Can You Bribe God? Rethinking Yom Kippur

As we enter the month of Elul and prepare for the High Holidays, let’s not forget that on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, a goat is sent into the wilderness, a ritual described by the rabbis as a shochad, a bribe to Satan. And later, Kapparot, where we offer a chicken or money to charity to offset our sins, or Tashlich, rituals that look suspiciously like cosmic payoffs. So what’s really going on here? Are these acts of devotion or bribes in disguise? And what are we to make of the fact that in Deuteronomy, there is absolutely no mention of Yom Kippur?

Join us as we imagine a different Yom Kippur. Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform, and now on YouTube and Substack. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parasha is Shoftim. We admire the biblical abhorrence of bribery in administering justice and against favoritism in interpersonal relationships. But sacrifice and worship found throughout Leviticus and Numbers, and so prevalent in our religion, can be taken as attempts to influence and curry favor, even gain advantage with God. How do we square this circle?

Rabbi, Rosh Chodesh Tov. We are recording on Chodesh Elul. And of course, when Elul begins, we start thinking about the High Holidays. We start thinking about those kinds of thoughts that one does during the High Holidays. And I just did a search quickly as I was finishing up my preparation, and is Yom Kippur mentioned in Devarim? And I had never realized that it’s not.

Adam Mintz [2:28 – 2:29]: That is fascinating.

Geoffrey Stern [2:29 – 2:31]: Okay, a big surprise.

Adam Mintz [2:32 – 2:38]: And the other holidays are mentioned, so it makes you wonder, in other words.

Geoffrey Stern [2:38 – 2:41]: The Regalim, the right, correct.

Adam Mintz [2:41 – 2:47]: Rosh Hashanah is not mentioned, but the Regalim in last week’s Parasha and Re’eh, the Regalim are mentioned.

Geoffrey Stern [2:47 – 4:23]: Pilgrimage festivals are mentioned, but not the High Holidays. So anyway, let’s start. We’re gonna launch talking about what Deuteronomy says about Shochad, about a bribe. And then hopefully, in a natural manner, we’ll segue into the bigger picture of Elul and Yom Kippur. So in Deuteronomy 16:18, it says, you shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes in all the settlements that your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall not judge unfairly. You shall show no partiality. You shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just.

Justice, shall you pursue; Tzedek Tirdof, famous phrase, that you may thrive and occupy the land God is giving you. So really, I do believe that equanimity and justice are mentioned throughout the Bible. But clearly, it is that bumper sticker line of Tzedek that you have in Deuteronomy. And this is a very forceful statement about trying to elicit favor no matter what you do. When you give something of material benefit to the person whom you are supplicating, maybe even to a friend whom you are trying to befriend, there’s no question it blinds the eyes and it upsets the scales. And that’s a pretty forceful statement.

Adam Mintz [4:24 – 4:39]: Very forceful. I mean, it’s interesting because it has a visual to it, right? It blinds the eyes. That’s an interesting way to say it. You could just say, don’t take a bribe because you’re not gonna give proper justice. But it says it blinds your eyes.

Geoffrey Stern [4:40 – 5:35]: Absolutely. And so I looked up in Sefaria, you can also do word searches, and I just looked up the meaning of shochad. And no big surprises here. It’s usually used to pervert justice. It’s used in that manner in a whole bunch of verses. It talks about the abode, a place of bribe givers. It talks about bribing kings to take sides. But then something struck my eye. It brings another word. Kofer is hush money or legal compensation. And it uses a verse in Mishlei, in Proverbs. And the verse in Proverbs kind of uses this kofer and shochad as synonyms as many times you find in especially the Nevi’im.

Adam Mintz [5:35 – 5:35]: Mm.

Geoffrey Stern [5:35 – 6:20]: And it says in Proverbs 6:35, he will not have regard for any ransom. Lo yisa penei kol kofer. He will refuse your bribe, however great. Lo yehavet ki tavet shochad. So shochad is bribe, but kofer. And in that, of course, is the word for Yom Kippur. Ultimately, what is ransom? Ransom is redemption money. When I want to redeem a slave, when I want to redeem a hostage, I give ransom. And that is literally the same source as the redemption from sin that we are looking for on Yom Kippur.

