TORAH READING: THE SERVICE OF THE HIGH PRIEST ON YOM KIPPUR This passage, dating from the second year of the Israelites’ journey in the wilderness, is the prototype for the later service of the High Priest in the Temple in Jerusalem, and ultimately for our service today. Only one other festival, Pesaḥ, is described in such detail in the Torah itself. אַֽחֲרֵי מוֹת After the deaths. The tragic death of two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, for offering “unauthorized fire” at the inauguration of the Tabernacle (Lev. 10:1), gave poignancy and depth to the role of Aaron in atoning for the sins of the people. He knew the depth of grief to which even well-intentioned transgression can give rise. וְאַל־יָבֹא בְכָל־עֵת Not at any time. The entry of the High Priest into the Holy of Holies was permitted only on the holiest of days, Yom Kippur.

כְּתֹֽנֶת־בַּד קֹֽדֶשׁ Consecrated linen tunic. In public the High Priest appeared in garments of gold, “for praise and glory” (Ex. 28:2). Alone with God, however, he was to dress simply in a plain white linen tunic. In the encounter with God, honesty, simplicity, and humility are needed. Some say that it is in memory of this that men wear a kittel, a plain white gown, on Yom Kippur. וְכִפֶּר בַּעֲדוֹ וּבְעַד בֵּיתוֹ As atonement for him and for his family. We must purify ourselves before we can purify others. This was the first of three acts of atonement by the High Priest on this day: first for himself and his family, then for the priesthood as a whole (v. 11), then for the whole nation (v. 21).

שְׁנֵי הַשְּׂעִירִם Two goats. The two goats were identical in appearance but different in their fate. One was sacrificed to God, the other – the “scapegoat” – was sent into the desert. They represent, respectively, the polarities of the human condition: on the one hand sanctity and order, symbolized by the Tabernacle; on the other, formlessness and void, symbolized by the desert. The ceremony of the two goats is similar to the acts of separation and division that took place during creation (Gen. 1). They represent the light and darkness within the human personality. The darkness – sin – is sent into the dark: the desert with its dangers. The light – the gift of love we bring to God when we offer Him a sacrifice – is transmuted by divine fire into forgiveness and love. לַעֲזָאזֵל To Azazel. According to the Talmud and Rashi, this term describes a place: a steep, precipitous mountain. Others (Sa’adia, Radak) say it is the name of a specific mountain. Some suggest that it means “to be sent away, removed,” hence the English translation “(e)scapegoat.” According to Ibn Ezra and Nahmanides it represented a realm of spirits, demons, or fallen angels. In this sense it is like the word Gehinnom, often understood as “hell,” though in fact it was merely a valley outside Jerusalem. The craggy, angular, desert, hostile to human habitation, was a symbol of chaos and danger. Just as God in creation makes order out of the void (tohu vavohu) by natural law, so we are commanded to construct order out of the ever-threatening vortex of violence and desire by obeying the moral law. Alternatively Azazel, from az or azaz, meaning brute strength, and el, the deification of a natural force, may signify the pagan idea of worshiping strength. Nietzsche would later call this “the will to power.” The sending away of the goat was a sign that its values had no place within the camp. (For more on the Scapegoat, see Introduction, lviii.)

קְטֹֽרֶת סַמִּים דַּקָּה Finest incense. The cloud of incense created a screen which sheltered the High Priest from full exposure to the divine radiance. וְכָל־אָדָם לֹא־יִהְיֶה בְּאֹֽהֶל מוֹעֵד No man shall be in the Tent of Meeting. There are moments in the religious life that require us to be alone with God. Judaism is a deeply communal faith, and at this moment the High Priest was atoning for the whole community. Yet there is an irreducible I–Thou encounter in the depths of the soul when the unattenuated human cry meets the unmediated listening of God, and we are known. It is a moment of truth in which the detritus of sin falls away and we are made pure and whole by the fire of God’s forgiving love.

וְסָמַךְ אַהֲרֹן אֶת־שְׁתֵּי יָדָו Aaron shall press his hands. The laying of hands is a symbolic act of transference, whether of guilt, blessing or authority. Maimonides writes: “There is no doubt that sins cannot be carried like a burden, and taken off the shoulder of one being to be laid on that of another being. But these ceremonies are of a symbolic character, and serve to impress people with a certain idea, and to induce them to repent, as if to say, we have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, have cast them behind our backs, and removed them from us as far as possible” (The Guide for the Perplexed, 3:46). The sense of guilt is pervasive and enduring. It needs some ceremony, a dramatic ritual, to make vivid the sense that the sin has been erased (the literal meaning of the root k-p-r, “atonement”).

תְּעַנּוּ אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם You shall afflict yourselves. Although on Yom Kippur the High Priest atoned for the sins of the nation, this did not mean that others were able to leave him to act vicariously on their behalf. They had to enter into the penitential spirit of the day through fasting and other afflictions. The ceremony as a whole was intended to create a national mood of repentance. כִּי־בַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיכֶם לְטַהֵר אֶתְכֶם For you will be atoned on this day and made pure. There is a difference between kapara, atonement, and tehara, cleansing. Atonement – literally “erasing” or “covering over” – refers to the sinful act. It is not merely forgiven. It is, as it were, deleted from the record. Cleansing refers to the person. Sin defiles the sinner. We feel soiled, stained. Yom Kippur, if we have internalized its message, removes the stain and we are made pure again. מִכֹּל חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם לִפְנֵי יהוה תִּטְהָֽרוּ Of all your sins before the LORD you shall be purified. The sages made two important inferences from this phrase. Rabbi Akiva concluded that even in the absence of the Temple and the High Priest, Yom Kippur still atones, since it is God, not the High Priest, who cleanses us. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya concluded that Yom Kippur atones only for sins “before the LORD,” that is, between us and God. Sins against our fellow humans are only atoned when we have made amends and been forgiven by those we have wronged (Mishna, Yoma 85b).

