The Azaz-El was the scapegoat sent away by the Beney Yisra-El at the beginning of the agricultural year, or in Yeru-Shala'im thrown over the cliff into Gey Hinnom (Gehenna)
Previously, from the story of Kayin (Cain), during the age of Taurus, and still reflected in the ceremonies of the bullfight, it would have been a scape-bull.
There is much dispute among scholars as to whether the name, as written, should be read as Azazel, or Azaz-El - I am going with the latter for reasons that should become clear in the essay. Gesenius reckons that it is actually neither, because Azazel is oddly spelled Ayin-Zayin-Aleph-Zayin-Lamed; he prefers ti drop the second Zayin, which leaves it as Aza'el, from the root AZAL = "to remove" or "separate". We will see, later in the essay, that this is probably correct in itself, but actually refers correctly to something completely different - the name of an evil demon in Arab mythology which may have become confounded at some point.
The connection between the Crucified Jesus as "scapegoat" and the Azaz-El cannot be ignored; but as it as a matter of theology, and not of comparative mythology, it will not be undertaken here.
What follows is cited from my book "The Day of Atonement" (pages 100-101):
The Book of Jubilees (5:17-18), a pseudepigraphic volume from the Second Temple period which influenced both the Midrashic authors and the sect of the Essenes, claimed that the date of Yom Kippur was a commemoration of the date that Ya'akov (Jacob) heard of Yoseph's death and mourned for him; the sacrifice of the male goat, the Azaz-El, according to the Book of Jubilees, was a reminder of the goat his brothers slaughtered in order to have blood to stain Yoseph's coat of many colours and thereby convince Ya'akov of the tragic fate that had befallen him. The Kara'ites have always followed this version of events, regarding the fast day as a day of mourning, and it may be a residue of this fate that led mediaeval communities to institute the practice of lighting twin memorial candles, one for the living and the other for the dead, and the strangest of all rituals – Kapparot, performable at any time between Rosh ha-Shana and Yom Kippur, but deemed best of all (most efficacious, in the way of white magic) at just after dawn on the eve of Yom Kippur itself.
Previously, from the story of Kayin (Cain), during the age of Taurus, and still reflected in the ceremonies of the bullfight, it would have been a scape-bull.
There is much dispute among scholars as to whether the name, as written, should be read as Azazel, or Azaz-El - I am going with the latter for reasons that should become clear in the essay. Gesenius reckons that it is actually neither, because Azazel is oddly spelled Ayin-Zayin-Aleph-Zayin-Lamed; he prefers ti drop the second Zayin, which leaves it as Aza'el, from the root AZAL = "to remove" or "separate". We will see, later in the essay, that this is probably correct in itself, but actually refers correctly to something completely different - the name of an evil demon in Arab mythology which may have become confounded at some point.
The connection between the Crucified Jesus as "scapegoat" and the Azaz-El cannot be ignored; but as it as a matter of theology, and not of comparative mythology, it will not be undertaken here.
*
What follows is cited from my book "The Day of Atonement" (pages 100-101):
The Book of Jubilees (5:17-18), a pseudepigraphic volume from the Second Temple period which influenced both the Midrashic authors and the sect of the Essenes, claimed that the date of Yom Kippur was a commemoration of the date that Ya'akov (Jacob) heard of Yoseph's death and mourned for him; the sacrifice of the male goat, the Azaz-El, according to the Book of Jubilees, was a reminder of the goat his brothers slaughtered in order to have blood to stain Yoseph's coat of many colours and thereby convince Ya'akov of the tragic fate that had befallen him. The Kara'ites have always followed this version of events, regarding the fast day as a day of mourning, and it may be a residue of this fate that led mediaeval communities to institute the practice of lighting twin memorial candles, one for the living and the other for the dead, and the strangest of all rituals – Kapparot, performable at any time between Rosh ha-Shana and Yom Kippur, but deemed best of all (most efficacious, in the way of white magic) at just after dawn on the eve of Yom Kippur itself.
