The Mitzvah of Fasting on Yom Kippur – Lesson 3 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

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[Speaker D] Into the sanctuary—that’s what has to be done.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, because on Yom Kippur you have to enter the sanctuary. That’s what he’s saying. That’s also why it appears at the end. He doesn’t say at the beginning, “On the tenth of the seventh month you shall do this, and this is how you shall do it.” No. First of all, he gives a whole procedure for how one enters the sanctuary so that what happened to Nadav and Avihu won’t happen to you. That’s all, nothing else. At the end he says: besides that, know that there is one day a year on which you are required to enter. Okay? Fine. So in order to enter, you need this whole procedure.

The Vilna Gaon argues that this was true in the wilderness. Yes—that there, I don’t know if it actually happened, but it was possible to enter on other days as well. After entry into the Land of Israel, he argues, that really changed, and it became only Yom Kippur. I’m not exactly sure why, but it’s clear that in the plain sense of the Torah, that’s what is written. You don’t need the Vilna Gaon for that; that’s what it says here. There’s no hint of Yom Kippur here. This is all just how one enters the sanctuary. At the end they say: and on Yom Kippur there is an obligation to enter the sanctuary. Okay? Why? Because it is part of the atonement.

And here appears the verse that the Talmud expounds and that Maimonides brings: “It shall be for you a Sabbath of complete rest, and you shall afflict yourselves” (Leviticus 16:31). And part of entering the sanctuary is this complete cessation—the broadest cessation there is: from labor, from occupational work, from food preparation, and from pleasures. The cessation has to be total. That is the meaning of entering the sanctuary. You basically suspend your whole world—your ordinary, physical, everyday world—you suspend it, because that is how one enters the sanctuary. And then, when you come out, you begin again. In other words, the world starts rolling for another year, until next year, when once again everything is silenced, everything is frozen, nothing exists, absolute cessation; atonement is achieved, and then we return to practical life.

In other words, the way to attain atonement is really through a total suspension of our whole world. That is the meaning of entering the sanctuary: everything is suspended. Okay?

Now, this gives us the context. Never mind: “And this shall be for you an eternal statute, to atone for the children of Israel for all their sins” (Leviticus 16:34), “once a year.” Right? Meaning, once a year you must do this, because it is part of the atonement process. On the other days, if you want to enter, then follow the procedure. Okay? That is really the meaning of Yom Kippur. The essence of Yom Kippur is not the Yom Kippur service, but entering the sanctuary in order to achieve atonement. And entering the sanctuary requires this entire procedure. Okay?

Now I want to say a little about the meaning of this Yom Kippur process. The essence of Yom Kippur is atonement. When we look in the Talmud, the Talmud asks: what atones for sins? On Yom Kippur, what is the focal point? What is the point at which everything is atoned for? The conclusion is: the scapegoat. The scapegoat is the one that bears all the sins of the children of Israel into the wilderness. Right? It says here—what is it called—“And he shall confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions in all their sins, and put them on the head of the goat, and send it away by the hand of a designated man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon it all their iniquities to a land cut off” (Leviticus 16:21-22).

The Torah says that the atonement is effected through the scapegoat. Now, the Talmud says that perhaps apart from impurity of the sanctuary and its holy things and so on—which perhaps the inner goat atones for—but sins in general, the atonement of Yom Kippur is really through the scapegoat. Right? Rabbi Soloveitchik, for those who know, at the beginning of On Repentance, speaks a bit about the relationship between the atonement of the goat and the atonement of the day—that the very day itself atones. How does this atonement of the goat work?

So I want to suggest an idea that may be a little timely, so perhaps it is a bit sermonic, I don’t know, but I think there is something to it. Because on the face of it, it seems very strange. Why should the scapegoat atone? What is this scapegoat at all? Such a bizarre thing. You take some goat, send it off to Azazel—to who knows what, who knows whom. It is not a sacrifice in the ordinary sense. It does not enter the Temple, the courtyard, it is not slaughtered, nothing. They send it off to Azazel in the wilderness, push it off some cliff, and that’s it. What? What is that supposed to do? What kind of thing is this?

Not even the inner goat. Understand, there is a goat here that goes into the Holy of Holies. Once a year, the inner goat goes all the way in. You would have expected that this is what would atone for us. No, no—the inner goat is for impurity of the sanctuary and its sacred things, something like that. The scapegoat atones. The one that goes all the way out, not the one that goes all the way in. What is the meaning of this?

So let’s start for a moment. Ibn Ezra writes as follows: “And Rabbi Shmuel said”—I don’t know if this is Rashbam—“Even though it is written concerning the sin-offering goat that it is for the Lord, the scapegoat too is for the Lord.” That is what Rabbi Shmuel says. Don’t think that the scapegoat is a sacrifice for someone else; it too is for the Lord. “And there is no need,” says Ibn Ezra, “for the sent-away goat is not a sacrifice.” Meaning, it is not slaughtered. They do not perform on it the whole sacrificial procedure. The scapegoat is not a sacrifice. Okay? And therefore you do not need to say that it is for the Lord.

What was bothering Rabbi Shmuel? Why did he say that both are for the Lord? We offer a sacrifice—what, are we going to offer a sacrifice to someone else? Not to the Lord? Obviously it is to the Lord. So Ibn Ezra says to him: no need. It is not to the Lord. It is—to who knows what—to someone else. And don’t be troubled: it is not a sacrifice. Meaning, there is no idolatry here. The scapegoat is not a sacrifice. So what is it? What is the meaning of this?

“If you are able to understand the secret behind the word Azazel”—here Ibn Ezra begins his mystery—“you will know its secret and the secret of its name, for it has counterparts in Scripture. And I will reveal to you a bit of the secret by way of hint: when you are thirty-three years old, you will know it.” An Ibn Ezra riddle. He explains to us what this thing is: it is not a sacrifice, and therefore there is no need to say that it is for the Lord. I don’t know—to Satan, I don’t know to whom. But it is not a sacrifice, so there is no problem. And what is this thing? What does it do? What is its secret? What is the meaning of this procedure? “When you are thirty-three years old, you will know it.”

So Nachmanides there writes: “Rabbi Abraham is faithful in spirit and conceals a matter, but I am a talebearer who reveals his secret.” The verse says, after all, “A faithful spirit conceals a matter” and “A talebearer reveals a secret” (Proverbs 11:13). So Nachmanides uses that verse here as a paraphrase and says: Rabbi Abraham concealed it here; I will reveal it to you. “For our rabbis have already disclosed it in many places.”

By the way, this is exactly something I discussed on Rosh Hashanah: “A talebearer” — people think that being a talebearer means speaking slander. Being a talebearer means revealing a secret; it has nothing to do with slander. It says so in the Talmud too. In other words, a talebearer is someone who reveals a secret; it has nothing to do with slander. Here, Ibn Ezra is guarding some secret, and Nachmanides reveals that secret. There is no slander here—he is not saying anything defamatory about anyone. You reveal the secret; that is called being a talebearer. Right?