חֻקַּת עוֹלָם An everlasting law. Even when there is no Temple, if we repent on Yom Kippur, the day itself atones (Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 1:3). The word ḥok or *ḥukka,*often translated as “statute” and understood as a law that surpasses human understanding, is derived from a root meaning “indelibly inscribed,” and is to be understood as part of the created order of the universe. The implication is that forgiveness is written into the human situation under the sovereignty of God.

HAFTARA: ISAIAH’S CALL TO SOCIAL JUSTICE This is an extraordinary choice of haftara for Yom Kippur. Bear in mind that the day is marked by fasting and other forms of affliction, and that it atones only for sins between us and God. For those between us and our fellow we are not atoned until we make reparation, apologize and are forgiven. Yet Isaiah, with the incandescent moral passion of the prophet, challenges our most basic assumptions by saying: “The fast you perform today will not make your voice heard on high” (58:4). True repentance is shown in other ways: “No; this is the fast I choose: Loosen the bindings of evil, and break the slavery chain. Those who were crushed, release to freedom; shatter every yoke of slavery. Break your bread for the starving, and bring dispossessed wanderers home. When you see a person naked, clothe him: do not avert your eyes from your own flesh.” (58:6–7). God’s greatness is His humility. The supreme Power cares for the weak, the poor and the powerless. When we do these things, we come close to Him and He to us. The prophets did not minimize the significance of our relationship with God. The sin that aroused their greatest indignation was idolatry. Yet the idea that one can love God and fail to act lovingly to one’s fellow humans, that the religious life can make one exempt from dealing faithfully, honestly, justly and compassionately with others, is self-serving and futile. We honor God by honoring His image in others. Hence in the words of the Untaneh Tokef prayer, we need not only teshuva, “repentance,” and tefilla, “prayer,” but also tzedaka, charity and social justice. There is in Judaism an unbreakable connection between faith and the building of a moral and compassionate social order. Only the belief that every human, as the image of God, has non-negotiable and inalienable dignity, gives us the power and the clarity to overcome the instinctive will to power that has divided most of humanity for most of its history into the rulers and the ruled, the powerful and the powerless.

מָרוֹם וְקָדוֹשׁ אֶשְׁכּוֹן וְאֶת־דַּכָּא וּשְׁפַל־רֽוּחַ High and holy I abide –yet I am with the crushed and humbled. From this text, among others, Rabbi Yoḥanan learned, in a passage we recite at the end of each Shabbat, that “wherever you find the greatness of God, there you find His humility” (Megilla31a). The same applies to people: strength is measured by our concern for the weak, wealth by our care for the poor, and greatness by our solicitude for those at the margins of society. This was Judaism’s moral revolution, its “transvaluation of values.” שָׁלוֹם שָׁלוֹם לָרָחוֹק וְלַקָּרוֹב Peace, peace, to those far away and near. From this the sages learned that “In the place where penitents stand, even the perfectly righteous cannot stand” (Berakhot 34b). וְהָרְשָׁעִים כַּיָּם נִגְרָשׁ And the wicked are like the ocean surging. We have a moral sense. When we do wrong, we know it, despite our rationalizations and excuses. A troubled conscience gives us no rest. לָֽמָּה צַּֽמְנוּ וְלֹא רָאִֽיתָ Why do we fast and You do not see it. People complain when their prayers are not answered. The prophet replies that rituals of penance such as fasting have no effect if they are not accompanied by true contrition and a change of behavior. God judges us by the way we treat others. וְכָל־עַצְּבֵיכֶם תִּנְגֹּֽשׂוּ Oppress all your laborers. The prophetic vision had a lasting effect on the Jewish understanding of how employers should treat their employees. Louis Brandeis was astonished by the East European Jewish immigrants he met in his role as mediator of the New York garment workers strike of 1910: While going through the lofts, he heard numerous quarrels between workers and their bosses, and was amazed that they treated one another more like equals than as inferiors and superiors. In one argument an employee shouted at the owner, “Ihr darft sich shemen! Past dos far a Yid?” (“You should be ashamed! Is this worthy of a Jew?”), while another time a machine operator lectured his employer with a quotation from Isaiah [3:14]: “It is you who have devoured the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing My people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the LORD God of hosts.” (Milton Konvitz, Nine American Thinkers, New Brunswick, USA: Transaction, 2000, 67) וְקָרָֽאתָ לַשַּׁבָּת עֹֽנֶג If you call the Sabbath a delight. Shabbat is a weekly dress rehearsal for the Messianic Age, an intimation of paradise regained, when all hierarchies of wealth, power and status are suspended, and master and servant enjoy the same freedom. One day in seven we cease to be creators and celebrate our “createdness,” catching a glimpse of the harmony of the universe – the creative Unity at the heart of created diversity – and in the silence of the soul hear the song of the earth and the music of the heavens.