Adam Mintz [6:20 – 6:28]: And of course, redemption from sin has its own word. That word is atonement. And so that’s what atonement means, redemption from sin.

Geoffrey Stern [6:28 – 7:48]: But it started me thinking, Rabbi, that so many of our rites involve doing something to gain that redemption. And that’s kind of, as I said in the intro, the focus of our discussion. The Rashi on this verse in Proverbs says he will not have regard for any money to expiate for his denial of him, meaning God and his cleaving to idolatry. And our rabbis expounded in the Tosefta, they will not despise a thief. This is one who steals from his friend and goes to the study hall and engages in Torah. The example that he gives of a ransom money that blinds you to the negativity of a situation. They use literally for that kind of quintessential hypocrisy of the person who steals from a friend and then goes into the study hall or the synagogue and feels that somehow the religion will expiate him from his crimes. It was amazing to me that they bring this Tosefta. But we are already in the thick of things because now we’re talking about using this type of ransom strategy, this type of bribery strategy to get oneself out of spiritual trouble.

Adam Mintz [7:49 – 8:05]: Right? I mean, so. Right. I mean, I guess that’s not surprising. The idea of bribery, the idea of redemption, the idea of atonement, it’s both monetary and it’s spiritual. And the question is what the connection is between all of them. Fantastic.

Geoffrey Stern [8:05 – 8:35]: Absolutely, absolutely. So we’re on the trail, we have the scent. So the famous Ramban that I bring is a discussion of the quintessential moment of Yom Kippur, when the so-called scapegoat, the Seir LaAzazel, is basically, there are two goats that are presented at the door to the tabernacle, and one goat is to God and the other goat gets sent away to Azazel. And if there is a sense in our religion of this expiation of giving a gift to the Satan, so to speak, it would be here. But this actually enters into the discussion of the rabbis.

Geoffrey Stern [8:35 – 9:06]: So in Ramban on Leviticus 16:8, Ramban quotes Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra. So what Ibn Ezra talks about and what the focus is on is that when it comes to giving the goat for God, it says “To Hashem,” to the name of God, and the other one is to Azazel. And it smacks, Rabbi, it smacks of some sort of engagement in idolatry, in or bribing the powers that be. And Ramban says that Ibn Ezra kind of conceals the manner, and he’s gonna play the role of the talebearer who revealed his secret. One of these use of language of the rabbis that always makes you smile. And it goes on.

He says that in the chapters of the Great Rabbi, Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, the reason why they give Samael, that’s the saw conciliatory gift, which is translated as a Shochad LeSatan, a bribe to the Satan on the Day of Atonement, was that so he would not annul the effect of their offerings, as it is said. So the

Geoffrey Stern [10:08 – 10:39]: idea is the Jews would be engaged, the Israelites would be engaged in all of the rituals of Yom Kippur, and they wanted to keep the Satan. There are situations where we distract the Satan. I think once we discussed this, and you reminded us that all the days of Elul, one blows the shofar, but on the day before Yom Kippur, one doesn’t blow the shofar to trick the Satan. To trick the Satan. Here we’re actually giving a bribe to the Satan to

Geoffrey Stern [10:39 – 11:10]: keep him from getting involved with all the pure efforts that the Jewish people are bringing. Ramban continues. Onkelos rendered the expression “one lot for the Eternal and one lot for Azazel” as “one lot for the name of the Eternal and one lot for Azazel.” Thus, he did not translate one lot for the name of Azazel, because this was for the name of the Eternal and not for him. Rabbi. All of the classical commentaries are

Geoffrey Stern [11:10 – 11:41]: trying to distance the bribe that is given to Satan from the bribe that is given to God. But it is clear that it’s, in a sense, the same thing. And I’m focusing this year not so much on the bribe to Satan, which obviously is very remarkable, but on the fact that even when we give sacrifices, supplications, prayers to God, you could take it to say as though we’re trying to bribe God. We’re trying to elicit and nurture favor. We’re

Geoffrey Stern [11:41 – 11:46]: saying, God, have mercy on your people. It is kind of striking, is it not?

Adam Mintz [11:46 – 11:48]: Very, very striking. This is a great Ramban.

