At the start of our parsha, Aharon is instructed not to come into the Holy of Holies bekhol et, at every moment. Literally what this means is that he is not to come all the time, but only once a year, on Yom Kippur; however, the Torah drags its feet in giving us this date, revealing it only 28 verses later. What stands immediately opposite the term bekhol et, “at every moment,” is the term bezot , “with this.” Don’t come bekhol et; only come bezot. Here, too, the word zot has a literal referent — “this,” meaning this sacrifice which is named later in the verse. But taken as the parallel to bekhol et, the word bezot — with all its deictic “this” strength — feels like a message of presence and mindfulness. If you want to come into the divine sanctuary, to connect to God, to the holiest of holies, you cannot do so with kol et, weighed down by all of time, by all the past narratives with their traumas and limiting perspectives and all the overwhelming and distracting worries about tomorrow and the future. You can only enter such divine connection bezot, “with this,” with this very minute in your body, present to “this,” present to the way things are right now, light and clear and open to the now, which is the only place where God ever resides. To worry or to ruminate over past or future takes you away from this capacity for entering the Holy of Holies. Only zot – only “this”-ness, today, this minute, this feeling, this body – only zot allows entrance to the eternal now of Divine Presence.
If this is difficult to do, as it is for most of us, if the past and the present persist and remain and come crashing down on us, consuming us and blocking any experience of this moment – then consider placing all that weight, all those heavy burdens of trauma and worry onto the back of the seir la’azazel, the goat that is designated in our parsha’s Yom Kippur ritual to carry the people’s sins off to the desert. Consider placing all that heaviness on the back of this goat. Watch it all go off into the vastness and disappear, and feel your own lightness and readiness to enter with only zot to the holy of holies, your own open, present heart.
