothing whose commandment has been fulfilled for which misuse still applies.” Meaning, if its commandment has been fulfilled, then it’s no longer holy. Therefore misuse no longer applies. But one has to do some action — in particular the action for which this whole matter was intended — and only after that does the sanctity lapse.

But here it seems that the sanctity lapses on its own. You really aren’t doing anything, and even if you are, it isn’t indispensable, and everything’s fine. So even if you did, that isn’t really the significant act here. So if these acts are not the meaningful acts, what removed the sanctity? How did this bodily sanctity, which we saw at the beginning — and there is a prohibition of offering it outside — how did that sanctity, where did it go? How did it lapse?

I want to explain this phenomenon through the conceptual layer behind this process of the goats. I’ve finished the halakhic part; now a philosophical introduction.

You know, let’s take a worn-out logical argument. Right? All human beings are mortal. Socrates is a human being. Conclusion: Socrates is mortal. Correct? That’s the canonical example always brought in logic classes. Okay? Why is it really the case that someone who accepts the two premises must necessarily accept the conclusion? Yes? Socrates — we’re back with the Greeks and their wicked disciples. The conclusion is already contained in the premise. Right, okay. In fact the reason that someone who accepts the premises must accept the conclusion is that there is nothing in the conclusion beyond what was already in the premises. It adds nothing new.

On this I usually bring the hot-air-balloon joke. Two people lost their way in a hot-air balloon; they’ve been floating around for days, have no idea where they are. They see someone plowing a field below. One of them shouts down: “Tell us, where are we?” He says: “Above my field.” So the guy up in the balloon says to his friend: “Listen, that guy down there is definitely a mathematician.” Why? Two reasons. First, what he says is perfectly precise. Second, it doesn’t help us at all.

Those two aspects of mathematics or logic, whatever, are two aspects that are connected to one another. The reason mathematics is completely certain is that it doesn’t help us at all. “Doesn’t help us at all” not in the sense that it literally doesn’t help — mathematics certainly does help — but it doesn’t give us any new information. There is nothing new in mathematics. Mathematics or logic are means of extracting more and more information from the axioms I assume. You will never extract, by mathematical or logical means, information that is not in the premises. The content of the conclusion is contained within… Think about the argument I gave earlier: all human beings are mortal — that’s one premise. The second premise is that Socrates is a human being. Let’s break that down into small change. What does “all human beings are mortal” mean? Jacob is mortal, Moses is mortal, Joseph is mortal, Muhammad is mortal — everyone is mortal; Socrates too is mortal because he is one of human beings, and so on. In short, I say “all human beings are mortal.” But if we break it down into small change, then among other things I have already said here: Socrates is mortal. Thank you very much.

But purposely I didn’t say Elijah the Prophet? Let’s not get into those landmines. I also didn’t say Jesus. I didn’t want to say it. Yes. So the point is: you assume that Socrates is mortal, along with various other assumptions, and your conclusion is that Socrates is mortal. What logicians call that is “begging the question.” Begging the question means placing the conclusion into one of the premises. In traditional logic that’s considered a fallacy, but that’s a mistake. Begging the question is not a fallacy. Every valid logical argument begs the question. That is what its validity means. Why is it valid? Because it begs the question. Why does the conclusion necessarily follow from the premises? Because it’s there, because we assumed it. Because if we hadn’t assumed it, then even if I accepted the premises, what would compel me to accept the conclusion? And why does accepting the premises compel me to accept the conclusion? Because the conclusion is contained within the premises. You can’t…

Think of the Little Prince coming to you now, dropping in before your astonished eyes. You try to tell him a story. You say to him: “Look, all human beings are mortal. Welcome to our planet. All human beings here are mortal.” He says, “Oh, interesting, nice.” Then you say to him, “And Socrates — there is a wise man in Greece named Socrates — he too is mortal, he’s a person, one of the human beings.” “Why? I didn’t understand.” I say to him: you accepted that all human beings are mortal. “Certainly, yes; if you say so, why not.” And you accepted that Socrates is a human being too, right? “Yes, if you say so, I believe you.” Well then, obviously Socrates is mortal. “No, that isn’t obvious to me. I accept the two premises, but how do you get the conclusion out of the premises?” What can you explain to someone like that? Other than hospitalize him? What can you do? You have nothing to explain to him. All you can say is: let’s unpack “all human beings are mortal” into small change and show him that he is in fact assuming the conclusion, that Socrates is mortal. Then you can’t tell me you don’t accept it — you yourself accepted it before. Okay? There is no other way to explain it to him. Someone opaque to this has no way through.