Geoffrey Stern [11:49 – 13:12]: So it goes on and says Ramban is very sensitive to the fact that this is a sensitive issue. And it says, for this reason, says the Ramban, that our rabbis have interpreted “and my statutes” (you shall keep) chukim, are always those statutes, like shatnez, like the parah adumah, the red heifer, that the non-Jews question us about. These are matters against which the evil inclination raises accusations and the idolaters likewise bring charges. Now, these idolaters have not accused us in connection with the offerings. So they haven’t said anything about our standard services that we do in the Beit Hamikdash. For these are the fire offerings unto the Eternal. But they accuse us in connection with the goat that is sent away to Azazel because they think that we act as they do. Wow. So what the rabbis are very sensitive about is, is what we do on an everyday basis the same at the end of the day, Rabbi, as what the pagans are doing? Only we try to find favor with the only God of the universe, and the pagans are doing it to the local tributaries and gods. But this act as they do kind of puts the hammer on the head of the nail.

Adam Mintz [13:13 – 13:25]: Yes. I mean, that’s a great Ramban insight, right. Act as they do. I mean, you see that around, but it’s interesting that he uses this in this context. Good, let’s look at this. The same word. Here we go again.

Geoffrey Stern [13:25 – 14:38]: Right. So I just. I’m going out of my way to say that in the rest of the four books of Moses, but particularly in the book of Leviticus, the priestly code, and in Numbers, Yom Kippur is a biggie. And the basis of our service on Yom Kippur that we will have in 40 odd days is “ki bayom haze yechaper aleichem letaher etchem,” that the day itself will be an atonement and will purify you. Using the language that we are using today in terms of bribery and ransom, it says that this day will be your bribe, this day will be your ransom to purify you from all the sins that you have committed pure before God. So however we take this, and even if we say no, the Ramban is absolutely correct, it might look as though the Seir LaAzazel is identical to the Seir LaShem to God. Ultimately, the outcome is the same. You want to redeem, you want to get a new bill of health, you want to get a clean slate.

Adam Mintz [14:39 – 15:03]: Right? Yeah. I mean, it is noteworthy that the Torah calls the day Yom Kippur. There are a lot of different pieces to Yom Kippur. It’s a fast day, you know, and there are a lot of things you could highlight, but they choose to call the day Yom Kippur, “ki bayom haze yechaper aleichem” that this whole idea actually becomes the central idea of Yom Kippur.

Geoffrey Stern [15:04 – 17:41]: And I would say, if I wanted to be cynical, I would say that the whole day we’re not eating, we’re just praying, we’re acting like angels as our offering. On the other hand, I would say, no, no, no. We’re saying to God, we’re not bribing you. We’re showing you what we’re capable of. We’re showing you our potential. We’re showing you where our core is. So I think the verdict is still out. But it is fascinating that in Deuteronomy there is no mention of Yom Kippur. So let’s go to TheTorah.com, and we’re going to listen to a scholar named Rabbi David Frankel in TheTorah.com for his take on that. And he says the book of Deuteronomy makes no reference at all to the 10th of Tishrei or the various rites associated with that day. From a theological perspective, this silence accords well with Deuteronomy’s overall orientation. Priestly ritual matters are often de-emphasized or given a more abstract or concept significance. In this book, Deuteronomy calls upon Israel to make a spiritual effort to purify the heart. And obedience and loyalty are not beyond reach but are very close to one’s heart. All a person needs is to educate diligently and to place the law upon your heart and spirit. And if Israel goes into exile due to sin, they will find their God anew when they seek God out and return in sincerity. So, and he quotes a bunch, he’s just not throwing out verbiage here. Clearly, in Deuteronomy this is more of an internal day and less a day based on ritual sacrifices and all of the things that we might mistakenly take our eye off the ball and say, that’s the quote. I think it’s a wonderful elul message for those of us who are looking for a track to follow. He goes on, in short, according to Deuteronomy, though the temptation to sin is real, Israel’s ability to be loyal or to successfully repent and wholeheartedly return is sufficiently strong to make priestly rituals of atonement of secondary importance at best. Actually, the lack of emphasis on priestly rituals focusing on the sanctuary may well reflect a sense of their spiritual danger. If the priest can guarantee divine absolution of sins on a regular basis, then a feeling of complacency is likely to set in and no true improvement will come about.

