Transcription
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For those of you who've studied rabbinic midrashic teaching, the teachings of the rabbis, both in the Talmud and the Midrash, the non-legal material, the we call midrashic or egotic material, so we know that it's often not easy to grasp. It's not always simple to understand the teachings of the sages.
But one thing emerges after a careful study of the midrashic teachings. One thing that you see very clearly is that the rabbis were very careful and attentive readers of the biblical text. They often notice things that might otherwise go unnoticed. And many of their comments and observations and teachings are based upon a very careful reading of the text itself. And unless you really understand what they saw in the text, so the comments they're making often seem to be totally inexplicable. Even if you know what they're basing their comments upon, their teachings are often hard to penetrate.
But the important thing to try to do when we're studying the midrashic teachings is to try to understand what prompted the rabbis to say what they said.
When the Bible recapitulates the story of creation, we all know that the creation story takes place in Genesis chapter one. But the Bible recapitulates that story in Genesis chapter two. And in doing that, the Torah describes the origins of animal life. And it says in the second chapter, verse 19, "Hashem minha adama." Now, the Lord God had formed out of the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the sky.
Twelve verses earlier, in verse seven, the Torah recounts the creation of man and uses the same word, "Hashem Elokim." And the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground. Now, even though the word "formed" itself in both verses seems the same and sounds the same, the sages noticed that when describing the creation of animals, one yud, the word "vayitzer" is spelled with one yud. But when describing the formation of man, the the word "vaitser" is written with two uids.
Now, the unit is the smallest letter in the alphabet. So you can understand how someone could very easily miss that. Not so easy to see. And this difference in wording prompted Rabbi Nachman bar Yitzchak to teach in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Brachot 61a, that the two yuds in the word that God formed in the creation story of man, the two yuds show that God created man with two inclinations: one good and the other evil. The word "yatzar" means God formed. And so you could say that it's not a good inclination, but a good formation, a part of the human being that was formed with an inclination toward good, and another part of the human being formed within inclination toward evil.
Now, there are other allusions in the biblical text that seem to be more explicit in the passages leading up to the flood story in the beginning of the book of Genesis. So in the sixth chapter, verse five, we're told that God saw that man's wickedness was great on earth and that every formation, every "yetzer" of the thoughts of his heart were evil all the time. And then later, in Genesis chapter 8, verse 1, we're told the "yetzer" imagery or imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.
Now, our sages teach that this destructive and self-destructive side to who we are, this what we call the "yetzer hara" or evil inclination, is most dominant in our youth. As the Bible just said that the "yetzer" of man's imagination is evil from his youth. And so it is strongest in our youth. During the early years of our lives, during those years, you all remember, I'm sure, that we were very self-centered, totally self-absorbed as little kids with very little impulse control. And our good inclination is more or less dormant and doesn't really begin to come into its own, we're told, until the age of bar or bat mitzvah, 12 years old, 12 years old for a girl, 13 years old, 13 years old for a boy.
We know that the good inclination is rooted primarily in the intellect and draws us towards spirituality, towards truth. We know that human beings have an instinct for truth, but that comes from our good inclination. Our good inclination also draws us to the ability and desire for self-control and for virtuous living.
Our evil inclination is based and connected primarily with our bodies, associated primarily not with our intellect, but with our body, with the physical part of who we are, and with our fantasies.
Another term that we see in our literature for the "yetzer hara," for the evil inclination, is Satan. Now, that's a word that has so much baggage and so many misconceptions because of its association with another religion, that very few people really understand the concept of Satan within Torah thought. Satan, first of all, is one of God's angels. That word also has a lot of baggage. What is an angel? And we tend to have very immature or primitive concepts of what angels are, but that's for another evening.
So we're told that Satan is one of God's angels. And the most well-known occurrence of Satan, the most famous appearance in the Bible, is in the book of Job. And there, Satan basically serves to challenge Job. To challenge Job. Job was incredibly righteous, and the Satan senses that perhaps his great faith in God and his righteous living were never really tested properly.
The famous biblical commentator, writing on Genesis chapter 22, verse 1, about God's testing Abraham at the Akedah by having Abraham offer up his son as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah, so Nahmanides explains that tests, trials, are for the purpose of allowing people to actualize their potential. And that's what the Satan wanted Job to do. If Job's greatness, if Job's righteousness and his closeness to God were never really tested, well, maybe he was never fully righteous.
