Comments on: Repentance via eScapegoat: There’s an App for That

By: bratschegirl

bratschegirl — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 00:28:38 +0000

One of the things that’s always made the most profound sense to me about the Jewish outlook on these things is in the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) liturgy, and it says essentially the same thing that you wrote above, namely “True repentance doesn’t live by God or goats alone; true repentance is about humanity.” The line in the prayerbook our congregation uses for these days is something like “For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones; but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another.” If you’ve wronged another person, you are not off the hook, no matter how much breast-beating and confessing and prostrating you might do, until you have gone to that person and made amends.

By: Anita

Anita — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 03:19:21 +0000

**their**

By: Anita

Anita — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 03:18:43 +0000

The goats scream whether you confess or not… they scream (rather a muffled scream), if you stuff four cookies into there mouth, instead of five…

By: tanita

tanita — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 22:47:22 +0000

In reply to tanita. Also, the GOATS!? THANK YOU. *helpless, hysterical laughter*

By: tanita

tanita — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 22:45:10 +0000

There is SRSLY an app for everything. That’s both kind of funny, and kind of bizarre.

This reminds me of Catholic techies putting out a confession app during the tenure of the last Pope, and him (via the Vatican) immediately saying, “Um, no,” when it came out, and creating boundaries on exactly how it was/was not to be used — essentially, they get to use it as a notepad and keep track of their confess-worthy behaviors, and “reflect” on them in the confessional, so that they can go through with the whole action of confession – remember what you did and fix it (in whatever way – I throw no shade on Catholics for me not really understanding the whole confession thing). Which is, in essence, the same general conversation Jewish techies seem to be having about the scapegoat app; yes, it’s all very well to confess to strangers and the ether, but do something about it; confession doesn’t stop there.

Interesting.