What a Goat in the Desert Taught Me About Forgiveness

Most people assume my favorite Jewish holiday must be something festive—maybe the lights of Hanukkah, the joy of Purim, or the family meals of Shabbat. So I always get raised eyebrows when I say it’s Yom Kippur. Yes, Yom Kippur. The one with the fasting. The one where you can’t wear leather shoes. The one where you sit in synagogue all day reflecting on everything you’ve done wrong.

And I love it.

I don’t just tolerate it. I wait for it. I count down to it. Because while every other day of the year feels like running—emails, laundry, dishes, kids’ snacks—Yom Kippur feels like standing still in the best possible way. For 25 hours, I don’t have to be anywhere but here. I don’t have to answer to anyone but God. It’s the one day I am nothing but a soul. A soul with a list of things to clean up, sure—but a soul nonetheless.

At the center of the Yom Kippur service in the Torah is one of the most dramatic scenes in all of Leviticus: two goats, one fate. Brought before the High Priest, the goats are nearly identical. One is chosen “for the Lord” and offered as a sin offering. The other is sent into the wilderness, “for Azazel,” bearing the confessed sins of the nation.

The Torah describes it like this:

It’s strange, isn’t it? The animal that carries the weight of our failures isn’t sacrificed—it’s sent away. The people don’t watch it die. They watch it disappear.

That, according to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Maimonides before him, is the whole point. The goat isn’t about punishment. It’s about purification. Not just kapparah—atonement—but also taharah—cleansing. As the Torah says:

Guilt is about what we did. Shame is about who we think we are because of it. Guilt says, “I made a mistake.” Shame says, “I am a mistake.” And if we’re honest, most of us carry both.

Yom Kippur is the one day a year where we lay it all out—everything we’ve done, everything we regret, everything we were too afraid to name—and we watch it walk away. Not metaphorically. Not hypothetically. But with a real, physical ritual that reminds us: This is not who you are anymore.

Judaism has always insisted on that distinction. We are not the sum total of our missteps. We can return. We can change. We can walk back into the camp cleansed. Not only forgiven by God, but restored in our own eyes.

That’s why I love Yom Kippur. Because it’s not about guilt-tripping. It’s not about feeling bad just for the sake of it. It’s about clearing space. It’s about naming the things that hold us back and then letting them go, one by one, until all that’s left is the person God always knew we could be.

And maybe that’s why—true story—one of my children was born on Yom Kippur. On a day of beginnings, of forgiveness, of wiping the slate clean, I was given new life in the most literal way. It felt like a divine wink.

So yes, there’s no food. There’s no singing or dancing (well, not until the final Neilah service). But there is something better: a whole nation, standing together, honest and unafraid, asking God to see us not at our worst—but as we are at our most sincere.

And year after year, He does.

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