I am standing in Lisbon for the first time.
A few steps away is the Church of São Domingos. In front of it, a quiet memorial marks the massacre of Jews in 1506. Tourists gather. A guide speaks. Most people listen… and then move on.
And I open the commentary of Don Isaac Abarbanel, statesman, treasurer, financier and Torah scholar (1437–1508)
Not in a study.
Not at home.
But here—
in the country that, when he wrote the commentary would, or had already expelled him.
The Torah describes one of its most enigmatic rituals:
וְלָקַח אֶת־שְׁנֵי הַשְּׂעִירִם וְהֶעֱמִיד אֹתָם לִפְנֵי יְהוָה…
גּוֹרָל אֶחָד לַיהוָה וְגוֹרָל אֶחָד לַעֲזָאזֵל
“He shall take the two goats and place them before the Lord…
one lot for the Lord and one lot for Azazel.” (Leviticus 16:7–8)
Identical goats.
Same origin. Same appearance.
One goes in—into the Holy of Holies.
The other is sent out—into the wilderness.
It’s not hard to see how this ritual can turn into a “blame game.”
One goat carries the sins.
One goat is sent away.
Who is that goat?
Who deserves to be blamed?
In times of suffering and persecution, the answer can feel obvious. The ritual becomes a story about them—the enemy, the oppressor, the one who deserves to carry the burden.
And as Israel Yuval shows, in his treatment of the curse on Yom Kippur and the “Pour Out Your Wrath” curse on Passover, this instinct has deep roots:
In Ashkenaz and Poland it was customary, following the Kedushah of the Morning Prayer of Yom Kippur, to recite fifteen liturgical poems based on Jeremiah 10:7: “Therefore, who will not fear thee, O King of the nations,” these piyyutim are known by the term rehitim. Two of them—Hagoyim efs and Veha-goyim emim—are attributed to Rabbi Kalonymus the Elder and include sharp condemnations of and curses against the Gentiles and a plea to God to bring destruction upon them. … These are texts that demonstrate the abyss of hostility and hatred felt by medieval Jews toward Christians. And we have here not only hatred, but an appeal to God to kill indiscriminately and ruthlessly, alongside a vivid description of the anticipated horrors to be brought down upon the Gentiles. These pleas are formulated in a series of verbs—“swallow them, shoot them, lop them off, make them bleed, crush them, strike them, curse them, and ban them . . . destroy them, kill them, smite them . . . crush them, abandon them, parch them”—and in the best alphabetical tradition, the string of disasters the poet wishes..
(Two Nations in Your Womb 119-120)
In this reading, the scapegoat is not just symbolic.
It becomes a theological weapon.
Isaac Abarbanel begins in a similar place—but only for a moment.
דעתי הוא שהיו שני השעירים ההם רמז לעשו ויעקב
שהיו שניהם אחים בני איש אחד ואשה אחת תאומים נולדים בשעה אחת
“In my view, the two goats allude to Esau and Jacob—
brothers, born of the same parents, twins at the same moment.”
The goats are twins.
Jacob and Esau.
Two destinies emerging from the same origin.
Abarbanel does not avoid the obvious.
He names it.
ואת עשו שנאתי
“And Esau I hated.” (Malachi 1:3, cited by Abarbanel)
This is not distant theology.
It is a lived reality—of rejection, persecution, and loss.
And the lot?
בחיק יוטל הגורל ומיהוה כל משפטו
“The lot is cast into the lap, but its judgment is from God.” (Proverbs 16:33, cited by Abarbanel)
History, too, feels like a lottery.
Abarbanel acknowledges the intuitive—and deeply human—reading:
וכאלו היה זה תפלה לאלהים שכן יעשה לשונאו…
כלומר שלא יהיה זרעו לישראל למכשול ולפוקה וצורר לנו
“It is as if this were a prayer to God—that He should do the same to His enemies…
that their seed should not become a stumbling block or adversary to Israel.”
There it is.
The scapegoat as curse.
As projection.
As theological revenge.
Esav as Edom as Christianity.
And in Lisbon—in a place where Jews were slaughtered in the name of faith—you understand exactly why that reading exists.
It makes sense.
It is human.
Because this is not where he stays.
He pivots.
והיותר נכון בעיני ששני השעירים היו רמז לעדת בני ישראל בכללותם
לטובה או לרעה
“But the more correct view, in my eyes, is that the two goats represent the community of Israel itself—
for good or for ill.”
This is the moment everything changes.
The scapegoat is not them.
It is us.
Abarbanel goes even further:
עזאזל הוא שם מורכב… עז אזל
רוצה לומר ילך העם הזה… מעל אדמתו
“Azazel is a composite term—עז אזל—
‘a brazen people that has gone away,’
a people exiled from its land.”
Azazel is not a demon.
Not a wilderness.
It is exile itself.
A state of being.
And then, in a line that feels almost impossible to read standing in Lisbon:
השעיר ההוא… לא יתום ולא יכלה בגלות
אבל יעמד חי לפני יהוה
“That goat… will not be destroyed in exile.
It will remain alive before the Lord.”
The scapegoat survives.
Exile is not annihilation.
It is endurance.
And even more:
לכפר עליו… ויגאלהו
“To atone for it… and to redeem it.”
Exile becomes part of redemption.
Abarbanel does something even more extraordinary.
He does not only reinterpret the scapegoat.
He redeems it.
Because if one goat represents Israel drawn close…
then the other—the one sent away—must also be Israel.
And that changes everything.
והשעיר אשר עלה עליו הגורל לעזאזל יעמד חי לפני יהוה
“The goat upon which the lot fell for Azazel shall stand alive before the Lord.” (Leviticus 16:10)
Abarbanel lingers on this phrase—יעמד חי לפני יהוה.
השעיר ההוא… לא יתום ולא יכלה בגלות
אבל יעמד חי לפני יהוה
“That goat… will not be abandoned or destroyed in exile.
It will remain alive before the Lord.”
This is not a rejection.
It is not a severing.
Even the one sent away…
stands before God.
And even more:
שני השעירים היו רמז לעדת בני ישראל בכללותם
“The two goats represent the entire community of Israel.”
Both goats.
One people.
Which means: those who are exiled, displaced, cast out—
they are not outside the story.
They are the story.
And then comes the most astonishing turn:
לכפר עליו… ויגאלהו
“To atone for it… and to redeem it.”
The exile itself becomes part of the process.
The suffering is not erased—
but it is not meaningless.
For Abarbanel, the scapegoat is not a dead end.
It is a path.
A painful one.
A humiliating one.
But still—
a path that leads back.
At this point, two fundamentally different responses emerge:
Project sin outward
Identify an enemy
Turn ritual into revenge
Understandable.
Human.
And, as Yuval shows, historically real.
No blame.
No vengeance.
Just a terrifying and empowering idea:
You are both goats.
Standing in Lisbon, this is no longer abstract.
This is a city where Jews were killed by mobs.
Where identity became a death sentence.
Where history screams for blame.
And yet Abarbanel—who lived in this world—refuses to build his theology on revenge.
He could have.
He almost does.
But then he stops.
And chooses something else.
Two goats.
Two destinies.
One people.
The Torah leaves the story open.
Abarbanel refuses to resolve it.
So the question is no longer:
What does the scapegoat mean?
But:
When history turns against us—
do we look outward… or inward?
Do we choose blame… or meaning?
Which goat are we becoming?
Listen to the podcast to learn more about Abarbanel here:
Sefaria Source sheet here: https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/720530