The Talmud brings an example of what gossip is. Suppose a court is sitting on some case. Two judges declared the defendant liable and one judge acquitted him. Fine? They go out, all three have signed the ruling: you are liable. One of the judges—the one who acquitted—says, “But I was the one who acquitted you; they convicted you, not me.” That is talebearing; it is forbidden to do that. Sign the ruling, and that is it. And if you do not trust your two colleagues on the panel enough, then do not sit there. Don’t sign—don’t sit on a panel of that kind if you are not prepared to be in the minority and to attach your signature to the judgment. As the Talmud says, the discerning people of Jerusalem would check who sat with them at a meal. Don’t sit at a meal with someone you would not be willing to get drunk with—that is, someone you do not trust. And judges have to be people whom you trust, so that even if there are two against you and you are in the minority, you trust that they are faithful enough, wise enough, reliable enough, that you are willing to sign a judgment with them even though it goes against your opinion, and to stand behind it. Because otherwise, do not sit on that panel; do not join that panel. Okay? Unless, of course, you’re in the Chief Rabbinate—then none of this applies. No one there is reliable about anything.

Anyway, back to our subject. We have now discharged our obligation regarding slander too, right? Talebearing. And now it only applies to one who is part of your people, so there’s no concern. In any case, he says he wants to reveal Ibn Ezra’s secret. And this is stated explicitly in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer the Great: “Therefore they would give Samael a bribe on Yom Kippur so that he would not obstruct their offering, as it is said: one lot for the Lord and one lot for Azazel” (Leviticus 16:8). Meaning, the second lot, the goat for Azazel, goes to Samael. It is a sacrifice to Satan—not a sacrifice, sorry—it is sent to Satan. It is a bribe. It is for Satan. Right? Some sort of thing like that, so that he will not interfere with us and will not disturb us regarding the inner goat.

So this is very strange, because the gift, the side dish, the thing intended to keep him from interfering with the inner goat—you would expect that the inner goat would atone for everything, and this merely takes care of that one so he won’t interfere. No, no: taking care of that one is the atonement for everything, not the inner goat. Something here is completely upside down.

So he says, yes: “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 sins of Israel are upon it. And thus He has made known to us its name and its deed, and that is the secret of the matter.” I am skipping here. “For there were those who worshiped other divine beings, namely the angels, and offered sacrifices to them, and they were to them a pleasing aroma.” Right? There were people who worshiped angels as idols and offered sacrifices to them. To actual angels, meaning—there are such angels—but it is forbidden to offer sacrifices to them; they are not God. Okay? This is what Maimonides talks about at the beginning of the laws of idolatry: worship through intermediaries is also how idolatry began.

“And behold, the Torah absolutely forbade accepting their divinity and any worship of them, 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 desolate places, and that is fitting for him”—this is that Samael—“because he is its master, and from the emanation of his power come ruin and desolation, for he is associated with the stars of sword and blood and wars and quarrels and wounds and blows and separation and destruction.” We have plenty of that today. These days it seems to me we are in the heart of the wilderness.

“And the intent of the scapegoat is not that it be a sacrifice from us to him, Heaven forbid”—but, as Ibn Ezra writes—“rather that our intent be to do the will of our Creator, who commanded us thus.” We are doing the will of our Creator in giving Samael this gift. Fine? It is not a sacrifice to Samael, but it is indeed directed to him, and directed to him by the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. He commanded us to give him this thing.

All this is an explanation of what Ibn Ezra said. Everything Nachmanides says here is to explain that secret of Ibn Ezra. “And this is the reason for the lots, for had the priest consecrated them verbally to the Lord and to Azazel, it would have appeared as though he were worshiping him and vowing in his name.” One sacrifice to the Lord and one sacrifice to Azazel—that would really be a kind of dual worship, right? “But he set them before the Lord at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.” So he did not do that; he set both goats at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before the Lord, because both are a gift to the Lord, in order to show that both belong to the Holy One, blessed be He; neither of them is a sacrifice to Samael, and so on.

“And Rabbi Abraham hinted to you that you would know its secret when you reached the verse, ‘And they shall no longer slaughter their sacrifices to the goat-demons’” (Leviticus 17:7). Here I write in parentheses: yes, this is a verse that appears thirty-three verses later. That is what “when you are thirty-three years old, you will know it” means—that is what Nachmanides intends. Fine? In other words, “when you are thirty-three years old, you will know it” means: go thirty-three verses ahead; there you will discover the explanation: “And they shall no longer slaughter their sacrifices to the goat-demons.”

[Speaker B] He’s playing with us, you know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think there are any secrets here that he wanted to hide from us. He just wanted to make us work a bit. “And he could not explain it,” says Nachmanides, “because we had to stop the mouths of those who chatter naturally like water, those drawn after the Greek, Aristotle, who denied everything except what he could perceive, and became arrogant”—swollen with pride—“to think, he and his wicked disciples, that anything his reasoning did not grasp is not true.”

How is this connected to a war against Aristotle? What characterizes Aristotle here is that he is some kind of arrogant person, for whom only what he understands exists, and what he does not understand does not exist. Right? And the goat for Azazel is supposed to deal with Aristotle? What? I mean, this was said long before Aristotle, of course—but what exactly is the point here? Why does the Greek suddenly enter the picture? Why this arrogance all of a sudden?

In short, he wanted to decipher Ibn Ezra’s riddle, but he left us with a riddle no less obscure. Okay? So if you will allow me to be even more of a talebearer, I will try to decipher a bit of Nachmanides’ riddle. Okay?

For that, I want to take a little tour—a little tour following the scapegoat. I once gave this class in Yeruham when I taught there in the yeshiva. I told them that I know people usually do Bible tours—those tours where they show you, here this battle took place, and here this happened, and this plant is what is called such-and-such. So I do Rabbi Chaim tours. Fine.

So let’s try to see how this story works. What procedure does the scapegoat go through? In the first stage, we basically take the two goats, okay? We buy the two goats. They have to be equal in height, in weight, and in value—that is what the Mishnah says. It is not indispensable, but ideally they should be equal in height, weight, and value. Then we basically consecrate them both—sorry, consecrate them both—and then they have the sanctity of a sacrifice. Then we draw lots: which of them goes into the Holy of Holies and which goes to Azazel. The one for the inside goes in; the one for Azazel undergoes sending away, laying on of hands, the crimson thread, they send it by the hand of a designated man into the wilderness, push it off the cliff, and so on. Okay, that is the general picture.

Let’s try to get into more detail. First of all, after we bought these two goats and consecrated them, the Talmud says in tractate Yoma 62 that if someone offers one of these two goats outside, outside the Temple courtyard, he has violated the prohibition of offering outside the designated place. That means both goats are currently in the status of a sacrifice. Right? An ordinary animal you can slaughter wherever you want. But a sacrifice—you are forbidden to offer it outside; that is the prohibition of offering outside. You must bring it up in the courtyard. Meanwhile, the goat for Azazel is going off to Azazel, not to be offered; but at this stage, after the consecration, it is a sacrifice in every sense—both of them are sacrifices in every sense. Fine? Therefore, someone who offers it outside violates the prohibition of offering outside.