All right? Meaning that, in effect — yes, this is the yeshiva joke — why must every Jew wear a hat? Because after all it says, “And Abraham went.” A Jew like him certainly didn’t walk around without a hat, right? Now if Abraham went with a hat, then we his faithful disciples, who walk in his ways, also have to go with a hat. Which is what we wanted to prove. What’s wrong with that argument? Nothing. Excellent argument. A perfectly valid argument. It begs the question, of course. Why? Because when I say “a Jew like him didn’t go without a hat,” what’s the subtext? That every Jew goes with a hat, or has to go with a hat, right? So in fact the conclusion I inferred is contained within one of my premises. That’s begging the question.

Fine, but we saw that every valid argument begs the question. That’s the meaning of an argument’s validity. The validity of an argument means that it begs the question. Therefore those who think that begging the question is a fallacy are mistaken. There is a kind of begging the question that is too blatant, as in the case of Abraham our father. That’s too blatant. So what does “too blatant” mean? It means that you will never in your life succeed in convincing your interlocutor by means of such an argument. Why? Because when you raise an argument, you are coming to persuade someone of the conclusion. So you present premises, and you show him that from those premises the conclusion follows. Fine? But he disputes the conclusion, right? That’s why you’re having this discussion with him. But if the conclusion is one of the premises on which you are building, then he doesn’t accept the premises of the argument, so what good is the argument? The argument won’t persuade him. Not because the argument isn’t valid; because the premises of the argument are not acceptable to him. That has nothing to do with the argument’s validity. Someone who does not accept the premises is not denying the argument’s validity. Okay?

Therefore the problem with begging the question is that it has no persuasive force. Meaning, it cannot transform my interlocutor’s outlook. But that’s not a fallacy. In principle, no valid argument can do that. When can a valid argument do that? Take geometry, for example. When we studied geometry in high school, there are axioms, four axioms, and from them I derive conclusions. Okay? Now if that really is mathematics or logic, then that means that the conclusion is in some sense contained within the premises. Because otherwise I would need observation, or it would be science — not mathematics. Mathematics doesn’t require observation. Mathematics simply extracts what is in the premises, more and more. But it is not always so simple to do that. Therefore in those places too it is begging the question, but it’s a form of begging the question that is not blatant. It is useful because on my own I would not have understood that this conclusion is contained within the premises. The teacher helps me. In the case of Abraham our father and the hat, everybody understands on their own the premises and the conclusion. You added nothing with that argument. So it’s a silly argument, but it’s valid. And “begging the question” there is not the name of a fallacy; rather, it characterizes arguments that are too banal, too unnecessary. But in fact every valid argument begs the question. When the begging of the question is more sophisticated, then the argument has some value, some use. It still adds nothing in terms of information. Meaning, the conclusion does not add information that was not in the premises. But it helps me, because I myself would not have extracted that information.

You can look at it as follows: imagine I have a locked safe and there are treasures inside. Now I have no way to open the safe, but the safe with everything inside it is mine. So everything is mine, including the treasures inside the safe, but I have no key to open it; it’s inaccessible to me. It’s mine, no one can take it, but I have no way to get to it. Logic is the key. Meaning, logic or mathematics help me open the safe, or see what is in the premises and bring out the treasures — for whoever calls them treasures; everyone to his taste — the treasures that are inside those premises. Okay? It will never add something beyond what is in the premises.

Arguments that add information beyond what is in the premises are non-deductive arguments: analogy or induction. Deduction is an argument from the general to the particular, yes? All human beings are mortal; Socrates is a particular person, he is part of that group, therefore he is mortal. That is movement from the general to the particular; it is called deduction. Okay? Induction is movement from the particular to the general, a generalization. Okay? Socrates is mortal, Moshe is mortal, therefore all human beings are mortal. That is an argument that is not necessary. Right? Why? Maybe there were two examples, but who said it’s true for the whole group? There is an element of speculation in induction, in generalization. Therefore it’s not a necessary argument. Notice what characterizes this argument: the conclusion contains more information than the premises. My premises concern two human beings and my conclusion concerns an entire group, or all human beings. Okay? Therefore the conclusion contains more information than the premises. By definition, that does not belong to the world of logic and deduction. There is more information in the conclusion than in the premises. It belongs to the world of science. The scientific world gathers information about the world, adds information for me. Mathematics does not add information for me. Mathematics reveals more and more information that in principle I already know. Yes, it’s not always easy for me to get there, but basically I know it. Okay? And science adds new information for me, and it will always be an uncertain inference or a non-necessary inference by definition. A logical or mathematical argument is certain; it is necessary. A scientific argument, a generalization, is not certain, not necessary, and only because of that does it succeed in adding information.

What about analogy? Same kind of thing as induction. Right? In analogy I say: Jacob is mortal, therefore Moshe is also mortal. Okay? I make an analogy between them. If this one is mortal, then that one is mortal. Again, “that one is mortal” is the conclusion. My premise is that this one is mortal. The conclusion is not contained in the premises; it has information that was not in the premises. Meaning, this inference brought me — or brought to my knowledge — new information that was not in the premises. Therefore this too is not deduction and is not certain; there is some degree of speculation here.

