Aharon shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and it shall be sent off to the wilderness through a designated man. (Leviticus 16:21)
That “designated man” – the one who leads the goat laden with all the “iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites” into the wilderness – has haunted my imagination from the moment I first noticed him there, lurking in a prepositional phrase, like an afterthought, at the end of the line of Torah.
Who was he? Why was he the “designated” one? Was it Aharon who designated him? Did he vie with another to go? Did he regard this lonely journey, leading a goat with its sin-laden burden into the “inaccessible region,” (verse 22), as a privilege?
Was it a punishment?
How long did the journey take him?
In my mind’s eye, I have seen him standing silently by in the shadows of the Temple grounds in Jerusalem, generations after the biblical account, as the High Priest lays his hands on the scapegoat, enumerating in a chant of rising intensity all the transgressions of Israel: for the sins we have sinned before You by hardening our hearts, by speaking perversely, by corrupt speech, evil thoughts, false pride, bribery, envy, perverting justice, tale-bearing, causeless hatred, haughtiness, desecrating Your Name…. All of our shame, all of our shortcomings, every sin that has polluted our souls, poured out on the back of this goat. As the list of sins grew longer, as their very being must have been plagued with guilt, as their anxiety over the possibility of punishment must have filled the very air, the people shouted, as the Mishnah recounts, “Take it and leave! Take it and leave!” (Yoma 6)
Who would want to be crowded in by one’s own terrible transgressions?
And in the searing heat, the Designated Man leads the goat into the sun-blanched Judaean desert, over the rocks, the dry wadis, the parched hills.… And what if the goat becomes sick along the way? What if the very act of carrying all the sins of Israel on its back makes the goat sick? The Talmud says that if the goat sickens, the Designated Man has to carry it on his shoulder. According to a baraita:
If the goat became sick, he carries it out on his shoulder; if the one designated to send it out took sick, he should send it through someone else; if he shoved if off the cliff and it did not die, he should go down after it and kill it (BT Yoma 66b).
The Mishnah goes on to describe the details of the journey: the booths along the way where the “eminent men” of Jerusalem would linger, offering the Designated Man food and drink, and escorting him to the next booth. So he was not alone along the way! And yet, after the final booth, he is probably more alone than he has ever been: there, on the precipice, he stands, the goat next to him, no one else near him. He ties a strip of red wool to a rock; he ties the other end of the strip between the two horns of the goat. Did the goat, like the ram caught in the thicket on Mount Moriah, sense what was about to happen?
And then – with a prayer? with no prayer? – the Designated Man would push the goat backwards over the cliff, watch it tumbling, watch as its limbs are torn from limb. He glances over the precipice at the bloodied goat – is there a whimper? is there a bleat? For if there is, if the goat is not yet dead, it is up to him to free the people of the burden of their sins: he will have to climb down that cliff himself, bruising his knees, his feet, his hands, because it will be up to him to kill that goat himself.
Did he feel triumphant? proud? relieved? exhausted? He would have to wait now, sitting under the last booth until it got dark. Did moonlight cast its whiteness on the rocks as he made his way back?
But not entirely back. For he who has pushed the sins of Israel over the cliff, he who has witnessed the sins of Israel getting torn limb from limb, cannot rejoin his own people, cannot sit among them again, until he rids himself of the defilement – of death? of sin?
He must wash his body and wash his clothes. He must rid himself of the tumah.
I wonder: did the sight of the scapegoat tumbling to death forever after plague his dreams?