So that does not fit very well with what they say, that the scapegoat is not a sacrifice. Right? At this point, both are sacrifices. But notice: it is not yet the scapegoat. For now we have two; lots have not yet been drawn, we do not yet know which is going where.

In the next stage, they draw the lots. When they draw the lots—here there is a dispute. Gevurat Ari, that is the Shaagat Aryeh, says that on the goat that goes inside they say the words “for the Lord, a sin-offering,” and on the one that goes to Azazel they say nothing. Therefore the other one goes to Azazel. This one is “for the Lord, a sin-offering,” and the second one just remains as it is. Rashi says that on the two lots one must write “for the Lord” and “for Azazel”—two slips placed in the box, mixed up, and drawn out—and that is how one determines which goes to Azazel and which to the Lord. Both slips have to be written, and when you draw them, this is the sin-offering goat and this is the scapegoat. Fine? You say that.

Why is that necessary? From the standpoint of the drawing of lots, it is enough to draw one, and the other follows automatically. So some later authorities explain that the drawing of lots is part of the day’s service. You—it is not for the sake of knowing that one is for Azazel; you can know that without this. If one was drawn for the Lord, then the other is for Azazel. You have to assign a designation to both of them; this is part of the day’s service. Okay? So at this point it is in fact a sacrifice, and we are performing sacrificial service with it. Right. There was a box with two slips. A box, slips. Right?

After the lot is drawn, we tie a crimson thread to the horns of the scapegoat. There were two crimson threads: one was tied to its horns and one to the rock. And if we were atoned for, the crimson thread would turn white, and then we would all understand that we had been atoned for and there would be great rejoicing. But this is the crimson thread—so they tied the crimson thread to the goat’s horns.

The question is: how is such a thing permitted? After all, that is making use of a sacrifice. You are not allowed to make use of a sacrifice. You are tying to the goat for Azazel a crimson thread; it is carrying the crimson thread on it. That is what some later authorities ask. Rabbi Chaim has a stencil about the crimson thread.

What? Labor. No, what does that have to do with it?

[Speaker E] Some kind of cloth, a thread, that is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, scarlet thread.

[Speaker E] Does it change color? Yes, yes, if they were atoned for.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the commentators say—they ask how this can be, since it is making use of a sacrifice. Now, I said the question is not so difficult, fine, it is part of the day’s service, no? True, I think the crimson thread is not mentioned in the passage—I think—not the tying of the thread. So perhaps they ask: wait, then this is not really part of the day’s service, because it is not written in the verses, so how do we permit ourselves to do it anyway? After all, it is making use of a sacrifice.

But what does this question show us? That we still see the scapegoat as a sacrifice. Here this is already after the drawing of lots. Lots have already been drawn; we already know that this is the scapegoat, right? Still, the Sages, the commentators say: wait, something here is not right; after all one may not make use of a sacrifice. Their perception is that this thing is a sacrifice. Okay?

After the lot and the tying, there is laying on of hands. The priest lays his hand on the head of the goat. In the book Mikdash David, in the laws of the Yom Kippur service, he brings proofs that this laying on of hands is the same kind of laying on of hands done with sacrifices, like that done on offerings. Meaning, this goat still has the status of a sacrifice—the status of a sacrifice.

After that, they confess over the goat that is going to Azazel. Right? The priest confesses over it all his sins and so on—confesses for all his fellow priests and for all Israel, and all the confessions we discuss in the service, the order of the day’s service. Rabbi Chaim writes that from here on—from after the confession—is that confession part of the laws of repentance or part of the laws of sacrifice? Mikdash David discusses there whether the confession is part of the laws of repentance or part of confession over sacrifices. That is a question. Rabbi Chaim explains that it depends on whether this thing is still a sacrifice. And his claim is that from this stage onward—from the stage of confession—it is no longer a sacrifice. There is also the issue of laying on of hands: how is that permitted? That too is a sacrificial rite. So Rabbi Chaim says that at this point it is confession under the laws of repentance, and it is no longer a sacrifice. Mikdash David raises the possibility—he says there may be a dispute about this; perhaps it is still a sacrifice.

The next stage is the sending of the goat to the cliff. They take the goat and send it to the cliff, to Azazel, into the wilderness. At this stage, they send it “by the hand of a designated man.” What is a designated man? “By the hand of a designated man into the wilderness” (Leviticus 16:21). A designated man means a non-priest, not a priest—someone who is not a priest.

Now here this already more than hints that it is no longer a sacrifice, because sacrificial service is performed only by priests. True, slaughter is valid if done by a non-priest, but in principle the service is done by priests. When we send it by the hand of a designated man, that again says even more strongly that at this stage the goat is no longer a sacrifice. Okay?

More than that: there are those who argue that although the designated man returns to the High Priest and says, “My lord High Priest, I have carried out your mission”—that is what the Mishnah in Yoma says—there are those who want to claim: no, he is an agent of the High Priest; this is a service still performed by a priest, only it can also be done through the agency of a non-priest because it is not inside. But still, it is a service of the High Priest.

Except—what happens from here on? So there is still room to hesitate: perhaps at this point it is still a sacrifice. But some of the medieval authorities claim that the sending itself is not indispensable. He can simply not send it. This is really strange. You make all the preparations, you draw the lots, this is the Holy of Holies, this is the peak of the day, this atones for everything—everything was preparation for the sending stage. And now you can just go home and have a campfire singalong. No, it is not indispensable. If you want, send it; if you do not want, don’t send it. It is not indispensable. So what, was everything not preparation for this? There is a dispute among the medieval authorities here as well.

And notice what happens next. Along the way, in the wilderness, the designated man eats and drinks—on Yom Kippur. He eats and drinks, and everything is fine. He also violates the boundary prohibition, because he goes with it beyond the permitted boundary. No problem at all. No Yom Kippur, nothing. The fellow is on a picnic. Okay?

Along the route, as described in the Mishnah in Yoma, all Israel set up booths. They build booths along the road and wait for him; they accompany him along the way, and they pull at the hair of the goat. They pull at the goat’s hair. Now this is already completely absurd. First, this is forbidden on Yom Kippur because of reaping, since an animal is treated like the ground; pulling out hair is a Torah prohibition. It is forbidden on Yom Kippur. Second, this is a sacrifice—how can you take something from a sacrifice and pull it out? What do you mean? That is outright misuse of consecrated property. Okay?

So at this stage, it is clear that it is no longer a sacrifice, and we are no longer in Yom Kippur mode at all. Nothing, nothing at all. We have exited the movie, okay? Exited the Matrix of Yom Kippur.

At the end of the route, the designated man arrives at the cliff and pushes it down from the top of the cliff. Here this is no longer a dispute among the medieval authorities. Here the Talmud says that it is not indispensable. If he does not throw it—

[Speaker E] Right, nothing happened.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can sit there and play him pleasant tunes on a flute for your own enjoyment. He can slaughter it and slaughter it and eat it—you’re being stringent; you can even do it without slaughtering it. We’ll see in a moment. So this is not indispensable at all. You can refrain from pushing it off the cliff; nothing happened. Some of the medieval authorities say the sending is not indispensable, but the pushing, according to everyone, is not indispensable. Even according to those medieval authorities who say the sending is indispensable, the pushing is already entirely non-indispensable.

