Lucy Azazel dvar - full version, v5

The following live broadcast is a d'var Torah teleplay written and produced by Lucy B. Smolar. We welcome all of you as well as viewers from around the world. And as it is with all my productions, this teleplay is sponsored by Sue's Pantyhose Restaurant, where every dish is a home run.

This morning's service has already been very long and, for some, very tedious. We don't usually read two Torah portions. And these are each very, very long. They also have many, many laws that are not safe for children to hear, and maybe for some grownups, too.
So let me start my d'var by saying:

• We won't discuss nudity.
• We won't discuss throwing kids into fire pits.
• We won't even discuss dating your cousins.

But for a family-friendly d'var Torah, this morning, we will be discussing demonic goat ritual sacrifice. And, as expected from a Smolar production, we will be having helpers act out the ceremony live in person.
Can I please have our volunteers come up to the bimah?
By the way, if you start to smell schawarma and besamim, what you're really smelling...is talent.

This morning, I'll be speaking about the annual Yom Kippur scapegoat offering to Azazel. This is found in the very beginning of our Torah reading today, the part my Dad tried to chant.
Good try, Dad.
After studying all of this story, I still really don't know what Azazel is. So I'll be exploring what Azazel is, or what it symbolizes, and maybe you can decide.

In Leviticus chapter 16, we read instructions for Aaron as the Kohen Gadol and what he had to do to get rid of the Israelites' sins on Yom Kippur. He starts by stripping down, washing up, then putting on his holy clothes, including tunic, turban, and a belt of bells, all made of white linen.
He starts with a sacrifice of a bull for the sins of him and his family.
He also makes sacrifices on behalf of the sins of the Kohanim and the Temple.
But for the sins of the Israelite people, Aaron then takes two goats...

The Kohen Gadol blindly picks which goat goes to Hashem and which goes to Azazel.
He ties a crimson thread around the neck of the goat that goes to Hashem.
Then he ties a crimson thread around the horns of the goat that's supposed to go to Azazel.

He takes the goat that goes to Hashem and sacrifices it on the altar.
But with the goat for Azazel, he puts his hands on the head of the goat and confesses all the sins of the people.

He then hands the goat over to an appointed person to lead the goat away.
But where is the goat going to go?

Verse 22 describes the destination of the goat using different terms:

• The goat is going to an eretz g'zeirah - a land of sharp cliffs.
• The goat is going into the midbar - the wilderness.
• And as I said before, the goat is going to Azazel.

So...was Azazel a place? A person? Or maybe a really hungry demon goat monster?
[I bet Mason hopes it's a monster.]
For more information about Azazel, we go to the Machzor and look at the Avodah service. That's the part of the machzor that describes how they actually did the Yom Kippur service in the early ancient Temple.
Here, it says the appointed person takes the goat for Azazel and follows a specific path with people marking the way. He reaches the sharp cliff, ties the thread around the goat's horns and the other end around a heavy rock. He then points the goat away from the cliff, throws the rock over the side of the cliff, making the goat flip backwards to its timely demise.

The Talmud says a guy standing on a nearby platform watches this and confirms that the goat is dead. He waves a red flag so the previous person on the path sees the flag and waves their own flag. This process continues in a chain of red flags all the way back to the Temple.
When the Kohen Gadol sees the last flag, he tells everyone, they all cheer because they're all done [almost], the Kohen Gadol changes out of his clothes, washes, changes into regular clothes, does another 2 sacrifices, and then all the Kohanim go back to his place to eat and wind down.

Part 2.
Now I'll discuss some interpretations of what Azazel actually was...or is...or means.
In the Talmud tractate Yoma, page 67b, there are arguments about the meaning and identity of Azazel.
In one instance, the Talmud says Azazel is a "har az v'kasheh": a strong and hard mountain. The word Azazel just means they had to take the goat to a craggy cliff on a tall mountain to throw it over. This matches up with the term "eretz G'zeira", because "gezer" can mean a place with lots of cliffs.
Gezer also means a carrot. But that's for another d'var.

The 11th century commentary Rashi later put this together, saying that the word Azazel both describes the ceremony and location of the Azazel sacrifice: take the goat to a remote place and throw it over a cliff.

But maybe Azazel wasn't a place. Maybe it was a supernatural being...or two.
Another selection in Yoma quotes Rabbi Yishmael. He went back to the story of the Great Flood. Why did Hashem destroy the world? Genesis chapter 6 starts by saying the angels became corrupt, sinning with the daughters of men. Whatever that "sinning" was, it was enough that Hashem hit the "reset" button on humanity.
Rabbi Yishmael blames all of this on two angels in particular. Their names? Uzza and Aza'el. The Talmud says, put these names together and you get Azazel. And every year, we must all as forgiveness for the sins of Uzza and Aza'el so that Hashem will never again the destroy the Earth...with a flood.

OK, I promised you a story about demonic goat sacrifice. For that, we go to 13th century Spain, when the RamBAN quoted the 4th century book of legends, known as the "Pirkei d'RAH-bee Eliezer". In short, he said that every year on Yom Kippur, Satan tries to trick Hashem into NOT forgiving all our sins.
So in the ancient Temple, we had to give Satan his own animal offering so he wouldn't cancel out the effect of the Kohen Gadol's sacrifices that day. Notice how we're not supposed to sacrifice the Azazel goat in the Temple...because it's against the Ten Commandments. So there's that.
Anyway, RamBAN teaches that the Azazel goat was a bribe to Satan to get him off our backs.

So Azazel describes the offering and the ceremony and the location and the people we were trying to save and maybe even the devil himself.
Or not.
You see, I know all of these stories are interesting, but they can't all be right.
So now, as a bat mitzvah, I'd like to give my own interpretation of the Azazel story.
What they did back then with Azazel was easy to do.
During the ancient ceremony, the High Priest magically would magically remove all their sins, and the people just stand and stare? That would mean that none of the people would think about their sins later. And this was all just one day of the year and done.
What we do today is very hard to do. And that is doing T'shuva, the act of Repentance. Asking forgiveness from other people is hard to do.

• Some people have social anxiety, meaning it's hard for them even to approach others.
• Maybe it's hard to examine and realize all the bad things they did to other people.
• It might also be hard not to repeat the things you did because you didn't even realize you'd done them in the first place.

So to do t'shuva, you need to actually talk to people, realize what you did wrong, and come to your senses.

BUT - even if what they did back then was easy at first, it would've been hard for them in the long run.

• They still carried their sins all year.
• They didn't face their friends.
• They didn't ask forgiveness...and that means they would've lost their friends.

It's harder for us...but it's better for us doing t'shuva. It's more rewarding. And it helps us keep our friends, learn our lessons, and have better friends in the future.

Thanks for joining me this morning. Thanks to everyone for their inspiration. Thanks to my family and friends for their help in getting me here today, along with the Rabbi and Cantor for training me for this day.
And after Shabbat is over, please remember to go online and check out our sponsor, Sue's Pantyhose Restaurant. Come on down to Sue's, where shoes are never a problem.

This has been a Smolarville production. Shabbat Shalom.