Now, to better understand the idea of Satan, it would be helpful to look at and examine the first time the word appears in the scriptures. Lublin, the famous Hasidic master who passed away in the year 1900, always taught that if you want to understand anything in the Torah, find the first time that it appears. The first time anything appears, either a word or a letter. If you want to understand what is the meaning of the letter Aleph, the first letter of the alphabet, find the first time that letter appears at the beginning of a word. That's the headquarters.
And so, the first time the word Satan appears in the Bible is in the book of Numbers, Bamidbar, chapter 22, verse 22. And there, in the story of Balaam. Balaam was a great non-Jewish prophet, and the king of Moab wanted to hire him to curse the Jewish people. God was not too interested in having Balaam go and curse the Jews. And after a lot of wrangling and haggling, God finally allows Balaam to go with the messengers of the king of Moab. But he says, "You can only do what I tell you to do. You can go with them, but you can't do whatever you want. You can only do what I tell you to do."
But on the way, apparently, God senses that Balaam has something else up his mind. And we're told in Numbers 22:22 that God's anger was kindled because he was going, not just going accompanying these men, but he was going along with them in the sense of he was really buying into their plans. And so we're told that the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road. God sent an angel to stand in the road, "Lishaton lo." You could translate that to be a Satan to him. Obviously, not a very good translation. The better translation, the correct translation, is that this angel stood in the road to obstruct him, to block him, to be an obstacle to him. And that is the meaning of Satan. The concept of Satan in the Bible is it's a force. Sometimes we call it an angel, but it's a spiritual force that serves to obstruct us, to block us, to stand in our way.
This is one of the main functions of the Satan. And our sages identify, our sages tell us that the Satan basically is our "yetzer hara," our evil inclination. The Satan is not so much some kind of outside malevolent, malevolent force with a tail and a pitchfork and a red suit. You can't get away from the Satan because it lives within us.
When we have an impulse to do good, there will be an automatic inner resistance that rises up to oppose us, to stand in our way. There's a story told of a very, very poor rabbi. And one day he suddenly comes upon, out of nowhere, 400 rubles. He received a lot of money that he never expected. That really was a lot of money for him. And almost as soon as he receives this money, there's a knock at his door. A very, very poor person comes in crying that he needs to marry off his daughter and he can't do it unless he has 400 rubles. What a coincidence.
So the rabbi immediately takes out the 400 rubles and gives it to the man and wishes him mazel tov. I wish you the best. The man leaves. And maybe he's out the door for a minute, and the rabbi gets up and chases after him and says, "Can you come back here for a minute?" And the rabbi started thinking, "I got this 400 rubles unexpectedly. That's a lot of money. Do I have to give all of it to this person? You know, I can give 400 different people a ruble." A ruble wasn't, you know, like a penny back then. Could probably buy a meal for a ruble. So he started thinking. He started having second thoughts about having given away all this money to this person who just happened to knock on the door at that moment. And he was about to ask for the money back. And he caught himself and he said, "Wait a second. I had an impulse when this man came and explained to me his need. I had an impulse to give him what he needed. I came upon 400 rubles unexpectedly. Immediately someone comes to me needing that much money. Exactly. So my "yetzer hatov," my good inclination, told me, 'Sure, you can help. Go and do it.' Now, when I heard that inner voice telling me, 'Well, why does he have to get all the money? Maybe you can give it to 400 different people.' So he realized where that voice was coming from. That voice of opposition was not coming from a healthy place."
Now, I once had a very similar experience years ago. I used to run High Holiday services. They were actually learning services, beginners' learning services, down at the Anche Mis Mint Synagogue in the Kensington Market section of Toronto. And it was a lot of work because I had to prepare at least two and a half hours worth of uh talks, and then there were questions for a long time, and then I would blow the shofar for everyone. And by the end of this morning, I was, I was spent, I was exhausted. And one year, Rabbi Shulman, who was the chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital, asked me if I would mind going to the hospital in the afternoon to blow the shofar for the patients in the hospital. And I immediately said, "Sure, of course." But then about a half hour later, I said to myself, "Why did he have to ask me? There are a lot of people downtown that can blow a shofar, and they didn't run an entire service all morning and already blow the shofar, and they weren't exhausted and spent and tired." And as I was playing this through my mind, I remember doing this. I said, "I know who you are. I know exactly who you are." I don't often have such clarity about the voice of my evil inclination speaking to me, but he came through loud and clear at that moment.