And we are not done. After it is pushed off the cliff, the limbs of the goat are shattered. They are permitted for benefit. A sacrifice—you are forbidden to touch it; that is misuse of consecrated property. No, everything is fine; you can have your campfire singalong. You can eat them. In the novellae of the Griz, he proves that if the goat remained alive after being pushed, you could eat it.

[Speaker B] Enjoy your meal—even without slaughtering it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or perhaps with—

[Speaker C] Slaughter it, but even without slaughtering—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, eat it with a good appetite. Why without slaughtering? You do not need to slaughter. Why would you? You do not need to. Every animal needs slaughtering—what do you mean? No, no, it is written that you do not need to. I mean, I don’t know what the difference is; they have proofs that you do not need to slaughter it properly. You can eat it without proper slaughter. Kill it somehow so it won’t be a limb from a living animal, but you do not need proper ritual slaughter, okay? No. Here, with the scapegoat, no—here this is something special. There are—so I’m saying, there are those who say that one can slaughter and eat it if it…Remaining alive—others say, no, you don’t even need to slaughter it. No, take the goat, make yourself a little campfire gathering, finish off this nice journey along the road, right? You ate, man of the appointed time, you too are on the road, there’s no problem at all, after all you’re not on Yom Kippur. This man of the appointed time is in a different sphere, and now he can take this goat and make himself a private little campfire gathering, and everything is fine. Okay?

[Speaker B] I remember the Talmud had some tendency that he would eat on Sukkot because, because he had bread in his basket, not because he was, uh—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be, uh, could be, uh—

[Speaker B] Something like that, or am I mistaken? He’s allowed to eat. Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be that he didn’t eat because he had bread in his basket, so he wasn’t hungry, it doesn’t matter. But he is allowed to eat, okay? So this process is a very strange process. At the beginning of the process, from the starting point, we have two animals. They are sanctified with the sanctity of an offering. Someone who offers them outside is liable because of offering outside the Temple courtyard. Everything—they are full-fledged offerings. Little by little the whole thing thins out, dissipates, until it reaches some stage where in fact nothing is left. Meaning, it’s not an offering, we’re not on Yom Kippur, there’s nothing. That is, there’s only you, going along for your own enjoyment with some nice goat on a shared walk. After that you can even eat it if you—yes, Ariel Sharon once said he doesn’t eat friends, with his sheep there at Shikmim Farm, right? But if you haven’t gotten too attached to it, you can eat it too, and everything is fine. If you did get attached, then I don’t know how you’ll push it off the cliff at the end. But yes, this whole story demands explanation. Something here is not logical in terms of the halakhic definitions. The Talmud in Nedarim says that bodily sanctity does not simply lapse on its own. If something has bodily sanctity, it can’t suddenly become ordinary, non-sacred property just like that, automatically. There has to be some action, if it’s even possible at all. Here, somehow, something just dissipates by itself. You didn’t do anything, and at some stage suddenly it evaporates. It had bodily sanctity—it was an offering. Okay, so what does that mean?

[Speaker E] Uh, yes,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that’s all of Yom Kippur—that’s what happened there.

[Speaker E] Nobody asked questions? I don’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know of any, but yes, this picture—I assembled it, I gathered it, because this picture is mine. But these are the facts. I just collected the facts from all over to show you that there’s some process here that is consistent; it’s not accidental. So among the medieval authorities, among the later authorities, you can see discussions: here it’s indispensable, there it’s not indispensable, yes they do a lottery. When you see it in this overall picture, you understand that there’s something systematic here. It’s not random. There’s some picture here: you start with an offering, and little by little its sanctity dissipates, Yom Kippur itself evaporates, and nothing is left.

[Speaker E] From all this, it could be that one year they ate it, one year—uh, yes, anything could be.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whatever they want. Yes. They can do whatever they want. Okay? Now, there’s something here that really calls for explanation. I want to suggest some sort of meaning for it that is a bit timely, but I don’t think it’s necessarily only timely. It’s the Greek element of Nachmanides; it already starts there. But today I think it’s much, much more tangible for us. So I’m leaving this process for now—we’ll come back to it later, and to Ibn Ezra, and to the sent goat, and to the atonement of Yom Kippur. I want to talk now about other things. In logical systems we usually distinguish between two kinds of claims. There are first principles, axioms, and there are derived claims, theorems. We derive propositions from the axioms, right? Like in geometry. Okay? So basically we have claims—

[Speaker D] Fundamental ones.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From which, using the tools of logic, we derive conclusions. Right? Now, this whole system is called an axiomatic system. An axiomatic system is axioms, definitions, rules of inference, and the theorems that we derive by means of the rules of inference from the axioms. Okay? In kabbalistic terminology, the primary claims, the axioms, are called wisdom. This is the first sefirah: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, right? Kindness, strength, beauty, endurance, splendor, foundation, and kingship. So at the top, in the three upper sefirot that are attached to the head in some way, there are wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. Wisdom on the right, understanding on the left, knowledge in the middle below, okay? Wisdom is the axioms. Understanding is to understand one thing from another, right? That is understanding. To understand one thing from another—what does it mean to understand? To derive, using logical tools, to derive a conclusion from premises, to understand one thing from another, okay? That is understanding, and knowledge is the result, the whole axiomatic system. Right? Everything we get altogether is knowledge. Right? So there are the axioms, there are the theorems, and the whole system together is knowledge. Okay? Now let’s try for a moment to see what exactly this process means. We have a certain tendency to think that an acceptable claim is only a claim that has a proof, that we have an argument proving it. If we have no argument that proves it, then the matter is arbitrary. If you want, accept it; if you don’t want to, don’t accept it. But there’s no reason to accept that claim. Once I asked students—or pupils, I don’t remember anymore—what are the stronger claims in geometry, the axioms or the theorems? Theorems including axioms—the derived propositions. The axioms have no proof. The theorems do. So does that mean the theorems are stronger than the axioms? Apparently not, because they are based on the axioms.

