{"id":328,"date":"2014-08-04T11:04:44","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T11:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=328"},"modified":"2014-08-04T11:04:44","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T11:04:44","slug":"in-search-of-the-real-scapegoat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=328","title":{"rendered":"In Search of the Real Scapegoat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"photo-52\"<\/a>In Madrid, we are staying on the beautiful Plaza Santa Ana.\u00a0 It’s an old working class neighborhood with vestiges of traditional bars, azulejos tiles on exterior walls, a theater trying to escape demolition.\u00a0 On the west side of the square is an elaborate modernist white facade bathed in violet light at night, the elegant Hotel Victoria.\u00a0 In the high season of bullfighting in Madrid, famous bullfighters prep emotionally and sartorially, in the hotel. \u00a0They adorn themselves in their skin-tight costumes and emerge in full extravagant display for fans who line up to shake their hands and wish them good luck. \u00a0Then they depart for ritual fight at the arena in Plaza de las Ventas.<\/p>\n

In this summer of slaughter, I began to think about scapegoats. \u00a0On the one hand, there is the symbolic and emblematic, be it bull or goat.\u00a0\u00a0 The ritual is acted out in the staged arena or in the desert.\u00a0 On the other, we have the sliver of holy land that is being fought over and blackened.\u00a0 Jews have long been the world’s scapegoats.\u00a0 Even as anti-Semitism is spiking for reasons both tied to politics and tied to atavistic latent hatred, others are vying for the honor of the world’s scapegoats – Palestinians, Russians, blacks.<\/p>\n

Unlike pampering and feeding animals to satisfy the human need to kill, humans are slaughtering humans.\u00a0 The killing need is lamentable and seemingly unquenchable, and the world theater uncontrolled, out of bonds, terrifyingly real.\u00a0 In ancient times Jews put their sins on the head of a goat, Azazel, and sent it into the wilderness, never to be seen again.\u00a0 The sins of the nation was atoned for. \u00a0On Yom Kippur, Jews now do it symbolically.\u00a0 If only humans could be satisfied by driving out a goat, carrying on its back our endless, grievous sins, and get on, somewhat lightened, with the task of living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Madrid, we are staying on the beautiful Plaza Santa Ana.\u00a0 It’s an old working class neighborhood with vestiges of traditional bars, azulejos tiles on exterior walls, a theater trying to escape demolition.\u00a0 On the west side of the square … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27,45,44,46,43],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-israel","tag-hotel-victoria","tag-madrid","tag-plaza-santa-ana","tag-scapegoat"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-5i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":330,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}