Adam Mintz [17:42 – 17:47]: That’s pretty revolutionary. If you said that in yeshiva, they wouldn’t like that.

Geoffrey Stern [17:47 – 19:46]: Lastly, and I have to say that this article is not on our parasha. This article is found in Leviticus, where the mention of Yom Kippur is. And it makes a survey of how Yom Kippur changed throughout the different books. And so, based on our discussion, it does become fascinating because it does talk about the challenges of the ritualistic Yom Kippur, which is depending on the atonement offered by the priests. It weakens the urgency of improvement and repentance. He says. So I just thought that that was wonderful. And again, it was almost an afterthought that I did a quick Google search because it occurred to me, is actually Yom Kippur mentioned in Deuteronomy. So there is. If you Google the ransom theory of atonement, you will come up with a theory in Christian theology as to how the process of atonement in Christianity had happened. It therefore accounted for the meaning and effect of the death of Jesus. It was one of a number of historical theories and was mostly popular between the 4th and 11th century.

Speaker A: That’s a pretty big time with little support in recent days. It originated in the early church, particularly in the work of Origen. The theory teaches that the death of Jesus was a ransom sacrifice, usually said to have been paid to Satan in satisfaction for the bondage and depth of the souls of humanity as a result of inherited sin. I think looking at this ransom theory of atonement, number one, it’s a thing, you know, when you get sick, I always say to my friend, is there a name for what you have? Once you have a name, at least you can understand. People have discussed it. But there’s no question that what Ramban is talking about, Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, is talking about this concept of a shochatl. The Satan was not unique. It was a concept, it was a thing.

Adam Mintz [19:46 – 20:30]: Well, say it even better here. You quoted from Wikipedia and of course it’s right. But what he says is particularly in the works of Origen. But where did he get it from? This is a Jewish concept. I mean, Ramban is much later than Jesus. But Ramban is telling you this is a Jewish concept. They didn’t make this up. And what’s interesting, it says that it was very popular between the 4th and the 11th century. Now, Ramban lives in the 13th century, but, you know, obviously he’s aware of this. It may not have been popular in Christianity, he was aware of this. And I wonder, when Ramban talks about this, whether he knows that this is the way they explain Jesus’s death. And he’s saying, you know what? We had it first.

Geoffrey Stern [20:31 – 22:15]: I think to go even one step further. And of course, what you say is amazingly true. It also could help explain why it was then repressed within Judaism. Once the Christians took it over and they offered Jesus as that ransom, atonement, sacrifice, you can imagine, we would run for the hills and we would say none of that in our religion.

In a sense, Ramban is saying that he identifies it, and he says, listen, if you read the whole Ramban, he says, look, ultimately what we’re doing here is very strange, but God commands us to do it. So God asks us to go through the motions. Who are we to question? But I think you’re absolutely right. It’s not as though we are making this up. You definitely could look at the whole world of both sacrifices and the whole world of priests, of clergy, of the clerics officiating at absolution of sin and say, that’s ultimately what we do on Yom Kippur.

But I think, and we’re going to end with this, is the Deuteronomic approach gives us a different pathway. And it’s important to know the two pathways to know what you take. And I also think it’s worth noting, Rabbi, that there’s something very human about this. I mean, let’s. We’re all as sophisticated as we’d like to be. Rabbi. We all feel we do something wrong to somebody, we want to make it better. We somehow feel that we can get on their good side. It’s very natural.

So let’s look at the other. More other rituals that we do on Yom Kippur that relate to the Seir La’Azazel, the kapparot. I don’t know whether our listeners have ever seen this, but especially the Hasidim, they take a pigeon and. And before. Is it before Rosh Hashanah or before Yom Kippur?

Adam Mintz [22:15 – 22:18]: Before Yom Kippur. Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, they.

Geoffrey Stern [22:18 – 23:51]: Do it and they shake it over the heads of every one of their family members. Some people substitute money for the chicken. And basically what they’re doing is then. And then they kill the chicken and they give it away to charity. You know, every time we get an aliyah, when we get a Mishebeirach in synagogue, Rabbi, if you look at the fine print, it always says, and Geoffrey Shlomo Ben Yehuda Leibel give such and such for tzedakah. There is that strong aspect here.