An interesting question is what is stronger, analogy or induction? To my mind that is a misleading question, because there is no real difference between them. Induction is a lot of analogy, or analogy is hidden induction. When I say: Jacob is mortal, therefore Moshe is also mortal — why? What is similar between Jacob and Moshe? That both are human beings. So in fact you are covertly assuming an induction. You are really saying that all human beings are mortal, and in particular Moshe. In other words, analogy is induction followed by deduction. The result is an analogy. When you make an analogy between Moshe and Jacob, you take Jacob, turn him into a generalization about all human beings, and from all human beings to Moshe in particular. That is deduction. So induction plus deduction is what produces analogy.

In any event, what I want to say is that a logical argument is certain but does not add information. Arguments that add information are by definition uncertain: analogy, induction, abduction, whatever — there are a few further distinctions into different forms. This means, I formulate it as the philosophical uncertainty principle. You know, the uncertainty principle in quantum theory says that the more precisely I know the position, the less precisely I can know the velocity and momentum, and vice versa. Meaning, the product of the uncertainty of the two is bounded; it has a minimum value. So if one is zero, the other is infinite; if one is small, the other is large, and so on. One offsets the other. One goes like one over the other. Okay? The product is constant.

The product of certainty and the amount of information added by an argument is also constant. An argument that adds me a lot of information has low certainty; it is highly speculative. An argument that adds me no information can be completely certain. Or an argument that is completely certain adds me no information. When I have full certainty in an argument, I have zero information. Fine? When I have a great deal of additional information — say, a very very broad, dramatic generalization — then the certainty is very low; it is very speculative. In this sense, if you look at analogy and induction, ostensibly induction is more speculative than analogy, because induction speaks about the entirety of the group, whereas analogy speaks about one case. If your chances of being wrong are, say, fifty percent — never mind, just for the example — then there. The chance is much greater, because for every one of them you get wrong, you were wrong in the generalization. Okay?

So the point is: logic has an advantage and it has a limitation. The advantage is certainty. The limitation is information. It doesn’t add information for me. Why am I bringing all these acrobatics? Because there is a certain illusion in our world — an old illusion, but it became very sharpened at the beginning of the twentieth century, what is called logical positivism — that in fact we can accept as valid only a claim that has a proof. Only a claim that has a proof is valid. A claim that has no proof, I don’t accept. Speculation. Maybe yes, maybe no. And the fact that you think so — so what? Is “proof” here deduction? A logical proof? Say, there are different kinds of arguments here. Yes. And that means there’s no such thing. There is, but it always rests on premises. Exactly. So there is a certain, to my mind illusory, conception that says you can base your knowledge, or restrict yourself, only to certain knowledge. Only to certain knowledge.

Now why can’t that work? The only certainty that can exist is, let’s say, direct observation — even that isn’t certain. But let’s say I accept that as certain. Direct observation doesn’t give you any interesting information; it gives you particular information. You know, you look at this, you see some thing falling to earth if you let go of it, so you understand that telephones of such and such number and in such and such form fall to the earth when released. Okay, that’s a statement about one object. Not interesting. Interesting claims are always general claims. Science deals with general claims. General claims are never the result of direct observation, because direct observation is about particular cases and from them I make a generalization. Right? The generalization, the scientific induction, always introduces uncertainty, always introduces doubt, the fact that it’s not certain that it’s correct. There is some degree of speculation here. Science is by definition speculative. You have to understand that. It may sound a bit surprising to people, but science is by definition speculative, unlike mathematics and logic.

But someone whose world contains only mathematics and logic, or only deduction, has no information. He will die with the information he was born with, if he believes in the information he was born with. He cannot add information, because as I said, certain arguments never add information. If you want to receive information, you will have to pay in the coin of certainty. That’s the price. When you want information, you pay in the coin of certainty; you have to give something up. And by the way, one of the claims — one of the platforms, if you like — because of which I think modern science burst forth is exactly this: it was willing to give up certainty. And the rationalist era that preceded it, antiquity and the Middle Ages — then science, philosophy, everything was the same thing, and basically the feeling was that by purely conceptual, logical tools, we can decipher the world. We proceed with proofs, with certain claims, and therefore there was also a certain kind of contempt for observation and for generalizations from observation. And that got us almost nowhere scientifically.

In the sixteenth century there was some breakthrough because science modestly limited itself to those things it could observe, and it understood that the generalizations it makes are generalizations with a certain value. Okay? After David Hume at least — it took a process, it didn’t happen instantly in the sixteenth century — but in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this became more crystallized. And that modesty is what enabled us to advance. Once we don’t demand maximal certainty, we can accumulate information. Whoever wants certainty will be left with no information. That’s the price.