The Talmud, in Tractate Sukkah 52a, teaches that the "yetzer hara" has seven different names. And one of them is "safoni." It's "safoni." If you remember from the Passover Seder, right, there's the part of the Seder called "safun," right, which means it's can hidden because we hide the Afikoman. So the word "sifoni" is one of the names of the "yetzer hara," and it means the hidden one. The "yetzer hara" is the hidden one. And the Maharal of Prague explains what this means is that the "yetzer hara" is concealed very deeply in the innermost parts of our hearts, and we don't really recognize that he's there. It's not so obvious to us all the time that we're walking around with an evil inclination. He sort of gets to lie low and and hide out for a large part of our lives. And it's interesting that the sages were aware of this, that our evil inclination is buried deep inside of us, that long before Sigmund Freud, our sages had an awareness of the subconscious realm.
The Talmud also compares the "yetzer hara" to a fly. They compare our "yetzer hara" to a fly. In explaining this, Rav Yitzchak Blazer, one of the great "Ba'alei Mussar," one of the students of Yisrael Salanter, wrote that God put into the animals the fear of man. And he says that if you drive animals away, first of all, many animals won't even come near human beings. They'll attack many other creatures, but somehow they have an instinctual fear of humans. But even if they don't, if you drive an animal away, they're not very quick to return. But a fly, he says, keeps on coming back and coming back and coming back. You can chase it away forever, it's never going to give up. And our "yetzer hara" never leaves us alone, and it always seeks to trip us up.
Our sages actually teach that we should never trust ourselves and grow complacent, even until the day of our death. Should never fully trust ourselves. They tell a story of a very old man on his deathbed. And people heard him saying to his "yetzer hara," "Get out of here, leave me alone." And he looked at him. Here's a man that's 92 years old, he can barely move, he he's not, he's basically dying. What is he afraid of? What is the "yetzer hara" going to get him to do at this stage in his life? So he said that the "yetzer hara" is whispering in my ear that right before you die, say "Shema Yisrael" very loudly so everyone will think that you're very righteous and very pious. Here's someone that basically they have one foot in the grave, and yet the lust for honor and for glory is still burning deeply in their hearts.
One of the great Hasidic masters used to always teach that you should picture the "yetzer hara" as a psychopath with a huge axe, prepared to chop off your head. So one of his students asked, "What if I can't imagine that?" So the Rebbe said, "If you have a hard time imagining that, it's an indication that he's already chopped off your head."
Now, anyone that's done some serious studying of Jewish literature dealing with personal growth and self-improvement knows that there is a tremendous focus in this literature on understanding the nature of the myriad ways in which our "yetzer hara" works to sabotage our lives and the virulent nature of its efforts to block our spiritual progress. It's not a very well-known part of our literature, but people that have studied this kind of literature, and there's a massive amount, usually it's called the "Mussar" literature, going back at least a thousand years. This is a major focus of that literature: understanding the wiles of our "yetzer hara," its tactics, how it tries to trip us up in so many different subtle kinds of ways, and what we need to do to fight against our "yetzer hara."
So, in light of what we've learned up until tonight, the following passage in the Midrash to Genesis might sound very shocking. After the six days of creation, the Torah concludes the account in the last verse of the first chapter of Genesis by saying, "And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." In the Midrash Genesis Rabbah 9:7, Rav Nachman the son of Shmuel said, "When the verse said, 'Behold, it was very good,' this refers to the "yetzer hatov," this refers to the good inclination. But the verse didn't just say, 'Hinei, behold, it was very good.' 'Hinei, behold, it was very good.' The verse says, 'And behold, it was very good.' And the Midrash seems to assume that that word 'and,' the extra letter 'vav,' is not really necessary in the verse. And so Rav Nachman the son of Shmuel says that this extra word 'and' refers to the evil inclination."