[Speaker B] Why not? Right. I mean, what is proof?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When we speak about proving the theorems, the proof is to ground them in the axioms—that’s what proof means, right? But if you think the axioms are something arbitrary, because after all they have no proof, then the theorems are arbitrary too. The fact that they have a proof doesn’t help at all. The proof is only to ground them in the axioms, right? So therefore, in effect, the entire system comes out arbitrary, if you are really prepared to accept only things that you have proof for. So everything is arbitrary. Then in fact there is nothing that has proof. Because proof always means grounding things in axioms that themselves have no proof. Okay? So if you are not willing to accept things for which you have no proof, then everything is arbitrary. Everything, everything is accidental, okay? In our world, we can call this relativism or postmodernity, or I don’t know, it has various names. Postmodernity, which does not believe in the existence of truth, is actually—people don’t understand this so well—but in fact excessive logicism, extreme logicism. It is excessive reliance on logic. Meaning, someone who is willing to accept only things for which there is a logical proof will be left with nothing. Because logical proof is always built on axioms, right? So you actually cannot accept anything if you are willing to accept only things that have proof. And this is exactly postmodernism. Postmodernism basically says: “I am willing to accept only things that have proof.” Now what does that mean? I have one set of assumptions, from which I derive certain conclusions. Someone else has different assumptions, from which he derives opposite conclusions. Who is right? We are both equally right. Because each of us assumed assumptions, and assumptions have no proof, and from them he can prove his conclusions. So in fact what we have is a collection of what they call narratives, or certain forms of discourse, but all of them have the same status, since you have no way to criticize someone as long as he is consistent. Because the only way to criticize something is through logical proof, right? To say this is true and the other is not true, if you have proof for— but we both have logical proofs, only our basic assumptions are different, right? Therefore, in effect—yes, if we took different axioms and different conclusions emerge from them—then they are right just like me, right? Meaning, from your attachment to logic comes the opposite of what we expected. The result is that everyone is equally right. Meaning, someone who wants—yes, someone who uses only a logical standard basically reaches a situation in which everyone is equally right. A self-righteous person, you might call him. Always right, yes, a self-righteous person. Whatever you say, you’re right. Okay? Like the judge’s wife, right? You’re right, and you’re right too, and you’re right too. Okay? So this claim is a very important insight, because it basically says that someone who is willing to accept only things for which he has a logical argument will in fact be left with nothing, will remain a complete skeptic. This is that same Greek who became arrogant in his mind, yes, as Nachmanides says—but we’ll get to that in a moment. Fine, let’s look again at the kabbalistic terminology of wisdom and understanding. You know that in kabbalistic terminology, when we talk about understanding, there is what is called the fifty gates of understanding. Okay? Fifty gates of understanding. In the Zohar, in the New Zohar at the beginning of Yitro, there are fifty gates of understanding and corresponding to them fifty gates of impurity. Okay? The New Zohar there says: why did the Holy One, blessed be He, hasten to bring Israel out of Egypt? Because He feared they would sink into the fiftieth gate of impurity, and from that it is impossible to emerge. Therefore He brought them out early, moved up their departure a bit, so that they would not sink into that gate. That’s one side. On the other side, the verse in Proverbs says— the verse in Proverbs says: “The Lord has made everything for His purpose, and even the wicked for the day of evil” (Proverbs 16:4). So the Vilna Gaon on this verse says as follows: “And he said ‘everything He made’ etc., ‘and even the wicked,’ because fifty gates of understanding were created in the world, and the fiftieth gate was not revealed until the coming of the redeemer, which is the secret of the world of freedom. For the other side has only forty-nine gates of impurity, and does not have the fiftieth gate. And when all its forty-nine are filled, then it will be removed from the world, for it will be consumed as dung is consumed until it is gone. Therefore the fiftieth gate will be revealed and it will be removed; when the fiftieth gate is revealed, the gates of impurity will be removed from the world. And this is ‘The Lord has made everything’ etc., which is fifty gates of understanding, ‘and even the wicked’—its numerical value is forty-nine gates of impurity—‘for the day of evil,’ ‘when the wicked spring up’ etc., ‘that they may be destroyed forever’ etc.” What does he mean? “Everything”—what is the numerical value of “everything”? Fifty, right? Kaf-lamed. “And even”—its numerical value? Forty-nine, right? Vav-gimel-mem is forty-nine. So “The Lord has made everything for His purpose” means fifty gates of understanding. “And even the wicked for the day of evil” means forty-nine gates of impurity. The Vilna Gaon’s claim is that there are forty-nine gates of impurity and fifty gates of understanding, even though God made one corresponding to the other, there is still a difference. And Nachmanides too, in his introduction to Genesis, says that the fiftieth gate is not exactly like the first forty-nine gates. There are fifty gates of understanding and forty-nine gates of impurity. Then the Leshem asks against the Vilna Gaon in the book De’ah, Discourses on the World of Chaos—that is the acronym De’ah—from Leshem Shevo Ve-Ahlamah. He raises an objection. He says: then what is this that the children of Israel were about to sink into the fiftieth gate of impurity? So there is a fiftieth gate of impurity. And besides, we know that God made one corresponding to the other, so if there are fifty gates of understanding, there must also be fifty gates of impurity. More than that, I would add: why is the opposite of the gates of understanding the gates of impurity? Why not the gates of foolishness? Why is impurity the opposite of understanding? Right? Either say impurity and holiness, or understanding and foolishness. Why understanding, and corresponding to it impurity? So let me try to suggest an explanation for this. All right, let’s look for a moment at this metaphor of a gate, the gates of understanding. What is a gate? A gate is something that leads from one place to another, right? A gate is the transition from one place to another, okay? Therefore understanding—the metaphor used to describe it—is gates. Remember what understanding is? Understanding is to understand one thing from another. The rules of logic, to derive a conclusion from premises. Therefore understanding is described through gates, because the gates lead me from one place to another. So if I now broaden our concepts a bit, we’ll call them rooms, say, places, between which there are gates. There is a room, and a gate leading me to another room, and a gate leading me to another room. There are forty-nine gates of understanding, okay? And the fiftieth is a bit different. Let’s try to understand how this chain is built. Think of a chain of rooms and gates, rooms and gates. How many rooms are there, or places? I would say fifty. Right? A gate to a room, another gate to a room, another gate to a room. The last gate also leads to some place. So there are actually fifty rooms, between which there are forty-nine gates. Unless there is a problem of terminology—unless this is not laid out in a line but in a circle. If it is in a circle, there are forty-nine rooms and forty-nine gates, right? The first gate in effect becomes also the last, the last returns to be the first, and then in the chain there is a room for every gate, and there are forty-nine gates, forty-nine rooms. The question now is whether we are on a line or on a circle—circles and straightness, as they say. What does that mean? In the analogy, let’s use this as a parable: someone who thinks that only things for which we have a logical argument proving them—only claims for which we have a logical argument proving them are acceptable, okay? Then in his world there are really only claims to which a gate leads. He is not willing to accept a claim if there is no gate leading to it. But he doesn’t always notice that if so, then he is in a circle. Because if he is on a line, then true, this claim has a gate leading to it, but at the beginning there is some room to which no gate leads. So you cannot recognize it as a room. The only way you can do that is to arrange it in a circle, and then there’s no problem: there is no room to which no gate leads, and of course the claim is circular. Or to put it differently in the analogy: if, say, you are not willing to accept the axioms of geometry, then in effect you are also not willing to accept the theorems. If the axioms are arbitrary, then the theorems are arbitrary too. You are basically in a circle. You know that if this room is true then this room is also true; if this room is true then this room is also true. But you don’t really know of any room that it is true. You only know the “if-then”: if this is true then this is true, if this is true then this is true. You only have the “if-then”; you have nothing that is true in itself, okay? And then this basically means that nothing in this system is true. Circular reasoning. You can only say that if this is true then this is true, if this is true— but about no room can you say. I ask you: what is the sum of the angles in a triangle? As a mathematician you are supposed to answer me: I have no tool for knowing that. Tell me what your assumptions are. If your assumptions are Euclidean, then the sum of the angles in a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees. If there are other assumptions, then the sum of the angles is minus pi, the sum of the angles is i, imaginary, right? It doesn’t matter, whatever you want. Tell me what your assumptions are, and I’ll tell you what the sum of the angles is. The mathematician is not responsible for giving you an absolute answer, only an if-then answer: tell me what your assumptions are, and I’ll tell you what follows from them. Right? That is the ordinary conception of mathematics. Mathematics does not reveal to us any true fact, but only a relation between facts. And if you accept these facts, then the conclusion is this conclusion. If you accept other facts, then the conclusion is another conclusion. You see the relativity or the postmodern relativism, okay? But if you treat mathematical truths as true claims, then you are basically assuming that the axioms are true axioms. Ah, but there is no proof, no argument that proves them. True—I am willing to accept also claims for which I have no proof. I am willing to accept those too.

