As many of you know, I converted to Judaism from Catholicism almost 37 years ago.

And for those of you who are wondering how I could have walked away from my religion, I will tell you in all honesty that it was one of the most difficult life decisions I have ever made.

What gave me solace over the years was my belief that if I lived a kind, honest, and generous life, I would be blessed no matter what religion I was.

And if there’s a heaven, I have faith and hope that I will be welcome there when the time comes.

But this blog post isn’t about my conversion.

It’s about atonement and my fear of it.

Let’s start at the very beginning.

According to rabbinic tradition, the Hebrew calendar started at the time of creation, placed at 3,761 BCE.

This year, on Rosh Hashana, Jews throughout the world celebrated the ancient anniversary of the creation of humanity; the commemoration of God’s creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 5,780 years ago.

As a celebratory holiday, I gathered family and loved ones together for two nights, eating challah bread and apples dipped in honey, and prayed for a sweet year.

I prayed for a positive future and asked for the strength to believe in the promise of better humanity and a brighter tomorrow.

According to Jewish tradition, God opens three books on Rosh Hashanah.

In the first book, the righteous are inscribed for life in the coming year.

In the second book, the wicked are inscribed for death.

And in the third book, the names of the rest of us are temporarily inscribed. Our fates during the coming year are based upon our actions and behavior during the Ten Days of Repentance, which culminates on Yom Kippur, a solemn day of fasting, repentance, and atonement.

The Hebrew word for atonement is “Teshuva,” which translates to “return.”

Over the years, I have personalized what the word “return” means to me in the context of atonement.

I have rationalized what “return” means to me in the context of my life.

Return to my better self.

Return to a place of goodness.

Return to kindness.

Return to the people I’ve hurt.

Returning to the people I’ve hurt is a tough one because, in the Jewish tradition, the process of atonement and repentance includes three acts:  confession, regret, and a vow not to repeat the misdeed.

Judaism requires that those who are in need of atonement must seek out those they’ve hurt and ask for their forgiveness.

And if the apology is rebuffed, the atoner must ask at least three times before giving up.

For me, three times rebuffed is way more rejection than I would care to bear.

But the possibility of forgiveness more than makes up for my fear of rejection and gives me the courage to ask, regardless of the pain it may cause.

My angst is overwhelming, but I know I need to set it aside and reach out to that person I hurt in the hopes of reuniting and returning to a more fulfilling, loving life.

I forgive you. Three words that could change my life. Or lives.

Judaism requires atonement but also emphasizes that it is never too late to make amends. It is never too late to repair what’s been broken.

Return, atone, repair.

On Yom Kippur, we take a frank look at our character and our actions over the past year and ask ourselves, “What is the purpose of our existence?”

And we promise God to engage in a project of self-improvement, self-transformation, and self-actualization.

And we ask ourselves:

Could I have done something differently?

Should I have done something differently?

Do I owe someone an apology?

Are there errors that I can still fix?

Have I made my family proud?

Have I made God proud?

Am I fulfilling my mission on God’s great earth?

During Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, many of the blessings, prayers, affirmations, and confessions are said as “we.”

“We have sinned” vs. “I have sinned.” “We ask for forgiveness” rather than, “I ask for forgiveness.”

Perhaps this is done to remind us that we are united and to help us understand that we are all in this together. We have all sinned. We all need to ask for forgiveness.

Pay it forward. Cause and effect.

One of us affects another, who, in turn, affects another, and another, perhaps infinitely.

It is all up to us. We have the option to cause pain or to repair.

We can choose to do something to someone rather than for someone or speak badly vs. praising a person.

Each action we choose will have repercussions upon our life and someone else’s life and perhaps the lives of generations to come.

I’m afraid of rejection, but during these holidays I know I need to atone, I recognize I must be brave and take a chance at repair. Reach out and ask for forgiveness.

I fear the silence, but I have hope; the hope of the return of someone I love and miss more than life itself.

My sleep patterns are substandard at best.

And what little shut-eye I do manage to sneak in, is more than often consumed with a never-ending succession of movie-worthy dreams; chock full of ideas, emotions, and images.

Unfortunately for me, way too many of those visions involve wild menacing beasts, which make them more nightmares than dreams.