Credible that when at the end of the creation story we're told that God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good, so we're told that this refers to the evil inclination. Is the evil inclination really very good? What does this mean? How do we understand this idea, this teaching that we should see the evil inclination as very good?
Sir Nachman continues in the Midrash. He says, "For if not for the evil inclination, if it wasn't for our evil inclination, a person would not build a house, would not take a wife, would not beget children, and would not conduct business." And so King Solomon says in his book of Ecclesiastes, Kohelet, chapter 4, verse 4: "And I saw that all labor and all skillful enterprise spring from man's rivalry with his neighbor."
So this Midrash clarifies that the "yetzer hara" is not an urge to sin. It's not an urge to sin or to do evil. That's not what it is. Rather, it is the entire range of normal human drives that we have for possessions, for security, for pleasure, for honor, for comfort. Our drives for ambition and honor and glory and success. That's what our "yetzer hara" is. Our "yetzer hara" might be described in Freudian terms as our id and ego. These are not intrinsically evil. However, they can lead to evil. They can lead us to evil if not properly channeled. Like nuclear power, other kinds of energy. Our "yetzer hara" is really neutral. You can't say that nuclear energy is evil. It depends on how it's used. It's an energy. And so our "yetzer hara" is an energy. They are, it's our drives. Therefore, our evil inclination is not immoral. It is amoral. It's not intrinsically immoral, but it's amoral.
The energy and potential within the instinctual drives of our "yetzer hara" are vitally, vitally necessary for all normal areas of human activity. And that's what the Midrash is teaching. Without this "yetzer hara," life would not really be possible.
And we can see this in a very famous passage from the Talmud, Tractate Yoma 69b. This is an incredibly rich and challenging passage, which describes the efforts of the men of the Great Assembly to eradicate the "yetzer hara" for idolatry. Here's what the Talmud says: They cried out in a great voice to God. What did they say to God? So Rav said, and some say it was Rav Yochanan, who said, they cried out to God concerning the evil inclination for idolatry. "Woe, woe! It is this inclination that destroyed the Temple and burned the Sanctuary and killed all the righteous ones who perished as a result of that calamity and destruction and exiled the Jews from their land. And it, that evil inclination for idolatry, it still dances among us."
So they said to God, "Did You give it to us for any reason at all other than for us to receive a reward for overcoming it? That must be the reason You gave it to us." So the rabbis said to God, "We do not want it, nor do we want the reward of overcoming it." And a note fell from them, a note fell to them from heaven, on which was written the word "Truth." They then fasted continuously for three days and three nights, and the evil inclination was delivered to them to subdue. It was handed over to them.
Obviously, we have to not understand this story too literally. What happened at this point? The likeness of a fiery lion cub emerged from the Holy of Holies. The Talmud here has an image of the evil inclination for idolatry, not as some grotesque, horrible-looking thing coming out of hell, but as a lion. A lion is a glorious creature. And this lion cub comes out of where? It emerges from the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Isn't that an odd place to be the residence of the evil inclination for idolatry? The prophet said to Israel, "This is the evil inclination for idolatry." And they seized it. And as they seized it, a hair slipped from its mane, and the fiery cub raised its voice in a mighty roar, whose sound went out over an area of 400 parasangs. They said to the prophet, "What shall we do? Perhaps, God forbid, heaven will have mercy on it. Maybe God's not going to allow us to destroy this evil inclination for idolatry." So the prophet replied, "Cast the fiery cub into a lead cauldron and cover the opening with lead, because lead absorbs sound."
Then the men of the Great Assembly said, "Since it's now a time of divine favor, look what we're able to do. We were able to capture the evil inclination for idolatry and lock it up." So they said, "We're on a roll. Since at the time of divine favor, let us also pray for the evil inclination for sexual immorality to be subdued before us." So they prayed, and it too was delivered into their hands. Whereupon the evil inclination for immorality said to them, "Look, if you kill me, the world will become desolate."
So what did they do? They imprisoned it for three days. And during this time, they tried to find a freshly laid egg throughout the entire land of Israel, and they were not able to find a freshly laid egg during those three days. They with us in a quandary. And they said, "What should we do? Shall we kill it? No, we can't kill it because the whole world will go desolate. Shall we pray that half the inclination be subdued? Meaning, maybe we should pray that God should only subdue the inclination for forbidden sexual relationships, but not forbid the inclination towards normal sexual relationships or permitted ones." So the Talmud says, "No, heaven does not grant half measures. Once something's in force, it's in force."
