Michael S. Stroh

“ By scapegoat effect I mean that strange process through which two or more people are reconciled at the expense of a third party who appears guilty or responsible for whatever ails, disturbs, or frightens the scapegoaters.”"’

For Girard, as for Rubenstein , scapegoating is at the heart of religion, and religion is at the heart of civilization. But as compared to Freud and Rubenstein , he does not believe that scapegoating need be perpetual. James G. Williams says the following about Girard and the Bible :

“... At certain times in human history there have been disclosures that unmask the victimization mechanism that results in sacrifice and scapegoating. Such disclosures are focused and sustained in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures...Girard finds in the Bible the revelation or disclosure of a God who does not want victims, a God who is disclosed in the actions of those who take the side of victims.”"®

In the Bible , evil is performed when we transform that which has been given us for life into death, as when a kid is boiled in its mother’s milk. Goodness is enacted when we transform that which means death into life, as is the transformation of a war bow(keshet) into a rainbow in the story of Noah, or we beat our“swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks”. The struggle of life against death is part of the depth meaning of Judaism . Although in our experience, death always wins, since every living creature dies, in Jewish faith, ultimately, in a way, perhaps, we cannot comprehend, life wins.

For Richard Rubenstein , a scapegoat is necessary to maintain the equilibrium of society. It could be a human victim, and human sacrifice has played this role in history. But an animal victim works and is, therefore, preferred to the sacrifice of a human being. Neither is terrible. What is terrible is the bursting out of the feelings kept down in the pressure cooker, the return of the repressed, which resulted in the ritual sacrifice of 6,000,000 Jews . For Girard, we can escape from the scape-goating mechanism; it is not inevitable. The Bible starts the process by identifying with victims. Rubenstein does