There is nothing in the Bible, nor in the Talmud, to suggest Kapparot. It was an invention of the Ge'onim, the Babylonian sages of the 9th century, though even they were in disagreement as to what should happen. Rashi, in Shabos 81b, describes a ritual entirely at odds with the one described, for example, in Rosh, in Yoma 8:23, in Tur Orach Chayim 605; and unusually it's the Rashi which is out of use.
At Rosh ha-Shana the Book of Life is opened, in which our deeds for the past year have been recorded, and where, come Yom Kippur, they will be judged in order to determine our karma for the coming year. Through the Ten Days of Awe, through the five prayer services of Yom Kippur especially, we have the chance to make amends, through penitence, and convince God to write our names in the Book of Life for a happy, healthy, prosperous and joyful next twelve months. But nothing that pertains to God’s creation can be taken from the world. So where, if we are forgiven, do our sins go? For they must go somewhere. In Temple times, they went into the body of the Azaz-El; but now, now that there is no Temple? Sifra, Acharey Mos 8:1, tells us that the Day itself is now sufficient, and supplants the Azaz-El; but clearly the orthodox do not accept this ruling. For now they go – into the body of a rooster. Or a hen, if a woman is performing the expiation. And why a rooster? Because the Yehudit word "gever" can mean both a man and a rooster.
The ritual, then, is one of symbolic transference, spiritual as well as etymological. By a process akin to self-exorcism, a person's sins depart him and enter the fowl instead; deceived, apparently, by linguistics. Or simply too giddy, too punch-drunk, to spot the chicanery. The chicken is taken in the right hand (some recite the phrase "Nephesh tachat nephesh – a life for a life" while doing so), lifted above the head, and then swung around three times, a process not unlike consuming three consecutive pina coladas in a smoke-filled discotheque. However, before swinging, the "Beney Adam" is recited, a construction of Psalmic out-takes (107:10, 107:14, 107:17-21), with two verses of Job (33:23-24). Only the opening phrase is original to the prayer:
"Children of Man, who sat in darkness…I have found atonement."
Then the formula for transference, varied according to who is performing the ritual, in what company, on whose behalf.
"This is my substitute, my vicarious offering, my atonement. This rooster shall go to its death, but I will have a long and pleasant and a peaceful life."
Originally, and preferably still today, the hen and rooster should be as white as purity, but as the relentless pursuit of the white dove, the bird of Asherah, was a pagan virtue, Jews were encouraged not to be too choosy. Like the penny in the old man's Christmas hat, if you haven't got a white hen, a speckled one will do; and if even that is beyond your means…in 9th century Babylonia it was customary to use baby rams (in recollection of Av-Raham's substitution at the Akeda), or even simple vegetables such as peas or beans. As sacrifice became forbidden with the destruction of the Temple, so no animal fit for sacrifice could be subjected to kapparot, lest the act be misunderstood. It is also acceptable, since the Kapparah is destined for charity, to use money. The rooster will be slaughtered and given to the needy for a meal – though fortunately we Jews are not an animistic people; there is no suggestion that he who eats the rooster will absorb the sins.
The act of transference itself transfers. The sins to the fowl, the fowl to the hungry. And the entrails of the fowl, given by the hungry to the needy birds and beasts. Nothing may be wasted.
How should a pregnant woman perform Kapparot? (These are the sorts of question that have sustained an industry of Jewish scholarship for two millennia.) For herself, a white hen. But she must also atone for her unborn child. With the same hen, or with a second one? And if a second one, since she cannot know the sex of the unborn child, should she use a rooster or a hen, or one of each, to be on the safe side? And maybe they're twins.
What do you mean, it doesn't matter? Of course it matters. To save a single human soul, the Rabbis teach, is equivalent to saving the whole world. Believe me, it matters.