So what did they do? They blinded its eyes and they released it. And what did this accomplish? It accomplished that a man does not become aroused to it, aroused by it, to sin with his forbidden relatives. Meaning, at one time in history, the evil inclination for having relations with close relatives was rampant. And apparently, they were able to ensure that that was no longer widespread, that normal people that were not immoral, that were not corrupt, would not be attracted anymore by their close relatives.
So what do we see from this passage in the Talmud? That the impulse for forbidden sexual relationships is one and the same with the biological urge to reproduce. And you can't separate them. Eliminating one, eliminating this urge, would destroy all life on our planet. So what we see is that all of our drives and all of our emotions, like jealousy and lust and competition and honor-seeking and greed and ambition, all of these drives that we have, ultimately drive the world. They are the engine that moves the world, and they're the fuel in the tank of life, and they allow for progress if they're harnessed properly.
Someone once came to the prophet, I spoke about the prophet Zhaim, I believe in previous weeks. He was a great sage who lived in Europe and passed away around the year 1933. So someone once came to the prophet Zhaim and complained. He says, "What can I do about my 'yetzer hara'? It hounds me all the time and doesn't give me a moment to rest." So the Zhaim answered him, "You know what? You're very fortunate to have a 'yetzer hara.' You should be very happy because," he said, "without its attempts to influence you and without all of the obstacles it puts in your way, being righteous would mean nothing. There's no virtue in choosing the good life when there's no viable alternative. If there's no viable alternative to the good life, there's not much virtue in choosing it." Life would be meaningless. The prophet Zhaim tells him, "Without your 'yetzer hara'."
And the Rebbe went on to explain that we can be compared. Human beings can be compared to clocks. Each one of us is like a clock. And in a clock, the sage said, there were two movements in every clock, at least in the clocks they had back then. One movement drives the gears forward, and the other holds them back. And this ensures that they are moving forward in a controlled way. And the prophet Zhaim said, "It only, it's the only the balance of these opposing forces that allows the clock to function properly, with the hour and minute hands moving forward accurately in step with the passing of time." So he said, "We too, each one of us, are caught between two opposing forces. Our 'yetzer tov,' our good inclination, pulling in one direction, and our 'yetzer hara,' our evil inclination, pulling in the opposite direction. When we resist the lure of the negative, we're able to move forward, but positively, in our lives."
The Babylonian Talmud, in Tractate Brachot 17a, teaches the following: Rabbi Alexandri would add at the end of his prayers. Each of the rabbis would tell us when they finished their formal prayers, they added their own private, personal prayer. And the Talmud tells us a number of these personal prayers. So Rabbi Alexandri would add at the end of his prayer the following: "Master of the Universe, it is clearly known to You that our wish is to do Your will. You know, God, that we really want to be nice boys and girls. What then prevents us? The yeast in the dough and our enslavement by the nations of the world." The fact that the Jewish nation is constantly persecuted by the nations of the world and makes it difficult for us to serve God properly. But I want to focus on the first of what he says, the yeast in the dough.
So we're told that the "yetzer hara" is like the yeast in the dough. When controlled, the fermentation caused by the yeast creates bread which supports life. But when uncontrolled, the dough turns sour and inedible. So too, if man's drive for pleasure is properly harnessed, that gives us the impetus to conquer nature and provide the means for us to have human life and to survive and prosper. But if our drives for pleasure are left unharnessed, then jealousy, pleasure-seeking, and lust for glory will drive us out of the world. Our human personality will decay and disintegrate.
And this understanding of the evil inclination is also reflected in a passage from the Talmud, Tractate Kiddushin 30b, where it says, "The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to Israel, 'My son, I have created the 'yetzer hara,' the evil inclination, and I have created the Torah as its antidote.' If you involve yourself with the Torah, you will not be delivered into the hands of the 'yetzer hara.'"
