Many years ago, a rabbinic colleague of mine would perform a sacred Yom Kippur ritual where congregants would write down their sins on anonymous slips of paper and place them in a basket. She would then read from the slips in front of an open fire on the holiday itself, watching them go up in flames over the course of the ceremony. What was amazing about the ritual was, that in addition to minor sins like, “I was mean to a sibling,” or, “I ate too many desserts,” were very large matters like, “I cheated on my spouse,” and, “I shoplifted.” Despite the public nature of the event, people felt a real need to unburden themselves of these weighty offenses. What a relief it must have been, at least partially, to be able to reveal secrets that had been imprisoning them for an entire year, or more.
The beginning of this week’s double Torah portion Acharei Mot-Kedoshim describes the ritual of the scapegoat, the centerpiece of the ancient Israelite Yom Kippur ceremony, where two identical kid goats are taken before the community, one to be used as a sacrifice to God, and the other to be sent out to a mysterious place called Azazel. Without words or pronouncements, just by their mere attendance, the entire Israelite community is meant to temporarily be purged of their transgressions.
Silence and secrecy can destroy the fabric of society, creating barriers that act almost as invisible prisons for both victims and perpetrators of harmful actions. Only when this caustic cloud is removed can we fully breathe fully, or really understand the implications of sitting for so many years unable to communicate what our hearts most need to say.
Lately, I have been reading the book She Said a book by New York Times’ reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, describing the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein scandal of 2017. This terrible villain, who began his career in Buffalo in the 1970s, had created an impenetrable wall of silence that prevented thousands of individuals from coming forward to name what was done to them. By exposing the lies, Kantor and Twohey are able to help release not only the pent-up frustrations of those directly affected by the Hollywood producer’s actions, but millions of others who have been harmed in similar incidents throughout the world. As they write in the book, “in the weeks after the first article on Weinstein, an overwhelming surge of tips flowed into the Times and other news organizations – a messy, unvetted, alarming record of what women in the U.S. and beyond said they had endured.”
If the Weinstein episode has taught us anything, it should be that we cannot wait forty-years (roughly the time from his graduation from UB to the NY Times article) to allow people’s voices to be heard. We must not allow even one year to pass before taking action. May the Harvey Weinstein’s of our time continue to be brought down and may their victims find release from the horrific suffering they have endured. May it be so and in our time.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex