TRAG(ED)Y TaGHeeYR Tahf-Ayin- Yod- Resh
sah-EAR שעיר [SGHYR àTRGY]
ROOTS: TRAGEDY can be hard to take, both in life and in this entry. Firstly, the T comes
from ש/ SH, an Aramaic shift seen at “TAURUS” (ox, bull… from שור SHOAR, ox, bull). Second, the ע Ayin of שעיר SaEeYR (hairy mountain goat) is letter #2, but becomes letter #3 in Greek tragos (goat). The י Yod here is a vowel, so we can ignore it. That י Yod does appear in TRAGEDY, and we’ll soon have to discuss this weird goat-tragedy thing. Completing the movable feast of letters in this match, the Edenic ר Resh ends the word, but it appears second in Greek tragos (goat).
There is no Indo-European (IE) “root” for this creature, and the Greek and Hebrew names of this creature doesn’t appear with a list of smaller, domestic goat words.
What’s up with the hairy mountain goat? Way up, a half-mile up on frigid mountains with sparse vegetation. On the positive side, no predators can compete with their uncanny ability to climb up sheer rock with their uniquely designed hooves and bodies that came from a master engineer, not from accidental mutation over a gazillion years. In the Hebrew Bible the שעיר SaEeYR or S’[E]eRaH of Leviticus17. 7 and Isaiah 34:141 is the he-goat demon or satyr worshipped as a god. People were in awe of this hairy mountain goat that defied gravity, deftly climbing up and bouncing down on high sheer mountain cliffs, bravely risking a fall and a horrible death. [Search ‘mountain goats’ at You Tube or National Georaphic. See them climbing a 90-degree huge Italian dam to lick salt, with no visable footholds. You might also conclude that they are not from this planet.]
The only predator that occasionally catches a mountain goat is the snow leopard. One or both animals can tumble to their death in one of their breathless, leaping chases over constantly
death-defying terrain.
BRANCHES: This tragic fall is enacted annually when a שעיר Sa[E]eYR was (possibly) thrown off a cliff, symbolically carrying the Israelites sins in Leviticus 16:8–10 and 21-22. Ever since Abraham was given a ram to offer instead of his son, the Creator of life dramatically condemned the atrocious Canaanite rite of burning their begotten children to an idol. The offered animal was not transformed into a sinful, bedeviled creature, (like the demon stoned by Muslims on the Haj). The animal (painlessly) losing its life expresses to the people that they deserve to die for their sins, but they are being mercifuly forgiven with sincere repentance. The ritual transfer of sin and judgement is not performed by the shedding of blood, but by placing hands on the animal.
The specific Torah ritual of the scapegoat involved sending it alive to the wilderness. The non-Torah addition of throwing the goat off a cliff comes from a later tradition of the Mishnah (tractate Yoma). Even if innacurate, this violent theory may well parallel the Greek Bible theology wherein a divine-human hybrid, a miraculously conceived son of the Creator with an engaged but virgin human mother is born. (This very much fits the Greek Hero of myth, Hercules, son of Zeus, and a married human, except for the virgin part. When he dies, he joins the gods.) The beautiful, sinless boy of the Greek Bible grows up to resist the Devil, heal the sick, feed the hungry, and perform an anti-gravity, mountain goat-like miracle of walking on water. Most similar to the Torah’s scapegoat ritual, this godly young Reform rabbi undergoes a violent death as a scapegoat, dying for the sins of Christian believers.
Despite the later innovations of Catholic councils and the natural corruption of Roman power, the medieval philosopher Maimonides can see many teachings of Jesus, (Mohammad and Confucius) as significant moral heros of history who have made our glorious, unified world of the near future possible.
This entry only briefly touches on Greek Tragedy (which now enobles our doomed existence wth largely elegiac Western lyrics and Soap Opera in a world headed to Doomsday for infidels ) vs. Torah Comedy … (Tragedy defeated: where even Diaspora, Holocaust and October 7 have positive repurcussions in a world headed to Edenic unity, restored with global Redemption). For better and longer discussions of the Greek vs Hebrew, Tragedy vs Comedy clash, go to the work of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) and Sir Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (1948 -2020).
Greek tragoidia is tragedy, and the mountain goat we’ve been tracking is tragos -- so this is still about language. The Greek and Western culture of tragedy is the dominant manner. Tracking our hairy tragos became the Western דרך DeReKH, manner or way, the major theme of Greek philospophy and
literature. (See our “DIRECTION” entry.) No Neil Young, it’s not “help, helpless, helpless, helpless.”
Our environment holds pitfalls. But we can learn to step, leap and balance with the fearless grace of a mountain goat.