Now, this reading that I just shared with you is the way this passage in the Talmud is normally read, and it sees the "yetzer hara" as a problem, like a virus or a poison that needs an antidote. Right? "I've created the 'yetzer hara,' and the Torah is its antidote." But that's not really an accurate translation of the Hebrew. The actual Hebrew says that the Torah is not an antidote, but "tavlin." That's the word that's used. The Torah is "tavlin" to the "yetzer hara." "Tavlin" means spice. "Tavlin" are spices.
So what we see from this passage in the Talmud is that the Torah is not an antidote to the "yetzer hara." Rather, the Torah spices up the "yetzer hara." What does this mean? So in this analogy, the Torah is spice, and the "yetzer hara" is our food. The "yetzer hara" is not some disease or some poison. The "yetzer hara" is our food, and the Torah is a spice to spice the food. As we've said, our "yetzer hara" is the entire range of our passions, our drives, and our desires. And these are the fuel of our lives. They're essential to life itself.
So what does spice do for food? So it directs the food to a particular taste and it enhances flavor. That's what spices do. It will make a particular food taste a certain way. You can spice the food to taste Italian or Indian or French. The food is often malleable. It depends on how you spice it. Similarly, the Torah gives direction to our drives and passions. The Torah gives direction to our "yetzer hara" to make it taste good. That's what the Torah is. It's a spice for our "yetzer hara" to make it taste good, to take the raw energy of our drives and to harness them in a positive direction.
The rabbis compare the relationship between our body and soul to the relationship between a horse and a rider. And they basically say that our body is like the horse, and our soul is like the rider. What does the horse want to do? The horse wants to be a horse. It wants to eat and sleep and run around and play with other horses and have a great time. That's what the horse wants to do. What does the rider want? The rider wants to give the horse direction. The rider wants to take that horse and make it go in a particular direction. It wants to harness the energy of the horse.
Why is it that our "yetzer hara" is so incredibly important? Sato explains in several of his works, including the "Dara Hashem," the Way of God, that God's purpose in creating mankind was to give us, to bestow upon human beings, the ultimate pleasure that we can have. God is good. God is a giver. The nature of good is to want to give, to want to bestow goodness. And so God wants to give human beings, not just any pleasure, the ultimate pleasure. And God wants to have human beings ultimately receive the ultimate pleasure that's possible in life. It's not a big car, and it's not dark chocolate. It's not even a trip to Fiji. These are all wonderful things, but there is a Creator of all these things. And every pleasure and every beauty in the world points above and beyond itself to its Creator. So if you think that the creations are pleasurable and wonderful, imagine how much more incredible it is to connect with the source of all those pleasures.
And so what Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto teaches us is that we are put in this world to be able to have the ultimate pleasure possible in life, which is to connect with God and to have a relationship with God, to know God. Now, the truth is that if God wanted to do this, it seems He could have done it in a much more effective way than He did. He put us in a world that's physical, not spiritual, where we have a physical body, we live in a physical world where there are tremendous distractions, tremendous obstacles to connecting with God. There are many things that compete for our attention. And so if God really wanted to give human beings the benefit of closeness with Him, so God could have simply created us and placed us in a totally spiritual existence, what we refer to as the world to come, or heaven, meaning a place where we're not encumbered and weighed down and distracted by our bodies and by the physical world around us. That would be the most direct way of giving people the experience of ultimate pleasure.
So why did God put us in a physical world with physical bodies, with a "yetzer hara" that militates so strongly against spirituality and against spiritual growth? So our sages say that the reason is because if we get something as a handout without working for it, it's not pleasurable. It's referred to in the Kabbalistic literature as the "bread of shame." Imagine two people who each are wearing an Olympic medal. One of them trained for 10 years and had to compete in semi-finals and finals and finally the finals in the Olympics after years and years and years of preparation and competition and finally reaching the Olympics, they win the gold medal, and now they're able to wear that with pride. And imagine someone else who buys a gold medal on eBay. They will not walk around with the same pride in that gold medal. As a matter of fact, they might feel foolish and embarrassed by it. "What did I do to deserve this?" "Nothing."
So when we get things that we didn't deserve, we didn't work for them, it's not pleasurable. It's the opposite. We're embarrassed by it. That's why the evil inclination is so critically important. It gives us the opportunity of living a life of choice, where we're not born and created into a relationship with God. We have to choose to have a relationship with God. Because a relationship that you don't choose, a relationship you are forced into, is not really a relationship. And so we're in a world of choice. We're in a world where the "yetzer hara" seems to present seemingly viable alternatives to God's will.