Therefore, people who live under the illusion that they will accept only certain information are simply left with no information. They remain skeptics; they cannot accept any claim more than its opposite. And I think that same Greek whom Nachmanides mentioned — what Nachmanides really means is Aristotle’s logic, the Organon. Aristotle was the one who first formulated the logical rules, the rules of deduction, in his Organon, Aristotle’s book of logic. And speaking for myself, anyone who studies logic finds it very easy to fall into this view: okay, from now on I work only with logic. Meaning: do you have a proof? Welcome. You don’t have a proof? Go find your friends. I have nothing to discuss with you. It doesn’t interest me.

At some point you suddenly realize that a proof is always built on premises. Right? What is a proof? You take premises and infer a conclusion from them. That is a logical process inferring a conclusion from premises. That is called a proof. There were heroic attempts in the history of philosophy to produce conclusions without premises. An argument that is analytic, purely conceptual analysis that yields a conclusion. Familiar? There is, for example, Anselm’s ontological proof. That’s one example. Descartes’ cogito — “I think, therefore I exist.” That’s a second example. These are examples of arguments that tried to reach some conclusion without premises. They failed. I won’t now get into why, but they failed. You cannot reach a conclusion about the world without premises. There is no such thing. Okay?

But on the other hand, the conclusion is not that if so, then one must be an empiricist and cling to observations. One must posit premises, but premises can come from reason and not only from observation. That’s already the debate between rationalism and empiricism; I won’t go into it here. In any case, what I want to argue is that the problem Nachmanides saw in the Greeks and their wicked disciples — namely, that everything they grasped in their reason is true, and whatever isn’t, isn’t true — is the same problem that I think we encounter in the last hundred years as well: that what is not logically proven is speculation. It isn’t valid.

Very often, for example, in relation to faith you hear this. Do you have an argument for faith? Speculation. What? You don’t have observations? You don’t have certainty in that conclusion? Then it’s speculation, it has no force or value. In the subtext of that claim there is some assumption that only something certain is valid. Okay? I once described this by way of a model — a three-stage model of maturation.

Think of a small child who accepts things because the grown-ups said so. Why does this happen? Because father said such-and-such. Okay, that’s the dogmatic stage. He accepts things because the dogma says such-and-such. At a certain point adolescent rebellion begins. What is rebellion? I’m speaking on the intellectual plane, not getting into psychology. So adolescent rebellion is when the youth starts asking his father: who said so? Prove it. You said it — so you said it. So what if you said it? Prove it. If you don’t prove it, I don’t accept it. What lies behind this? I accept only things that are proven, only things that are certain. If it’s not certain, your speculation is worth no more than mine. Why should I accept it? Okay?

The Enlightenment ends at the painful point — this is autobiographical — when you discover that nothing is certain. Since every argument that proves a claim is based on premises. And if you prove the premises themselves, you’ll need prior premises. So those premises too — somewhere you will begin with a set of claims, premises, that you have not proven. And if you don’t accept premises that have no proof, then your conclusion too is worthless.

I once asked students: what is more correct in geometry, the axioms or the theorems? The theorems have proofs; the axioms don’t. Now why is that nonsense? Because the proof is reduction to the axioms, right? What does it mean to prove a theorem? To show that it follows from the axioms. That is called proving it. If you don’t accept the axioms, what good does it do me to prove that the theorem follows from the axioms? That’s not interesting. Therefore clearly you can’t regard the theorem as more correct than the axioms, even though it has a proof and they do not. But if you are really willing to accept only things that have proofs, then you accept neither the premises nor the theorem. If you ask a serious mathematician what the sum of the angles in a triangle is, he ought to answer: I don’t know. It depends what your foundational assumptions are. If your assumptions are Euclidean, then the sum of the angles is 180 degrees. If your assumptions are different, then it’s minus pi… whatever you like. Decide whatever you like. It’s not… pi is actually 180 in radians, but never mind, some expression with the number e, whatever you want. Huh? There are different geometries too. Yes, exactly. Therefore the mathematician cannot answer the question what the sum of the angles in a triangle is. But if you give me the premises, I’ll tell you what follows from them. Okay? Mathematics deals in “if… then.” It doesn’t deal in conclusions. It deals in deriving conclusions from premises, in the transition from premises to conclusion. Okay?

Now there are people who live under the illusion that one can construct a worldview, or live within a picture of the world, consisting entirely of “if… then,” entirely of logic. Just logic, just certainty. But there is no such thing, because logic starts from premises, and then with logical tools I arrive at conclusions. If you don’t accept the premises because they are not the product of logical proof, then what good does a proof based on those premises do in proving the conclusion? It doesn’t help in any way.