Not all the world approves of the ritual of kapparot, and it isn't hard to see why. Vegetarians and animal rights campaigners have their own reasons, and they are probably valid. But in Jewish tradition other reasons apply. In the Responsa "Darchei Emon", Rabbi Solomon ben Abraham Adret, the Rashba, opposed Kapparot precisely because it transferred the rite of sacrifice from Temple to courtyard, from Azaz-El to rooster. Post-modernists would take pleasure from such symmetry, but to Adret it was contradictory; the Temple practice was YHVH's Law, the Kapparot mere heathen superstition, and the one could not be allowed to stand substitute for the other. Adret's teacher Nachmanides – his "other" teacher; the Rashba always regarded Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi as "my teacher" – shared his pupil's view, as did Joseph Caro who, in the Orach Chayim (the book being clarified in the Mishnah Berurah), derogates it as "a stupid custom". (Orach Chayim 605)
It was the Kabbalists who really gave it credence, and thereby a tradition; and this may explain why it is particularly prominent amongst Hasidic Jews today. What more mystical act than this symbolic transiration, this ghostly passage from body to body as though a sin was no different from a wart or a louse or a virus? Isaac Luria and Isaiah Horowitz both advocated it, and Moses Isserles not only decreed it compulsory, but ordained for it all manner of ceremonies that attached it unequivocally to the cult of sacrifice – the laying of hands upon the animal, for example, the slaughter in the immediate aftermath of the rite, the accompanying Vidu'i or confession.
One final thought on kapparot. In Yiddish, the term is used for any futile effort, any waste that might have been avoided, any loss of goods or cash or time. Is there, in this, a measure of criticism to be deduced? (pages 8-11)
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The Reading: Leviticus 16:1-34
This is the text that gives us the concept of the Azaz-El, the scapegoat so fundamental to the ancient sacrificial ceremonies of Yom Kippur, though in fact the goat was not ritually slaughtered, as was customary with Jewish sacrifice, but merely cast out, sometimes into the desert and sometimes over a cliff; and in all probability the name Azaz-El refers to the many places to which goats were despatched, rather than the goat or the act of sacrifice itself.
Yoma 6:4, a tractate of Mishnah, tells us that the Babylonians would pluck the hair of a goat before driving it away; we know from other sources that this happened at the feast of Akitu, the New Year, and that the goat was dedicated to Ereshkigal, the goddess of the abyss. The Babylonians and their predecessors the Akkadians both regarded despatching a goat in this manner as a cure for sicknesses of various sorts; in some cases the goat was tied to the patient's bed, in order that the sin responsible for the sickness be transferred contagiously; the goat was then taken into the desert and decapitated or left to die – the early Beney Yisra-El, like their middle eastern neighbours, regarded the desert as the habitat of daemons, so that sending the goat into the wilderness wasn’t a deportation but a repatriation, and as such understood as the white magic of propitiation.
The same tractate (Yoma 4:1-2) describes the process by which the High Priest would draw lots to determine what was "L'Adonay" and what was "L'Azaz-El"; if the goat was selected for expulsion a thread of crimson wool was bound around its throat and the animal taken to the gate to wait until the "Ish Itti" (c.f. Leviticus 16:21) or designated man, who had to be of priestly status, was ready to take the goat up to the cliff, and push it over, backwards. Height and backwardness ensured that the goat was well dismembered before reaching the sandy bottom. But this only applied to the Jerusalem rituals.
The thread of crimson wool is interesting. When Parets' brother Zerach came out of his mother's womb (Genesis 38:30), he had precisely such a thread wrapped round his wrist, to show that he was technically the first-born; though how this connects to Azaz-El remains obscure. More pertinently, we know that the Beney Chet (Hittites) fought off the plague by making crowns of coloured wool and binding goats with these, sending the goats into enemy territory so that, again, the sickness be transferred contagiously.
The D'vei of Rabbi Yishmael¹ regarded the goat-ritual as an atonement for the acts of the fallen angels, specifically Uzza and Aza-El (Yoma 67b), whose names, they claimed, had become mixed up. The First Book of Enoch (Chanoch in Yehudit), some fragments of which were discovered at Qumran and form part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but most of which has survived only in Ethiopian translations, treats Azaz-El, or Aza'el, as one of the leaders of the angels who desired the daughters of men (Genesis 6:1-4), and taught the skills of manufacturing weaponry and ornaments (Genesis 8:1-2). Almost certainly we should read Aza'el as correct and regard any connections with the Azaz-El as merely the consequences of post-Biblical dyslexia.
¹ See page 142 of "Day of Atonement", and also chapter 7 of "A Myrtle Among Reeds".
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