[Speaker B] The fact that reality is always like this—isn’t that a proof?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Why? Observation. Observation is not a mathematical proof. Observation is scientific confirmation; it is not a mathematical proof. Up to now you saw it this way—tomorrow morning it will be otherwise. How would you know?

[Speaker B] No, I always saw it this way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? Fine, so until now it was this way; tomorrow it will be otherwise. Is that a proof? A mathematician does not accept observation as proof, right? Mathematics is not something that comes from observation. Mathematics is not a science; it does not come from observation. So what does that mean? It basically means that we have two options for looking at the world intellectually. One option—let’s now call it, I call it the analytic option, never mind, for reasons best known to me—is an option that says I am willing to accept only things for which I have proof. The result is: you cannot accept anything. All I can accept is only if-then, if-then, if-then, if-then, right? Or in other words: I am willing to accept only understanding without wisdom. Wisdom is the power of “what,” yes? That is wisdom. What does that mean? It means something that is true in itself. From wisdom one can produce, with the tools of understanding, further conclusions. But all this is only if you accepted the foundation, the wisdom. If you accept the premises as something true, then everything you prove from them, everything you derive by means of the tools of understanding, is also true. But if you are not willing to accept the original axioms, then what help is everything you produced with the tools of understanding? It too is not true, because the foundation from which, on which you built, is not true. Okay? So now the question in the picture I described earlier is whether I am on a line or on a circle. If I am on a circle, then all I have is if-then, if-then, if-then, but nothing is true. Okay? This is relativity, the relativistic conception, okay? In contrast, if I am on a line, then I say: the initial room is true simply because it is true. My common sense tells me it is true. There are no proofs. My common sense tells me it is true; my faith tells me it is true; everyone can call it whatever he wants.