And in fact this conception, or this point where the youth finishes adolescence — it begins with his saying: I accept only proven things. Talk logic to me. That’s the only language I’m willing to accept. And then it ends with his understanding that with logic you get nowhere. Then he has three possibilities of maturing. Incidentally, this is completely analogous to what happens in our civilization in general. I’m talking about an individual, but it’s exactly the same thing. That’s induction. What? Induction? It’s analogy.

But what happens in the stage after the point where adolescence ends? Notice: along the way we’ve accumulated two insights. One insight: only what is proven is certain. That is the youth’s conception. And by the end of adolescence we have also accumulated the insight: nothing is proven in an unconditional way — yes, without depending on premises. Nothing is proven. Now if I remain with those two insights, what is the conclusion? Nothing is valid, right? If only something proven is valid, and nothing is proven, then nothing is valid. Okay? Therefore that is skepticism.

That is one form of maturation: keeping both insights and abandoning neither. A second possibility is to keep the insight that only proven things are valid, but give up the view that nothing is proven. How can one get there? That is what I call fundamentalism. Fundamentalism — beyond the fact that fundamentalists murder people — what’s bad about them, to my mind as a would-be philosopher, isn’t that they murder people. What’s bad is why they murder them. They murder them because they have certain principles that are certain and not subject to the test of critical thought. That is what fundamentalism means in the philosophical sense.

Now you can be Mother Teresa and be a fundamentalist — then there’s no problem. She doesn’t murder anyone. On the contrary, she is fundamentalist about helping every poor and downtrodden person. So that’s a fundamentalist who is pleasant to live next to, but she is still a fundamentalist. The problem with fundamentalism is that not everyone is Mother Teresa. Usually they are not Mother Teresa. Okay? Then I’d keep a bit of distance. Anyway. It isn’t pleasant there. But basically, to my mind, the real problem with fundamentalism is not its product; it’s its fundamentalist approach. This view that says: I have certain truths that are not subject to the test of critical thought. That’s fundamentalism. And that basically means: I have some other tool to attain certainty. Not logic, because with logic, as we saw, you can’t reach certainty. So where does it come from? Some spiritual charisma, some exalted guide, idol, God, whatever you like — caliph, rabbi, priest, pope — I don’t care, everyone can choose his own pope. But you create an alternative that gives you certainty instead of the rational, logical tools that you know do not provide certainty.

So here you can retain the view that only the certain is valid, but abandon the view that nothing is certain — because I’m not going with logic; I’m going with things that are not logic but something else. Okay? By the way, even within the Jewish world there is often a common outlook that is fundamentalist. A common outlook according to which there are things we are not allowed to ask about or not allowed to think about; they are not subject to critical examination; they are principles of faith. Whoever even reflects on them is a heretic; one must not reflect. To my mind that is bizarre, and it is the common view. Don’t think this exists only in ISIS. It exists among us too. Thank God there is less murdering here, but the fundamentalism on the philosophical plane is completely here, completely.

So that’s the second type of maturation. The third type of maturation — yes, this is combinatorics — is: nothing is certain, but I retain the second insight and give up the first. Nothing is certain, but who said that only the certain is valid? I’m willing to accept intuitions, common sense, what seems sensible to me. Okay, accepted. Not with certainty — if they bring me good evidence against it, I’ll give it up; I need to be honest. But that doesn’t mean it’s speculation. It doesn’t mean that if I don’t have a proof I don’t accept it. That’s nonsense. No — I do accept it. To me, for example, a synonym for this outlook is faith — not fundamentalism. This outlook is faith. Faith means being willing to accept something even though I have no proof for it, but in a skeptical way. Meaning, I think it’s true; it’s my common sense. But I’m willing to subject it to critical examination. If you have good arguments against it, if you have observations, if you have whatever — let’s examine it. Maybe I’ll retreat. Okay? This is what I call synthetic maturation. In Kant’s terminology I call this analytic versus synthetic — the terminology itself doesn’t matter now — but that is the third type of maturation. Or to abandon both; that would be the fourth type, but it isn’t interesting. It’s unnecessary. If it’s enough to abandon one, why abandon both?

Okay, I’m getting there. And this connects to the Greek; now we’ll extract something from the Greek. The point is this: in the Kabbalistic world there is a distinction between two sefirot, wisdom and understanding. What’s the difference between them? Understanding is to understand one thing from another — or, freely translated, logic. Right? To infer a conclusion from premises, the tools that infer conclusion from premises — that is understanding. Okay? Now we know that in the world there are 49 gates of impurity and 50 gates of understanding. Thus Nachmanides in the introduction to his commentary on Genesis, and the Vilna Gaon. The Vilna Gaon writes on a verse in Proverbs: “The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.” “Everything” has the numerical value 50 — “The Lord has made everything for its purpose” is 50 gates of understanding, and “even” — “even” is 49 — “the wicked for the day of evil” is the gates of impurity. The Leshem discusses how that can be, since it should be 49 opposite 49 — “God has made one corresponding to the other.”

