Our Gemara on Amud Aleph Compares the death of a righteous person to the ritual and forgiveness achieved by the scapegoat.

What is the connection between the scapegoat and the death of a righteous person?

Tzidkas HaTzaddik (92) explains it in the following thought provoking manner: A person may have a Powerful but temporary spiritual awakening, where he or she feels an arousal and awareness of spiritual connection that is beyond the usual. Even the generation of the Flood experienced this when Mesushelach died. The death of a Tzaddik is comparable to the scapegoat, in that it creates a momentary clarity. If that clarity is capitalized on, Tzidkas HaTzaddik says that it can sustain a powerful atonement. However, neither the scapegoat nor the death of a righteous person alone will accomplish atonement without the introspection and subsequent action taken to maintain this awakening.

What is the nature of this spiritual awakening? Tzidkas HaTzaddik does not explain it explicitly. However, it would seem that in both situations, the graphic dismemberment of the poor goat, and the seemingly cruel suffering of a righteous person, at least temporarily, generates the following thought: This undeserved suffering of this creature or person is not about someone else’s misdeed but rather our own. And, if this is how much the righteous suffer, how much more we, who are less righteous, are in danger. Hence the righteous person is literally and figuratively the Scapegoat.

Why is this fair? We have a tradition that the righteous leaders of the generation can be held responsible for the sins of their peers if they have not tried hard enough to influence and bring others back to the Torah and mitzvos (See Shabbos 54b).