[Speaker B] If I accept that, then—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then everything proved from it by means of the tools of understanding is also true. Intuition. Yes. All right? So the tools of understanding have significance because they produce more and more conclusions out of something I trust, and so I can also trust the conclusions, okay? Therefore the question of how I relate to the first room, to wisdom, basically determines how I relate to knowledge as a whole, to the whole structure, to all the results I derive from wisdom, okay? My relation to the first room determines everything: whether I’m in a circle and then nothing has any significance, or whether I’m on a line and if this is true then this is true too, and then I really accumulate information. In every such process I have more and more knowledge about reality. Think about a situation in which you have a palace full of gates and guards and a whole system, with the king supposedly in the middle. And what if there is nothing in the middle? The Wizard of Oz actually describes such a thing, right? In the end they get to the Wizard of Oz and see there’s nothing there, just some cowardly old man. Okay? That is exactly the parable here. It’s this picture that in the end there is no room, there is nothing. The chain is there, and in the end you arrive—there’s nothing at the end, nothing. Why? Because there cannot be something true in itself, only out of something else. But the initial foundation from which everything begins cannot be true because it is based on nothing, okay? Basically, what we see here is that the gates of understanding receive their significance from the fact that at the beginning there is wisdom. If there is wisdom at the beginning, all the understanding that derives more and more things from it receives significance. What happens if I do not recognize the existence of wisdom? Then those same forty-nine gates of understanding become gates of impurity. Why? What is impurity? A corpse is the supreme source of impurity. What is the difference between a corpse and a living person? One point that gives life to the whole body is missing, right? The body is the same body. Everything that exists in the corpse exists in the living person too—the same thing. One point that animates the whole story is missing. A thing cut off from the root that gives it life—that is what is called impurity. Demons, here—things without a root, creatures without a root, right? Therefore they represent impurity. The goat-demons—what he is talking about here is demons, okay? These are creatures without a root, okay? That is called impurity. Now, forty-nine gates without the first room that gives life to the whole story, that gives it significance—if the first room is not true, then why should I care about all the derivatives you derive from it? Okay? Without the point that gives it significance, without the point that gives it life, these are gates of impurity. They are gates of impurity because they are gates without a root. There is no room that gives life to the whole chain of gates. But if there is a room at the beginning, then those very same gates become gates of understanding. Gates of understanding and gates of impurity are not two different things; they are the very same gates. The whole question is whether there is a room at the beginning. If there is a room at the beginning, they are gates of understanding. If there is no room at the beginning, they are gates of impurity, okay? Now, in our world it is very easy for us to understand this, why? Because in our world there is a feeling that there is what is called postmodern philosophy, some great wisdom that is all logic and science, but of course it is all fake. There is nothing there. Why is there nothing there? Because all there is there is only if-then. Meaning, if this is true, then I can prove that this is true; and if this is true, I can prove that this is true; and if this is not true, then no, then I will prove that the opposite is true, right? Basically everyone is right. Meaning, very great wisdom, very great logical skill, which actually covers over a vacuum. There is nothing there. In the end there is that cowardly old man, right? At the end of The Wizard of Oz there is that cowardly old man. There is nothing there. An enormous façade, right? Everything is behind palaces and gates and this and that, and rooms, a huge complex, whose foundation, what gives it life—there is nothing there. It is dead. It is a dead complex. The point that gives it life does not exist, okay? So this is a world that creates the impression of being terribly wise and terribly varied and intelligent and all that, and there is nothing in it, nothing at all. You can be very intelligent in using the tools of understanding, but if you do not accept the foundation, the truth of the axioms, of wisdom, then what good is all that understanding? Then everyone has his own narrative, everyone has his own understanding, everyone has his own truth, and there is nothing there. Maybe—it depends how you relate to it. But what I want to say is that there is a kind of enormous illusion. This whole world is full of noise and bells and whistles, full of wisdom and intelligence and everything, and behind it there is nothing. An absolute vacuum, an absolute vacuum. They got to the moon, and people still think they got to the moon by means of things that have logical, scientific, mathematical proof and the like. Nonsense. There is no such thing as proof that is not based on some unproven infrastructure, on some assumptions. Science too, logic too, philosophy too—everything. At the beginning there is some sort of foundation, and if you do not posit it, you know nothing. And people live in some kind of façade as if, from their point of view—yes, this is logical positivism in the twentieth century—that only things that are proven and fully defined and observational, only that, only that are we willing to accept. That’s nonsense. If you accept only that, you have accepted nothing. You know nothing. Science is saturated with assumptions that have no proof whatsoever—not empirical, not logical, not philosophical, nothing.Just leaves them there. Yes, the theories are based on those same assumptions, like the principle of causality, the principle of induction, all kinds of things of that sort, okay? Without them there is no science; without them you know nothing. So really, it’s a very, very impressive world, a whole system of rooms and gates and everything, but if in the background, in the foundation, at the core, there’s nothing solid there, then the whole story is just nonsense, it’s fake, okay? But if at the foundation you place trust, then everything you learned out of that foundation teaches you more wisdom and more things, and then knowledge has meaning. The point of wisdom is the soul that animates this whole body of knowledge. And if you relate to that point of wisdom as something arbitrary, relative, subjective, whatever it may be, then all your knowledge is like that too; it has no meaning at all. A world in which there are no points that you trust even without having proof for them—in such a world you can trust nothing. And people don’t understand this. People think you can live only on the basis of logic and observation, be rational, right? But that isn’t rational, it’s rationalistic—to be completely rationalistic—but that’s nonsense, there’s no such thing. Now you can decide: either you’re a complete skeptic, or you place trust in a few points—or faith, if you like—in a few primary points, and from there you can build a great many things, but only so long as you place trust, or faith, in those basic points. The service of Yom Kippur, it seems to me, is really about demonstrating this process. The scapegoat—after all, there are two goats. What are you saying? You’re basically saying this: you take two goats, and they have to be equal in height, in weight, in value, completely equal, they have to be identical. Why should they be identical? Because what distinguishes this one from that one is only your choice. You chose for it to be this way or that way. The lottery represents the process of choice. If you choose this, then it has meaning; and if you don’t choose this, it has no meaning, okay? You chose the good, so it’s good; you chose the evil, so it’s evil, okay? That’s the meaning of the lottery. And the lottery determines that this goat will go to Azazel and that goat will go into the Holy of Holies. But that’s not because there is a difference between the two goats. There is no difference between the two goats. The difference is only that I chose this one for the innermost sanctuary and that one for Azazel. The choice determines whether the act is good or bad, not the act in itself. The choice determines it; you assign the meaning of good and evil to our actions. There’s a very common educational mistake—we talked about this, I think—where people depict, in children’s books, Esau as something repulsive and disgusting and ugly, that way from birth, while Jacob is an angel, he looks like an angel. And that’s an educational mistake, because it says that the difference between Esau and Jacob is that one was born an angel and the other was born a demon. But no—the difference between them is the question of what they chose. So you need to draw them equal in height, in weight, in value, exactly the same. This one is wicked because he chose evil, and this one is righteous because he chose good. That’s the difference between them, and the same with the two goats. What Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner says—why do we need to drink on Purim until we do not know—we talked about this, didn’t we?—until one does not know between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai.” Why? If anything, the whole service of the day is to distinguish between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai.” No, because the depth of the comparison is the depth of the distinction. Mordechai and Haman have to appear to you exactly the same, identical. The difference is that this one chose good and that one chose evil. Same thing with Jacob and Esau, same thing with the two goats. They have to be completely equal so that you understand that the difference is simply what he chose. The difference is not what he is, how fat he is, how beautiful he is, how splendid, and so on. No—the difference is what he chose, or in the case of the lottery, what the lottery brought up, okay? And then what happens is, they’re basically telling us this: our sins are sins committed when we’re living in a movie. We’re living in a movie. We think we have another alternative, that there’s this option and that option, and he’s right and he’s right too, and each person has his own thesis, and there’s one doctrine and another doctrine, and we have a whole world full of possibilities and truths and alternatives and things of that sort. And we’re living in a movie. We’re living in a movie, and this movie often causes us to sin. Why? Because suddenly we’ve built ourselves a theory that this too is okay, this too is an option; not only this option is right, that option is also right. And then we can behave differently, because that too is an option; you don’t have a monopoly on the truth, right? We know this already: he’s right and you’re right and the judge’s wife is also right, everybody’s right. No one has a monopoly on the truth. In other words, this notion of multiple truths, pluralism, is the father of all sin. That’s where sins come from. Why? Because you manage to justify to yourself that there are other alternatives that are just as right as you are. Okay? So who says you specifically have to behave well? You can also behave badly; that’s okay too. Who says this specifically is good? Maybe that’s good too? Everything is possible. In other words, this conception of the gates of impurity—or in other words, of understanding without a root, with nothing that is true in and of itself—is the mother of all sin. And what the Yom Kippur service does is try to work on precisely this point. And what does it tell us? Oh, you think there’s also a goat—there’s Samael today, right, the one in charge of the goats and demons and the desert and all those things—and there’s the Holy of Holies. This against that, meaning there is good and there is evil. Okay, so let’s go with you, if that’s what you think, let’s offer a sacrifice to Samael, okay? Let’s follow this all the way. A holy sacrifice—you may not offer it outside—and we send it to Azazel as a sacrifice. Then you go gradually, and suddenly you discover there’s nothing there. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s not a sacrifice, just a nice goat, do whatever you want with it, the sacrifice isn’t indispensable, nothing—there’s no Yom Kippur, you can eat, you can do… there’s nothing! Nothing at all, it’s fake! Everything is fake. And really, this is a kind of metaphysical experiment they put us through. You think there is good and evil, and struggle and conflict, and maybe this one is right and maybe that one is right, and maybe both are right. There’s nothing there. There isn’t anything else at all; there is only this. There is only this thing. What happens out there—there’s nothing there. There’s a petting zoo of nice goats playing, walking around, going on a stroll—there’s nothing there. So it begins with great fanfare: you go into some metaphysical experiment, there’s a sacrifice all the way inward, to the Holy One, blessed be He, into the Holy of Holies, and all the way outward, a sacrifice to Samael, okay? And you go all the way, and you discover there’s nothing there. Nothing at all, it’s fake. There is nothing there. You wake up and say: this isn’t a sacrifice, you can eat it, there’s no slaughtering, no Yom Kippur, nothing, no priest, nothing. The designated man can eat it, can tear it apart, do whatever you want. And this whole grand business of the goats and Azazel and Samael and the evil inclination and the alternative world and everything—that’s all a movie. Do you know Alice in Wonderland? In Alice in Wonderland, after she goes through all her adventures, what happens at the end? She wakes up on the riverbank and sees that it was all a dream. Right? There was nothing there: no Queen of Hearts, no rabbit, no Mad Hatter tea party, nothing was there. Nothing. It was all a dream; it dissolved. Yes, a hallucination. So it dissolves when she wakes up. That’s what happens on Yom Kippur! We take your dream all the way—come on, let’s go all the way, let’s bring a sacrifice to those guys, no problem, everything’s fine. And then you discover there aren’t any guys. There’s no one to bring a sacrifice to. There’s nothing. Okay? That is what atones. The goat to Azazel is a metaphysical experiment, and when we go through it, that is what atones for our sins. Because all sins come out of the perception that there is something there, and when we discover that it’s fake, there’s nothing there—if we really discover that—then there’s nothing there, and then we’ve been atoned for. That’s the atonement of the day itself: to discover this thing. And if I go back to Nachmanides, then Nachmanides says: “And they shall no longer offer their sacrifices to the goat-demons” (Leviticus 17:7), after they perform the Azazel rite. Why? Because opposite holiness there are no goat-demons. There is no one to whom you could bring that sacrifice; you discover there’s nothing there. And so in the end he gets to that Greek and his wicked disciples, who arrogantly imagined that only what he arrived at through his own intellect, with his logic, is true, and everything else does not exist. The moment you think everything is logic, there is nothing. There is no such alternative. And therefore this whole process of the goat to Azazel and the atonement of the scapegoat is really meant to silence that Greek and his wicked disciples, who think that only logic can validate claims, that only what we have proof for is true. The rationalistic view, so to speak. And the role of the goat to Azazel is to deal with that, to silence that Greek and his wicked disciples, who arrogantly thought that only what is proven is true. That is really the secret of the goat to Azazel—not that the priest chooses it,

