I have some question to ask you!!! What does it mean that the High Priest makes atonement for the holy places, for the tent of meeting, the altar, and for the Holy of Holies (Lev.16.33)? Is there no sanctuary from sin and evil? Have we not rid ourselves of Azazel, the incarnation of evil, pushed over the precipice in the desert? (Lev.16.21-22)? As if to address the anomaly of the atoning for the Holy, the Rabbinic imagination creates a strong and stunning insight recorded in the Talmud Yoma 69b.

The evil desire, the tempter of idolatry that has destroyed the sanctuary, burned the Temple, slain the righteous, driven Israel into exile is still dancing among us. It is discovered neither in the netherworld nor in the unholy places, but coming forth out of the Holy of Holies like a fiery lion. It is the last place one would think of finding Azazel.

The sages deliberate and propose to cast it into a leaden pot and to close the opening with lead because lead would slay the evil tempter so that the world would be released from its sinister grip. But they soon learn that the suffocation of the Yetzer would simultaneously smother the libidinal energies indispensable for civilization (Halya Olma). There is then no recourse left but to release the Yetzer. Before doing so, some of the sages suggest that perhaps they can pray to the heavens for “half mercy” (Rahame Apalga).

Let there be lust-but let it be restricted to one’s own spouse. Let there be ambition and aggressiveness, but let it be restricted to noble and peaceful ends; let there be anger, but let it be limited to righteous indignation. In so praying they would extract the best of the impulse, the instinctive energies within us. But the plan is abandoned because of a profound reality of principle; “Halves are not granted from heaven” (Palga Birkiah Lo Ya-have). The world in which we live is not parceled out, neatly labeled good and bad. The world in which we live is not conveniently segregated. Therein lies the rabbinic recognition of ambivalence. The sacred and profane are intertwined. There is no place, no act, no person that is wholly evil or wholly good.

The Zohar explains that “when God came to create the world and to reveal what was hidden in the depths and disclose the light out of darkness, both were wrapped in one another. So it is that light emerged from darkness and from the impenetrable came forth the profound. So, too, it is that from good, evil issues, and from mercy, judgment issues. All are intertwined, the good and the evil impulse” (Zohar III, 80b).

In the ideal world, in God’s essence, the left and the right hand are harmoniously ambidextrous. This is the unity that the prophet Zechariah envisions on that day when the Lord will be one and His name one. “I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and evil. (Isaiah 45.2). In God and God alone, all polarities are united. But on earth there is an ambiguity in all acts and events. Here what appears to emerge out of the pure, the sacred, the very temple is ambivalent. The High Priests is no exception, nor even the Holy of Holies, which is subject to contamination and must be purified and atoned for on Yom Kippur.

The world has many men and women of righteousness, but the deeper truth is that “There is no Tzaddik upon earth that does good and does not sin” (Eccl.7.20). The Yalkut Shimoni I, 44 explains that Azazel refers to the angels Shamhzi and Uzziah who fell from heaven pleading with God to let them live on earth so that the threatening flood against humankind (Gen.6.4-5) may be averted. They, the angels, unlike mere human beings, would abide on earth without becoming corrupted by evil. But God predicted that the angels once on earth would be subject to the evil urge. Nevertheless, they descended, and immediately The sons of God took them wives (Gen.6.2), made swords and knives, wore ornaments. On earth even angels lose their halos. Possibly this is the reason for reading from the Torah at minhah the parshas on incestuous relations (Lev.18.6-30).

The Rabbinic insight into the ambivalent character in human history is dramatically enacted in the section of the Torah in which two male goats are chosen on Yom Kippur. The first section of the sixth chapter of the Mishnah on Yoma explains that the two male goats of Yom Kippur should be alike in color, height, and price. And they should be together in their purchase, both the one to be chosen by lottery as a sacrifice for Ha-Shem and the other as the goat to be destroyed for Azazel. They are initially indistinguishable, and only a mere lottery will differentiate them.

We can’t rely upon such a lottery. It is the human task to distinguish good from evil in all human projects. No place or person is exempt from corruption; no place or person is devoid of the sparks of holiness. It requires wisdom to live with ambivalence. Alongside the insights of Jeremiah 17, The heart is deceitful above all things, is the vision of Ezekiel 11 that promises transformation of the stony heart into a heart of flesh.

This parshas, selected as the reading on Yom Kippur, begins starkly with the death of Nadab and Abihu, the priestly sons of the High Priest, Aaron. “Intra ecclesia nulla salus (“outside the Church [there is] no salvation”).” Even within the sanctuary no one is safe. Even those who, with pious zeal, bring fire and incense to the altar are not immune from the evil tempter, because of the charisma that wraps itself with pure and absolute holiness.

There is nothing original in sin; SIN RESTS AT THE DOOR (Gen.4.2). But that is liberating awareness. Because we are aware of the ambivalence (the state of having mixed feelings), we are cautious of anyone who claims to speak out of the sanctuary, without the stammer of fallibility, because we know that we are all human beings, and all our credos and acts are human projects. Conscious of the ambivalence in living, we may not forfeit critical discrimination or surrender moral judgment to another. We enter the sanctuary as fragile men and women seeking to sort the good from the evil, careful to extract the sparks of divinity lodged in the husks of existence. All are judged, all are atoned for, the pulpit and the pew, the laity and the priest-hood, the vestibule and the Ark. And all may be cleansed.

Shabbat Shalom!!!