So Nachmanides writes that among the 50 gates of understanding there is one that is different. There are 49 gates of understanding corresponding to the gates of impurity, and one more. What is the meaning of that? What is a gate? A gate is an entrance, a transition from here to there, right? Therefore a gate symbolizes understanding. Understanding is to understand one thing from another, to pass from the premises to the conclusion. Therefore the metaphor used for understanding is gates. Okay?

Now I have 49 gates and rooms between them, presumably — room, gate, room, gate — and each gate carries me from room to room. Think of this for a moment like, say, an axiomatic structure such as geometry. Fine? So I have the axioms, and after that there are inferences; I derive theorems. From those theorems plus the axioms I derive additional theorems, and so on. I can keep advancing in this chain, one more gate and one more gate, and I expose more and more rooms. How does it end? How is a system of 49 gates closed? How many rooms are there? Depends how you arrange them. There are two possibilities: either a circle or a straight line, right? Depends on the conditions of the language. If it’s a straight line, then you have 50 gates. If it’s a circle, 49 gates that loop back. Right?

Now someone who thinks that one can build a picture of the world solely on understanding, on logic — only certainty — is basically moving in a circle, right? Because in fact you can know nothing that is not conditioned by something else. You begin with axioms, move to theorems, to more theorems, more theorems — but wait, what about the axioms themselves? If you don’t succeed in closing that, you won’t get anywhere from anywhere. Meaning, you can’t arrive at any… you are, in a certain sense, moving in a circle. You cannot know any truth in an unconditional, independent way. Okay?

For those 49 gates to have meaning, you need to accept the existence of a room to which no gate leads. A first room that begins the chain. Those are the axioms or premises. From it you pass through a gate to the next room. What does the first room do for the whole chain? It changes the meaning of the whole chain. Because a chain in a circle contains no truth. Forty-nine truths in place of fifty? Zero truths. Because if you don’t accept the premises of geometry, then the theorem that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees is not true either. So what if it is proven on the basis of the premises? Okay? Meaning, the existence of the first gate turns the whole chain into gates of understanding. If you decide there is no room at the beginning, then these are gates of impurity.

You know what impurity is? Death. A corpse is the ultimate source of impurity. It is a lump of flesh without the thing that animates it, without the root. Without vitality, without the soul, what gives it life. This chain of 49 gates without the room at the beginning is like accepting all the logic but not relating to the foundational premises. The foundational premises are what animate the whole chain. If you don’t accept the foundational premises, then none of your conclusions is true. Now that’s a little disappointing to discover, because it basically means that all… with some qualification, right? Such is life. But without the first gate — if you doubt it because you have no argument proving it — then throw the whole thing in the trash. You are left with nothing. In the end, the point that animates this whole chain, the soul of the whole chain, is the room. And that’s what Nachmanides means when he says there is a fiftieth gate that differs from the first forty-nine, because it isn’t a gate; it’s a room. A room without a gate.

Okay? Wisdom is, if we wanted to elaborate, the “power of what” — something from itself, not from something else. Understanding is one thing from another thing. But wisdom is what is true from itself. You simply understand that it is true because your common sense or your intuition says so. The Leshem in fact asks several questions — I can already see I don’t have much time, so I’m skipping a bit — but he basically says these gates need to be one corresponding to the other. The answer is: right, they are one corresponding to the other. It isn’t two systems of 49 gates; it is the same system of 49 gates. If there is a room at the beginning, then they are gates of understanding; if there is no room at the beginning, then they are gates of impurity.

And impurity, in the modern sense — that’s why I said this is a bit anachronistic, because for us today it’s very understandable, but I think it was true then too, just less sharpened than today — it was true then as well. Someone who thinks that only proven things are valid ultimately is left with nothing; he remains a skeptic. These are the gates of impurity. Amalek numerically equals “doubt,” and all that… I don’t like those word games, but never mind, that’s the idea behind them. There is a kind of essential skepticism here that refuses to accept anything. This is what the Sages call cynicism. Cynicism is not telling jokes. Cynicism means refusing to accept anything. “As for everything we heard — who told you? Prove it. Maybe the opposite.” That is cynicism. The joke is just the way we do it to empty what you are saying of content and significance — by telling a joke about you. And the way we do that… I’m not engaging substantively.

