Scapegoats

Achrei Mot

Lev. 16:1 -18:30

Lev. 16:21 “And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over him all of the iniquities of Israel, and all of their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them on the head of the goat and shall send him away into the wilderness.”

            We review here the familiar verses (also found in the Torah reading on Yom Kippur) about the scapegoat. What does being a scapegoat really mean? It’s generally defined as “a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.” Its genesis is from this verse in our Bible. 

            We Jews have no shortage of experience as scapegoats throughout our long history, and certainly it is still abundant in today’s world.  One needs to look only to the BDM to see that this is the unfortunately the case today. Scapegoating is now part of our presidential politics, as Hispanic immigrants, Muslim Americans and the LGBT community feel the wrath of those who wish to blame them for all of America's ills. 

            However, while scape-goating is often used against a group, I’d like to speak about our own, more personal issues of what I might call “scapegoatism.” Many of us are assigned blame for things for which we are not responsible, and many of us assign others the responsibility for acts or actions they have not taken, or have taken under duress.

            As Rabbi Kerry M. Olitzky has pointed out in his Daily Twelve Steps Recovery Meditations Based on the Bible (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1992), it is ironic  that a process for seeking forgiveness has been transmuted into one to conveniently assign blame to others.

            As he suggests, we may have many reasons to blame others for our current problems. This is a source of slow, festering anger and regret which in turn may lead to the “self-medication” many of those who struggle with addiction face. It is a refusal to accept responsibility for what are really one’s own actions. There comes, I suggest, a time when we can no longer blame others – parents, teachers, supervisors – for our own failures to reach what we “should” have reached. We have many reasons, rationales, and excuses to explain why we have become what and who we are, but as Olitzky notes, that won’t help us change for the better. Accepting responsibility – being accountable - is the first step to change.

            While we are a long way until Yom Kippur by the calendar, this week’s reading reminds us that t’shuvah (repentance) is always possible, regardless of the calendar.

Something Like a Plague

Metzorah

Lev. 14:1-15:33

Précis: The parasha discusses laws for the purification of “lepers” with sacrifice and water. It also discusses growths on walls of a house which cause ritual impurity. The parasha concludes with a discussion of bodily secretions which are another source of ritual impurity.

Lev. 14:34-35 “When you enter the land of Canaan which I gave you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague upon a house in the land you possess, the owner of the house shall come out and tell the priest, saying ‘There is something like a plague which has appeared on my house.’”

This “plague” seems to be related the skin diseases we read about last week, which tradition suggests arises not out of a real physical problem but from moral failures, especially the “evil tongue” (gossip and tale bearing). Despite this verse’s prediction, the Sages suggest that such a plague never in fact took place, and never will take place! (BT Sanhedrin 71a). According to Nahama Leibowitz, citing other authorities, the verse appears in the Torah “as a means of providing edification.” She suggests that this “plague” on a house represents a disease in society, and steps must be taken immediately to prevent its spread. Social ills must be halted immediately upon detection.

            In recent months we have seen “something like a plague” as it relates to assaults and deaths of black teenagers and men at the hands of (mostly) white police officers. The fact that the Torah carefully uses the circumspect phrase “something like a plague” serves as a warning to us that we can never really be sure about the extent or causes of a social illness. Is racism a part of this problem? Without a doubt, yes. Is this a growing phenomenon or is it just more prominent because of the 24-hour news cycle and the spread of smart phone cameras? I really don’t know.

            I do know that every death is a death which must be mourned. I can pray, as we all should, that we can at some point get past our heritage of racism in the United States. Whether this will happen in my lifetime or in the lifetime of my children I honestly do not know. But as we read in Pirke Avot (2:21),  Rabbi Tarphon says, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but you are not free to desist from it either.”