[Speaker F] So that shows that, as if,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The moment you understand that there is no alternative, you will choose correctly. Because why do you choose incorrectly? Weakness of will. Why do you choose incorrectly? Because you think the alternative—who says it’s not right? Maybe that’s right too. And then you say: no, there is no alternative, you’re living in a movie. There is no alternative. So then you’ll choose correctly. From that point on you’ll choose correctly, we hope. That is the repair of Yom Kippur. And therefore: “And they shall no longer offer their sacrifices to the goat-demons” (Leviticus 17:7). After you discover there are no goat-demons, why would you sacrifice offerings to them? Okay? So this process is not atonement by sacrifice the way we’re used to in ordinary sacrifices. The atonement is that same metaphysical experiment that basically turns you into someone who won’t really sin anymore. It repairs the root of the sin. That’s why it atones; that’s why the goat to Azazel atones for everything, because you discover that the Greek and his wicked disciples are not really presenting an alternative. And if there is no alternative, then why would you choose it? You won’t choose it; you’ll choose the correct thing. And I’m going back again—what?

[Speaker B] It’s just to see… I was thinking, when the Rabbi was talking about pluralism and relativism, that really everything is true, but each thing only for the person himself—isn’t that, as it were, a bit of a distortion, for example, of the Talmudic saying that “Both these and those are the words of the living God”? As though really everyone is right, but each in his own context?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Both these and those are the words of the living God” is not pluralism.

[Speaker B] Okay, so what is it, exactly?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just today, this afternoon, I uploaded a column to my website about this, about “both these and those.” Look: the only example brought in connection with “both these and those” is the Talmud in Gittin. Rabbi Yonatan and Rabbi Evyatar regarding the concubine at Gibeah—whether he found a fly in the dish or found a hair in that place. It’s a dispute between Rabbi Evyatar and Rabbi Yonatan about why he got angry with her. One says he found a fly in the cooked dish, and the other says he found a hair in that place. Then Rabbi Evyatar meets Elijah the prophet, and he asks Elijah the prophet: what is the Holy One, blessed be He, doing now? So he says to him: He is studying the section about the concubine at Gibeah. Ah! Interesting—we were just arguing about that. And what is He saying? He says: “My son Evyatar says thus, and My son Yonatan says thus.” So he asks Elijah: Heaven forbid, can there be doubt before Heaven? What, the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t know what happened there? No, no, no, you didn’t understand. He found a fly and was not upset; he found a hair and… “Both these and those are the words of the living God.” He found a fly and was not upset; he found a hair and was upset. What does that mean? So one could say: well, then apparently Rabbi Evyatar was right; really the hair did the job, not the fly. But I think that’s not the correct reading. He found a fly and was not upset—what does that mean? It already got him heated up, but it didn’t lead to the explosion. Then the hair led to the explosion. And the accumulation of the hair and the fly together led to the explosion. “Both these and those are the words of the living God” does not mean that they are both right. It means that the picture is made up of both perspectives together. Each one contributes something to the picture. And all the perspectives together are what give the full truth. That is not relativism.

[Speaker B] So that it’s not really a dispute.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. It is a dispute, because each of us sees it from a certain angle, but the full truth is the collection of all the angles. One hundred and fifty reasons to declare the creeping thing impure, one hundred and fifty reasons to declare the creeping thing pure. Who is right? All three hundred are right. There are correct reasons to declare the creeping thing impure; there are correct reasons to declare the creeping thing pure. Okay? In the end the Torah says the creeping thing is impure. What does that mean? That the reasons for impurity are weightier than the reasons for purity—but not because only they are correct and the reasons for purity are incorrect. Everything is correct. It’s just that now you have to weigh things in order to know the final answer: impure or not impure. So the weighing of the hundred and fifty for impurity—their weight is greater than that of the hundred and fifty for purity. But all the reasons are correct. “Both these and those are the words of the living God” is not pluralism. “Both these and those are the words of God”—yes. My chocolate example always serves me in this context, okay? One person says not to eat chocolate because it’s fattening; the other says to eat chocolate because it’s tasty. Who is right? Both of them, right? It is both tasty and fattening. “Both these and those are the words of the living God.” But in the end, in the end, you have to decide: eat it or not eat it? So it depends—if taste outweighs health, or health outweighs taste, right? So the difference is in the weighing, in the weight of the reasons, but the reasons themselves are all correct, in both directions. It is both fattening and tasty. That is “both these and those are the words of the living God.” “Both these and those are the words of the living God” is not relativism, not pluralism, and none of those things. It is complete monism; there is only one truth. But that truth is a complex truth; it has this face and that face, and all the faces are correct. The question in the end is how to weigh them, what weighs more, what weighs less, and what the bottom line is. Here there is only one truth. No, so I claim not. “Both these and those are the words of the living God” applies to the reasons, not the results. There is only one correct result. As for the reasoning—no, he has correct reasons, he just weighed them incorrectly. The reasons are the words of the living God; they are correct. Right, exactly. The reasons—all three hundred are correct: one hundred and fifty for impurity are correct, one hundred and fifty for purity are correct. The weight, the final balance—that has only one truth, because the considerations for impurity outweigh the considerations for purity. So when we say “both these and those are the words of the living God,” the meaning is that all the reasons are correct. Incorrect reasons are not the words of the living God; when the reasons are correct, they are the words of the living God. But the balancing, the weights, the relations—there there is only one truth. Fine, but that’s a topic for classes of its own. I just want to return to our matter, because we need to finish, so I’ll just say: if we return to Yom Kippur, then really the total cessation that exists on Yom Kippur—a cessation from pleasures and a cessation from labors, this total cessation on Yom Kippur—its meaning is the suspension of our world. Our way of attaining atonement is by suspending our world. When we suspend our world and there is quiet, we immediately see that there are no alternatives, that there is one truth and the other things are noise, white noise, fake. Okay? So this cessation, this total suspension of our world from labor, from pleasures, from all these things, is really our way of attaining atonement. When you suspend all the noise and you remain simply looking at what really exists and what does not, that is this experiment of the goat to Azazel, which in the end

[Speaker B] carries

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] all our sins away to Azazel, into the wilderness. That is the atonement of Yom Kippur, and may we all be sealed for a good year.

[Speaker B] May we all be sealed for a good year. Thank you very much. A good year. Thank you very much. Complete health to everyone.