Fine. So today we call “cynicism” people who tell jokes, but cynicism in the language of the Sages is skepticism. “Strike a scoffer and the simple will become prudent” — that’s Amalek. Amalek, after whom they became prudent like serpents — prudent means clever, though here in a negative sense. That’s Jethro. Jethro heard what Amalek did and became wiser. “Strike a scoffer and the simple will become prudent” — that’s Amalek. Amalek is a scoffer — why is he a scoffer? He’s a skeptic. What is a skeptic? From his point of view, if you prove it — fine. But nothing has a proof, so he accepts nothing. That doesn’t mean you should accept everything because someone said so — that would just be simple-minded. Fine, but I am saying: pay attention to what common sense says, examine it. Maybe it isn’t true; maybe it is. But it is not something devoid of value. Proof is not the only tool for validity, for assessing the validity of claims. That is really the point.

Now if I adopt that claim, let’s return for a moment to the scapegoat. Nachmanides says that this process of the scapegoat comes to “extract from” the Greek and his wicked disciples the notion that whatever they grasped in their minds was true, and whatever wasn’t, wasn’t true. For our purposes, Aristotle’s logic, essentially. He says: if you cling only to logic, then this is what the scapegoat comes to pull you away from. So what does the scapegoat actually say?

Remember for a moment the process we followed — yes, when they take the goat, what happens there? You begin with two goats. One goes all the way inside, into the innermost place, and the other goes all the way outside, to the satyrs, to desolation and devastation and demons and all those things in the wilderness. A sacrifice to idolatry? It’s strange, really a metaphysical experiment. Okay? You take one goat — and they have to be completely identical, in height, in weight, and in value, so that you don’t think there is any difference between them — and you take this one to Azazel and this one all the way inward. Once a year we go all the way inward, and opposite that, all the way outward. Now let’s see what happens when we go all the way outward. What happens is that little by little, like in Alice in Wonderland, we discover that this is all the Mad Hatter — the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Nothing happened. There’s simply nothing there. We were inside a wild illusion. This whole crazy structure contains nothing; it simply holds nothing.

This feeling that… yes, here I am also speaking about both the psychological dimension and the intellectual dimension. When a person sins — this is like Rabbi Nachman’s Indian parable — when a person sins, in the end it is accompanied, or usually accompanied, by some theory he builds for himself. He builds for himself a theory: it’s not so bad, it’s actually okay, just now this really is okay, this is what I need to do. You deceive yourself in some way, whatever — you build some imaginary structure. In effect, you are sacrificing to the satyrs. You invent for yourself some kind of god, or truths — doesn’t matter — and you live inside them. And then when someone illuminates things for you, you say: who said so? Prove it. Maybe this is right; maybe that is right. But wait a second. Think for a moment. If you really aren’t willing to accept anything that isn’t proven, then what you say isn’t true either. So it’s all illusion.

Let’s go all the way through the chain of the 49 gates of impurity. What will we discover? That we’ve arrived back at the beginning; it just looped around, right? We went the whole way, all of us trembling — the sins of Israel are being atoned for, crimson strip, the holiness of Yom Kippur, one who offers it outside is liable to karet, all those kinds of things — and in the end we arrive with some sheep for a bonfire gathering. We find ourselves opening our eyes: we dreamed. This whole story simply doesn’t exist. When we performed this metaphysical experiment and understood the insight that all the significance, all our sins, really came from — both intellectually but also psychologically — some structures we build for ourselves, which are built on thin air, built on nothing, on “without what,” yes, no “what” at all — then they are built on nothing. So in the end we understand that there is the inner goat, while the goat to Azazel is a bonfire gathering. That’s it.

And therefore the scapegoat also atones for all sins, because in the end it really is the repair of the thing that brought us to commit all the sins. What brought us to commit all the sins is building these crazy structures. When you talk to people — and also to yourselves — whenever someone sins, whenever someone does something, inside he knows it’s not right. He builds for himself some structure: no, no, it actually is okay; no, it isn’t not okay. If you look at someone who doesn’t want to be committed to anything, then you instantly find all kinds of excuses that are just made up. “Yeah, but how can you prove it? Maybe he has his own axioms, and you have yours; he builds one structure, you build another, they’re all the same. Postmodernism. Everyone with his own narrative.” He has his foundational assumptions; that one has his. Everyone is right. The hare’s tea party is right. Right? How do you break that? You can’t break it. You can only step out of the conception that consistency is the criterion of truth. Consistency is not the criterion of truth. Consistency is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.

So what is “there is nothing besides Him”? I didn’t understand. What’s the addition? I didn’t understand the question. What does “there is nothing besides Him” mean? There is no god besides the Holy One, blessed be He. There is nothing at all except the Holy One, blessed be He? No, there is no god except the Holy One, blessed be He. I am still here, as far as I know, and I am not the Holy One, blessed be He. I hereby issue formal notice. There is no other god — this is the issue of the secret of contraction. You know, a story about… I’m less Hasidic, but there’s a story about the Lubavitcher Rebbe. We spoke earlier about the nineteenth of Kislev.

