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What do they think about this ceremony? Does it make sense to them?
Is the goat responsible for the sins of the people? Can it then be responsible for fixing their problems?
How does this ceremony align with the idea in Judaism that we are to work each year to fix our behavior
and make teshuvah? This could lead to a discussion of the nature of Yom Kippur in the Torah versus the
Rabbinic idea of teshuvah and atonement that we know today. Torah Judaism focuses on the sacrificial rite
and not on the behavior of the individual whereas in the absence of the Temple, the Rabbis focused on
individual behavior and responsibility as the way to atone and better ourselves. This is seen as what God
really wants. (See the
Resource
section for a passage from
Avot D’Rabbi Natan
on this)
Does assigning blame to a scapegoat help us to work on ourselves?
I have included information about the word “Azazel” in the
Resource
section. It is a difficulty in this text and there
are a variety of opinions about what it might have meant. Which of the possibilities you present should be guided
by your goals and the school where you teach. I would stick with the Brown-Driver-Briggs definition and possibly
the first Rabbinic interpretation. I would not necessarily introduce the idea of goat spirits in this lesson as it will
most likely sidetrack the conversation.
WATCHING THE FILM,
WITH MY OWN EYES
Introduction
Let’s expand the idea of a scapegoat from us placing our individual sins on a goat to be sacrificed to what might
happen if an entire society looks for a place to assign blame for their problems.
Questions:
What type of problems might cause a society to look for a scapegoat on which to assign blame?
What do they think about this idea of placing the blame for all of a community’s problems on a designated
individual or group and punishing that individual/group for the collective problems?
Could this go wrong? How, and in what ways?
Does it solve the original problem that is causing the community to suffer?
Background information for film
Teach a brief history lesson about Germany after WWI and the rise of Hitler on a platform of blaming the Jews for
the economic crisis in Germany. You can go into more depth, but the following points will cover what is necessary
for this lesson.
1.
Germany did not recover quickly from the defeat of WWI. The country was in a crisis of identity and
national pride as well as a severe financial depression (along with the rest of the world). There was massive
inflation and severe unemployment into the early 1930s.
