When a Scapegoat Doesn't Cut It

This week's Torah portion (Leviticus 16:8-10) has a peculiar practice that is referred to as the "scapegoat ritual" (עזאזל).  Essentially, the sacrificial ritual of two goats is supposed to cleanse one of all sins, thereby bearing off all their iniquities (16:22).  My Christian friends see this and attempt to extrapolate this practice to the cruxificion of Jesus since that, too, allegedly did away with all iniquities. 

I never liked this ritual.  Sacrificing two goats is too simplistic of a solution towards repentance.  Much like with kapparot, it doesn't create a sincere sense of repentance.  The fact that the ritual had to be done on an annual basis is all the more evidence that the ritual was not as effective as one would have hoped.  As this D'var Torah points out, there's another issue with the ritual.  In verses 29-30, we're still told to celebrate Yom Kippur.  If the scapegoat ritual was supposed to cleanse the people of Israel of all their sins, why would there be any need for Yom Kippur? Michael Carasik provides an answer:

In the ritual metaphysics of sin and its removal, perhaps they have been. Figuratively removing sin from the locale continues to be part of Jewish observance; on Rosh Hashanah, New Year's Day, Jews throw bread into the water in the ceremony known as tashlikh.....Like the scapegoat ritual, this serves (if only symbolically) to carry sin away from the sinner and into the void. The solemn ritual of animal sacrifice—meant, as some of the traditional commentators explain, to shift the punishment the sinner himself deserves to an animal—must have worked similarly. But neither ritual is enough to complete the job.

A scapegoat, as we use the word today, is someone who takes the fall for the person who is really responsible for the crime. But when what you want is not to shift the blame but genuinely to cleanse yourself of your misdeed, neither a scapegoat nor any other kind of vicarious punishment, even in the form of animal sacrifice, is sufficient. You must afflict yourself—not because G-d desires such affliction, but because you might not feel truly cleansed unless you, too, feel some of G-d's distress at the existence of sin.

A point I like to bring up time and again is that ritual is the means, not the ends.  The ritual may or may not have the intended impact of sobering the individual to not sin in the future.  However, by making Yom Kippur necessary even though their is a scapegoat ritual teaches us something more.  True repentance comes through realizing what you have done, making up for it, and vowing never to do it again.  That has been and will always be the prevailing message of Yom Kippur.  Although it's not the High Holidays, it's still always a good time to realize what we have done wrong, compensate for it, do our best to make sure we don't do it again, and thereby grow in the process.  G-d didn't create us to have a goat wipe away our sins.  He created us so we can grow as individuals, and that's what repentance is all about.