The son of Rabbi Shach, Ephraim Shach, was an inspector in the Ministry of Education. So he once told — I heard it on the radio — that he was in line for the Rebbe’s dollar distribution in Brooklyn. And when he got there, the Rebbe asked him, “Who are you?” He said, “I’m Ephraim.” “Ephraim what?” “Ephraim Shach.” “Related to the Rosh Yeshiva?” “Yes, I’m his son.” He told him, “Wait a moment on the side.” Fine. After he finished distributing the dollars, he said to him, “Listen, when you go back to the Land, tell your father: it’s not I, it’s He.” So Rabbi Shach said: tell that to his Hasidim, not to me. Excellent line. The question is whether that’s your decision or not.

Anyway, for our purposes: what I want to argue is that this movement of the scapegoat is really the entrance into the innermost place, and it accompanies the entrance into the innermost place, and in a certain sense it is more important. It is more important that we go all the way outward and discover there is nothing there — there is nothing besides Him, there is nothing outside — than that the High Priest go all the way inward. They are mirror images of the same thing. Once you understand that there is nothing truly real outside, it’s all demons — therefore it also drags along our transgressions in practice. Right. Therefore it atones for all our sins. Right.

But the question is whether the sent-away one dies before he completes the whole service. Not necessarily. It may die and it may not. Even after the push it sometimes remains alive. I heard — even after the push it can stay alive, and then you’ll eat it. The main thing is that it was thrown. It doesn’t even have to be thrown. There are quite a few cases, even regarding the sending itself, with lots of rules in which it doesn’t die. Okay. Fine, but let me satisfy the minister. So I’m saying: that “minister,” that prince, is imaginary. What are “satyrs”? “Satyrs” are demons. In the Kabbalistic world, demons are beings without a root. That’s the difference between them and angels. Angels have a higher root, while satyrs exist in the worlds of formation or whatever, but they have no higher root. They simply exist.

What does it mean to appease him, to appease him more? Appease means: go, serve him all the way. If you have idolatry, worship it all the way. Give it a sacrifice all the way. Go with it all the way, test it all the way, and discover that there’s nothing there. Build on it, and discover there’s nothing there. The fact that they are demons with no root means that therefore they are nothing. They are imaginary beings. In our language I’d even say they are fictions. They don’t really exist. When you read Kabbalah it sounds as though they exist but without a root — a flimsy existence, unstable, I don’t know exactly what. I would say you don’t need to resort to that. They don’t really exist. They exist in our imagination. And we have lots of such demons — not demons as metaphysical creatures, but demons as fantasies that cause us to think and to do things. Those we need to get rid of.

Bring them an offering. Go with them all the way. Go with your “truth” all the way and discover that it isn’t truth — it too lacks proof. So if you don’t accept anything without proof, this is a translation into the intellectual plane; never mind. I agree that Nachmanides probably didn’t mean this, but it is a translation of what he says. And it is a more modern translation.

Then you discover that there is nothing there at all. And often the remedy in debates like these — about faith, which are often conducted — the remedy is often here. A person always says to you: wait, who said so? Prove it. Maybe the opposite. I say to him: you don’t accept anything that lacks proof? Fine. Tell me one thing you do believe. Then I’ll show him that what he believes also has no proof. Now you put him in a dilemma. He has to decide either that he accepts nothing without proof — then you are a total skeptic, and I have nothing to do with total skeptics — or that he discovers he has to be honest: he is not a total skeptic, and he does accept what common sense indicates. Now let’s see what common sense says. Because you can’t contend with skepticism; you can only check whether the person is truly a skeptic. That’s all.

Therefore the way to deal with skepticism is to go with it all the way. Let’s see. You know, one thing I always admire is the Amish in the United States — a religious group that goes all the way. I don’t know if they really go all the way; I don’t know them that well. But at age seventeen or eighteen, I think, they send their young people out for a year or two to the city to live however they want, and they come back only if they decide they want to be Amish. Yes. That’s very beautiful. Meaning: if you don’t want to, no problem. Decide what you want. But once you’re grown, now make a decision. If you decide, then you’re with us. If not, fine, your decision. That’s very beautiful — a metaphysical experiment with courage. Most return, by the way. Most return? Yes. At least according to what I read at the time. Age eighteen still isn’t enough. True. Not only that, your whole social infrastructure there is such that it’s hard to leave. Before you even adjust to something else. True. But still, it is worthy of admiration.

Now we stand on trial, under a test. Once I’ve already formed a position, I don’t want a test, certainly not a test involving sin. A test of thinking incorrectly? I think one has to think about everything. Every argument that arises should be thought through and one should decide whether one agrees or disagrees.

All right. Is everything being recorded, Rabbi? What? Yes. I’ll upload to the WhatsApp both the recording and the summary. Thank you very much.