These epic brain dumps typically wake me up in the early hours of the morning in a heart-pounding, anxiety-heightened sweaty state.

I call them my bogeyman wake-ups.

My typical bogeyman wake-up goes like this: I open my eyes, paralyzed with fear. I quickly turn on the light and check the room. I pull out my notebook from the nightstand next to my bed and furiously write down everything I can recall. Sometimes this exercise takes ten minutes, while other times it takes two to three hours.

If the image or idea is particularly vivid, I can write an entire essay until I either run out of words, am mentally exhausted, or I’ve self-talked myself to calm it down.

Once I’m calm, I’m usually also wide awake, so I regularly turn on my tablet and research the why of all of it.

I recently found a quote by Sigmund Freud answering his why of all of it, which stuck with me:

“On my way to discovering the solution of the dream, all kinds of things were revealed, which I was unwilling to admit even to myself.”

This past Tuesday my bogeyman alarm woke me up at precisely 3:02 in the a.m.

The apparition was an animal image combined with a question: How can I escape?

The dream started out with a very scary goat.

I know what you’re thinking. Goats aren’t scary.

But this goat was a scary doozy, and because I was in a corner, the goat was even more terrifying.

It was less a dream and more of an idea. Or maybe it was less of an idea and more of a blurry image of that super scary goat and helpless me.

I wrote “scary” and “goat” in my notebook.

And then, with nothing better to do with my drenched and anxious self, I grabbed my tablet and looked up, “scary goat.”

Google offered me several choices:

scary goat
scary goat gif
scary goat meme
scared goat
scapegoat
scapegoating

Oh, my God.

“On my way to discovering the solution of the dream…”

I then looked up scapegoat: A compound of the verb scape, which means “escape” and two Hebrew translations/interpretations. 1) A possible misreading of the Hebrew word ‘ez ‘ozel (goat that departs) and 2) the Hebrew proper noun Azazel (demon).

I also discovered that In Leviticus 16:1-34, a goat was used in a ritual by a rabbi on Yom Kippur; where the rabbi symbolically loaded a goat with the sins of the Israelites and then let it loose into the wilderness to die.

The bottom line in Leviticus 16: that unsuspecting harmless goat who did nothing wrong was blamed and punished for the mistakes and sins of everyone else.

I continued my research.

By definition, a scapegoat is a person who is blamed for all that goes wrong, regardless of the guilt and wrongdoing of others. Scapegoats are repeatedly subjected to character assassination, abandonment, betrayal, and outright hatred by family members.

Scapegoating is also a way for adult children to hide familial abuse by blaming everything negative that happens, on one particular (and innocent) family member.

Further, scapegoating by adult children is usually due to having one parent with a personality disorder. To protect the parent with the mental disorder, the adult child uses the other parent as their scapegoat.

In an abusive, dysfunctional family, keeping their image unmarred is key to the scapegoat coverup. They live in an alternate reality. The dysfunctional family will go to any lengths to destroy the scapegoat because otherwise their abuse and sickness will be uncovered. They will also do whatever it takes to convince others that the scapegoat is a horrible person in order to further isolate and destroy them.

One article specifically used the following example: A wife leaves an abusive marriage, (which in and of itself takes enormous courage).  The family of the husband becomes paranoid that his abuse, dysfunction, and psychopathy will be revealed, and used against him, so the lies, brainwashing, and alienation begin until the scapegoated wife is attacked, denounced, alienated, and ultimately removed entirely from the familial picture. The scapegoating is used to deflect accountability for the husband’s abusive behavior.

“…all kinds of things were revealed which I was unwilling to admit even to myself.”

Out of that scary goat dream, I had an epiphany:

The hurtful accusations and condemnation I have endured over the years were explicitly designed to protect an abusive family member. I was scapegoated and sent out into the wilderness to shrivel up and die. But now that I’ve found my way back home, I can finally stop beating myself up. I can eviscerate the self-doubt and let go of trying to work out a relationship that I now see is sadly impossible because the one that I miss the most is complicit in all of it.

The goat wasn’t scary. The goat was scared.

The goat wasn’t the demon; the goat was the target.

What started as the mother of all nightmares turned into a miraculous and most welcome wake-up call.