Wordsworth and the Two Goats

I hope everyone had a good Rosh Hashana and an easy and meaningful fast. I know I did.

Rav Bailey taught a class on Tzom Gedalia that helped us learn about Yom Kippur and forgiveness through poetry that I'd like to share with you.

Vayikra 16:2-3 "Speak unto Aaron thy brother that he come not at all times into the holy place...Herewith shall Aaron come into the holy place"
Vayikra 16:8 "And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for Azazel."

In the first sentence we see a contradiction.  First it says that Aaron should never go into the holy place, and then it says that he should. How does this make sense? If he is supposed to go in, why does it say beforehand that he shouldn't go in?
In the second sentence, we see the practice of taking two goats and randomly choosing by lottery which will be a sacrifice for god, and which will be the scapegoat to be thrown off a cliff with all of the sins of Israel.
Let's take a look at Part V of William Wordsworth's poem Ode: Intimations of Immorality From Recollections of Early Childhood.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Similar to Shakespeare's "All the World's a Stage," we are talking about the stages of life in this poem, but here we are connecting life's stages to the stages of this soul that came from somewhere far away.

1. When an infant is born, the soul comes and unites with the body.

2. As the boy grows, there are limitations and restrictions that cause the soul to begin to sepearate BUT it can still be seenin glory and happiness which is where the soul initially came from.

3. The youth, who is a bit older, is even farther from the beginning and must work harder to be with the soul, STILL the divine can be seen in the physical world if he tries.

4. Then the man stands by and watches as it dies away because the soul has become insignificant to him. 

Summary: The older you get, the less spirituality is found because you're not making an effort.

If people knew what was right and what was wrong, they would obviously choose to do right. Then why do people do wrong, which causes the need for forgiveness? Some commandments do have specific right or wrong things to do. Sometimes the choice isn't so clear and people randomly choose, just as Aaron randomly chose one of the goats to be thrown off a cliff.  We learn from this that we shouldn't randomly be making decisions. Why do people need forgiveness? People need forgiveness because they chose wrong, and the wrong thing to do was the decision to do something bad.

This is further seen in the contradiction of the first sentence.  It basically says, "Don't do this, except during this specific time." When you have the negative and the positive, you need to not only not do the negative, you must also do the positive. 

Forgiveness has two parts, the asking and the forgiving.  I hope you all find it in your hearts to forgive one another and have a happy new year.  Shalom V'lehitraot!