Parshas Acharei Mos
Before Aharon the Kohen Gadol was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies to request forgiveness for the sins of the Jews, he had to receive exoneration for his own sin of enabling the building of the golden calf. We know that Aharon rationalized giving in to the demands of the people by arguing that if he would block the venture, he would be killed like his nephew Chur before him. Were that to happen, the Jews would never be forgiven (Eicha 2:20) and they would be destroyed. With their destruction, G-d’s plan for the world, the giving of the Torah to the Jews, would be frustrated.
But this was the wrong decision. It was not for Aharon to run G-d’s prohibition against serving idols though the filters of his own logic. That was a problem he should have left to G-d to solve while he, Aharon, simply complied with the cardinal rule that one has to give up one’s life rather than give in to idolatry. When the Kohen Gadol rendered an erroneous decision which the people followed, he had to bring a bull as sin offering (4:3 and 16:3). This is what he had to do on Yom Kippur before being admitted entry to the Holy of Holies.
In addition to the bull, Aharon had to offer up a ram as an Olah offering in atonement for not performing the positive commandment of offering his own life to prevent idol worship. Aharon should have conducted himself like Yitzchak who also could have reasoned his way out of the Akeidah. “G-d,” he could have argued, “You promised Avraham that the Jewish nation would be born through Yitzchak (Bereishis 21:12). How is that going to happen if I am killed?” But Yitzchak said nothing. It is the ram, which signifies Yitzchak’s faith in G-d, despite its defiance of logic, that Aharon brought on Yom Kippur in atonement for his failure to follow the example of Yitzchak.
Furthermore, Aharon’s advocacy on behalf of Bnei Yisrael would be rejected if he entered the Holy of Holies with anything that reminded G-d of the sin of the golden calf. That is why he had to shed the four garments which contained gold and could enter only with the four garments made of pure white linen (Rashi, 16:4).
In addition, the Avnet (the girdle with which the Kohen Gadol girded himself) that he wore on Yom Kippur had to be made of pure white linen (16:4). This was unlike during the rest of the year when the Avnet could be made up of sha’atnez mixed with colors of blue, purple and scarlet, which symbolized different shades of sin. That was acceptable for the Temple service during the year when G-d tolerated the mixed bag of good and bad that is typical of the human being. But on Yom Kippur, when we have to strive to most closely resemble angels, the Kohen Gadol wore pure white linen.
Now that the Aharon had purified himself of his sin, he still had to cross one more barrier to entry. We are told that G-d’s presence cannot be in the same room as those that talk lashon hara. Like the Mergalim, the spies before him, who slandered G-d by doubting that He could overcome the armies of the seven nations (Rashi, Bamidbar 13:31), Aharon, so to speak, slandered G-d that He was not smart enough to figure out how to save the Jews from destruction even after they killed him. And so before entering, Aharon had to first deodorize himself from the odor of slander by coming in with Ketoret, finely ground perfumed incense which, we are told, atones for the sin of defamation (Zevachim 88b).
The Jews themselves also subjected G-d’s word to the dictates of their own reason. On the one hand they were promised they would be given the Torah, and with it their success in life would no longer depend on haphazard luck or on the stars, but on their adherence to the commandments of the Torah 26:3-13), something which was in their control. But then, the unexpected happened. Moshe, who was going to come down from the mountain of G-d with the promised Torah, never arrived. Clearly, they concluded, G-d had gone back on his word and relegated them again to the luck of the stars. If that was the case, they would have to resort again to worshiping the calf, the Egyptian zodiac sign of prosperity.
They too, like Yitzchak before them, should have relied on their faith rather than on their logic. But instead, they became Bible critics. They threw in the towel because of seeming contradictions. They reduced the size of G-d’s brain to the size of the human brain. This downsizing of Divine capacity to human intelligence defiles G-d and is known as tum’at Mikdash u’kedoshav. To atone for this, Aharon sacrificed the goat that had been drawn by lot (16:8) to show that the Jews now understood that their success in life was not dependent on goral, the luck of the draw, but on their unconditional obedience to G-d and His Torah.
But there was also another way of explaining why the Jews resorted to worshiping the golden calf so soon after witnessing the presence of G-d at the Revelation. It was not that they had become Bible critics. They were simply giving in to their human urges, even as they believed in G-d and His Torah. The second goat drawn by lot, called the sa’ir la’azazel, came to atone for this human weakness.
The word Azazel is a combination of the names of two angels, Uza and Azael. Before Matan Torah, these two angels pointed to man’s sins and argued that man was not worthy of being entrusted with the safekeeping of G-d’s Torah. If we angels were human, they said, we would never sin. So G-d sent them down to earth to see how they would fare. No sooner had they landed on earth, they succumbed to the sin of adultery. They did not sin because they denied the existence of G-d. They sinned because they were human, because that is how G-d created man, with an evil inclination.
The Azazel goat was sent into the desert, to show that it is the temptations of society that entice one to sin and that if man were to live in the desert, in total isolation, he would likely adhere to G-d’s Torah. It is these two mitigating factors, the evil inclination that G-d planted within us and the pressure of society that surrounds us, that G-d takes into account in forgiving our sins on the Day of Judgment.