Whichever explanation we follow, the chattat represents an idea familiar in law but strangely unfamiliar in Western ethics. Our acts make a difference to the world.
Under the influence of Immanuel Kant, we have come to think that all that matters as far as morality is concerned is the will. If our will is good, then we are good – regardless of what we actually do. We are judged by our intentions, not our deeds. Judaism recognizes the difference between good will and bad. That is why deliberate sins cannot be atoned for by a sacrifice, whereas unintentional ones can.
Yet the very fact that unintentional sins require atonement tells us that we cannot dissociate ourselves from our actions by saying, “I didn’t mean to do it.” Wrong was done – and we did it. Therefore we must perform an act that signals our contrition. We cannot just walk away as if the act had nothing to do with us.
Many years ago a secular Jewish novelist said to me, “Isn’t Judaism full of guilt?” To which I replied, “Yes, but it is also full of forgiveness.” The entire institution of the sin offering is about forgiveness. However, Judaism makes a serious moral statement when it refuses to split the human person into two entities – body and soul, act and intention, objective and subjective, the world “out there” and the world “in here.” Kant did just that. All that matters morally, he argued, is what happens “in here,” in the soul.
Is it entirely accidental that the culture most influenced by Kant was also the one that gave rise to the Holocaust? I do not mean, Heaven forbid, that the sage of Konigsberg was in any way responsible for that tragedy. Yet it remains the case that many good and decent people did nothing to protest the single greatest crime of man against man while it was taking place. Many of them surely thought that it had nothing to do with them. If they bore the Jews no particular ill will, why should they feel guilty? Yet the result of their action – or inaction – had real consequences in the physical world. A culture that confines morality to the mind is one that lacks an adequate defense against harmful behavior.
The sin offering reminds us that the wrong we do, or let happen, even if we did not intend it, still requires atonement. Unfashionable though this is, a morality that speaks about action and not just intention – about what happens through us even if we didn’t mean to do it – is more compelling and more true to the human situation than one that speaks of intention alone.