Practical Philosophy (Week 10)

This week’s Parsha: Achrei Mot (meaning: “After death”)

In a nutshell:

This week’s portion begins with G-d’s instructions to Aharon, the Cohen HaGadol (high priest), on how to mourn his son’s lives that were taken fter they showed off with a magical fire
G-d establishes the crucial once-a-year sacrifice, known as Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), by commanding Aharon by to sacrifie one goat and and cast another into the wilderness. Aharon laid his hands on the second, transferring the community’s sins into it, before sending it into the abyss

Moral of the story and how it applies to our world today

Two Goats — Shame & Guilt: In 1530 William Tyndale produced the first English translation of the Hebrew Bible, an act then illegal and for which he paid with his life. Seeking to translate Azazel into English, he called it “the escapegoat,” i.e. the goat that was sent away and released. In the course of time the first letter was dropped, and the word “scapegoat” was born. Still, Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) is a reminder that the problem of sin is just as real today as it was in the time of Moses. Yom Kippur is the day that God pronounces judgment, administering either the rewards for good deeds (mitzvot) or the punishments for sin. This holiest day of the year, which is observed in the fall, reminds us that we have all sinned and are in desperate need of redemption. It’s important for each of us to not only rely on this day each year to cleanse our sins, but rather wake up each morning, look in the mirror, and be truthful with ourselves about how we can do better. Shame is a social phenomenon. It is what we feel when our wrongdoing is exposed to others. It may even be something we feel when we merely imagine other people knowing or seeing what we have done. Shame is the feeling of being found out, and our first instinct is to hide. That is what Adam and Eve did in the garden of Eden after they had eaten the forbidden fruit. They were ashamed of their nakedness and they hid. Guilt is a personal phenomenon. It has nothing to do with what others might say if they knew what we have done, and everything to do with what we say to ourselves. Guilt is the voice of conscience, and it is inescapable. You may be able to avoid shame by hiding or not being found out, but you cannot avoid guilt. Guilt is self-knowledge. There is another difference, which explains why Judaism is overwhelmingly a guilt rather than a shame culture. Shame attaches to the person. Guilt attaches to the act. It is almost impossible to remove shame once you have been publicly disgraced. It is like an indelible stain on your skin. Shakespeare has Lady Macbeth say, after her crime, “Will these hands ne’er be clean?” In shame cultures, wrongdoers tend either to go into exile, where no one knows their past, or to commit suicide. Playwrights have them die. Guilt makes a clear distinction between the act of wrongdoing and the person of the wrongdoer. The act was wrong, but the agent remains, in principle, intact. That is why guilt can be removed, “atoned for,” by confession, remorse and restitution. “Hate not the sinner but the sin,” is the basic axiom of a guilt culture. Yom Kippur deals not only with our sins as individuals but also confronts our sins as a community bound by mutual responsibility. It deals, in other words, with the social as well as the personal dimension of wrongdoing. Yom Kippur is about shame as well as guilt. Hence there has to be purification (the removal of the stain) as well as atonement. Judaism is a religion of hope, and its great rituals of repentance and atonement are part of that hope. We are not condemned to live endlessly with the mistakes and errors of our past. That is the great difference between a guilt culture and a shame culture. Yom Kippur because is the one day of the year in which everyone shared, at least vicariously, in the process of confession, repentance, atonement and purification. When a whole society confesses its guilt, individuals can be redeemed from shame.

“For there is not a righteous man upon earth who does good and sins not.” — Ecclesiastes 7:20

Shabbat Shalom,

Guy