The Ashkenazi tradition, this is a practice with either money is waved over a person’s head to try and transfer the sins of the person and then donate it to charity, or else a chicken is waved over the head, transfer is paid of a person’s sins and donated to the hungry. It is important to clarify that this is not a sacrifice, as it is not even an offering. It can be eaten just as any other chicken. So again, we’re walking a fine line here. But I would like to say if we did have a modern-day ritual that survived or was initiated similar to Seir La’Azazel, this comes pretty close.

He does talk about how the later rabbis discussed it. It’s not mentioned in the Torah, the Talmud. The first reference, according to this scholar, appears in the 9th century in a responsa, a kind of question and answer. The scholar is Amram Ben Sheshnut, the head of a revered Babylonian. He wrote the first siddur. Interesting. I always thought it was Hai Gaon.

Adam Mintz [23:52 – 23:54]: No, Amram Gaon is the first siddur.

Geoffrey Stern [23:55 – 23:56]: Okay, okay.

Adam Mintz [23:56 – 24:03]: And what’s interesting is that his siddur is very similar to our siddur. In a thousand years, the siddur hasn’t changed much. That’s cool.

Geoffrey Stern [24:03 – 24:33]: So Amram, okay, so this is Amram Gaon. And he says, we don’t know where this comes from. But it did go back that far, to the 9th century. Historians believe it probably began several centuries before Sheshna’s commentary became a widespread concept, widespread tradition, requiring the rabbis divine to provide ex post facto explanation. Sheshna said it derived from practice in the ancient temple where a goat bearing the sins of the people was sent into the wilderness to die.

But after the destruction of the temple, Jews were prohibited from carrying out this practice. Interesting. You know, you read the newspaper. I read an article in the New York Times and it was talking about all the bribery going on in, not only with Mayor Adams, everybody working about him. And the complaint, it said, is in Tammany Hall. In the old days, there were real bribes. Here we’re talking about upgrades on airlines. We’re talking about putting $100 into a red envelope.

The article in the New York Times complained about the pettiness of this bribing. And I couldn’t take out of my mind this concept of pettiness. And that’s ultimately, at the end of the day, what we’re discussing today. We’re saying that go forbid anything in Elul or Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah should become petty in terms of thinking that somehow you can go through the motions and check a box and by doing so, abracadabra, you have gotten your redemption.

We’re not talking about major bribes here, but it is this kind of, I would say, mentality. It’s a mentality that they have in Israel. It’s called proteksia. You don’t do anything unless you think that you have an in, as if you have. What they call vitamin P is proteksia in Hebrew. That’s a true thing. It’s well-known in Israel. It’s often referred to as vitamin P. It describes the use of connections to get things done efficiently by leveraging military or political ties. This, this really idea of cutting the corners and using religion in this trivial petty way, I think is what we need to be concerned about.

It’s not the rituals. The rituals can be in different manners. I think the best example of a ritual that can be taken in different manners is Tashlich. On the one hand, you could definitely put Tashlich into the same category as kapparot and Seir La’Azazel, that somehow we’re taking our sins and we’re throwing them out. But the big difference is there’s no recipient here. We’re not giving tzedakah we’re just focusing on the releasing part of it.

And there’s a beautiful article that I quote that talks about it in terms of cathartic therapy, this idea of releasing, of going over one’s past and then letting go of it.

And I think that the Tashlich ceremony, more than anything else, provides us with a bridge between a Leviticus Yom Kippur and a Deuteronomy Yom Kippur. In the Deuteronomy Yom Kippur, it’s all about the heart. It’s about cleansing the heart. Yes, there is this part of it that we need to let go, and we need to cast away.

Geoffrey Stern [27:38 – 28:10]: But I don’t think we need to do it from the perspective of gaining an advantage or gaming the cosmic system. I just think that it’s so fascinating that it’s missing from a Deuteronomy. It is so fascinating that the same words are used for bribe and ransom, “Sochad” and “Kapur,” as are used for this sense of redemption, redeeming oneself and enabling oneself to move on; that it gives us wonderful tools to use in the weeks ahead.

Adam Mintz [28:21 – 28:30]: A great topic and perfect for Elul. Chodesh tov to everybody. Shabbat shalom. And we can’t wait to continue this next week with all of you.

Geoffrey Stern [28:30 – 28:33]: Shabbat shalom. See you all next week.