Rabbi Pinchas Karitz, the great Hasidic Rebbe, said that there's no possibility of good without the possibility of at the same time choosing evil. So our "yetzer hara" plays a critical role to allow us to have free will and to choose a relationship with God and to choose a life of virtue, and therefore thereby grow spiritually and to make ourselves into fitting vessels so that one day we will be able to live in a purely spiritual realm, which we refer to as the world to come.
Ultimately, we know we can only grow spiritually when we overcome resistance. Much in the same way that we build our muscles in a gym by lifting weights, we only grow spiritually by overcoming resistance. When we encounter a spiritual obstacle, when we run head-on into something that obstructs our spiritual growth, we are forced to climb over it. And this isn't easy. It can actually be incredibly difficult. But the Torah assures us that we are capable of doing it. And it's through overcoming these obstacles that we're able to grow.
In the very beginning of scripture, of the Bible, God says to Cain, in the fourth chapter of Bereshit, in the seventh verse, God says to him, "Surely, if you improve, you will be forgiven. But if you do not improve yourself, sin will rest at the door. Its desire is toward you, but you can conquer it." God is telling Cain, and really all of humanity, that we will always be tempted by sin. Sin will always be crouching at the door. But God tells us we have the ability to rule over it. We have the ability to master it.
We see similarly in the book of Devarim, in Deuteronomy chapter 30. God tells us that He places before us today life and good, death and evil. That's the choice we have before of us. Before us, "that which I command you today: to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to observe His commandments, His decrees, His ordinances, that you will live and you will multiply, and Hashem your God will bless you in the land to which you came to possess it." And He goes on to say in verse 19, "I call heaven and earth today to bear witness that I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse, and you shall choose life, so that you will live, you and your offspring."
So God says to us, we have a life of balance. We have a good inclination, we have an evil inclination, and we are given the ability to choose. It's not beyond our capability. But again, it can become very, very difficult.
One of the stories in the Bible where we see this is in the story of Joseph. Joseph is referred to in our literature as Yosef HaTzadik, Joseph the Righteous One. And in the 39th chapter of Genesis, we're told of this incredible trial that he was placed into. We're told that Joseph was someone who was handsome of form, handsome of appearance. And we're told that Potiphar's wife, his master's wife, cast her eyes upon Joseph, and she said, "Lie with me." But he adamantly refused. And he said to his master's wife, "Look, with me here, my master concerns himself about nothing in the house, and whatever he has placed in my custody, there is no one greater in this house than I. And he has denied me nothing but you, since you're his wife. How then can I perpetrate this great evil and sin against God?"
And so it was, just as she coaxed Joseph day after day, day after day, she tried to seduce him. And he was a young man. He was a young man. She would not listen to him, and she would continue to try to coax him, but he would not listen to her to lie beside her, to be with her. And then there was an opportune day when he entered the house to do his work, no man of the household staff being there in the house. So here, it wasn't just her flirting with him. Here, she was now totally alone with him. And she caught him by his garment, saying, "Lie with me." But he ran out and left the garment in her hand, and he fled and went outside.
And in describing his resistance, Torah uses the word "vayima'en," that he refused all of her overtures. Torah says he refused. But was it easy? So we have the trope of the Torah, the the musical notes of the Torah. Only four times, I believe, only four times does this particular sound appear in the Five Books of Moses. It's called a "Shalshelet," and it's a very long note. I can't do it that well, but the way it might sound is as if to say, "He was torn." He went back and forth. He was very tempted to be with her. It wasn't easy. It was a struggle. And his back and forth struggle is reflected in this word that he refused. It wasn't a simple refusal.
And so we're told that even though resisting the evil inclination can be very, very difficult, we're able to do it. We don't only grow by the way from our victories over our evil inclination. We can also grow from our defeats. The book of Proverbs, King Solomon says in chapter 24, verse 16, "For a righteous person will fall seven times, but they will get up." Now, people often understand this to mean that the nature of a righteous person is that even though they might fall seven times, they'll get up. But Rav Nehemiah, the great Rosh Yeshiva of Ha'aretz, Berlin, says that's not what it means. What is teaching you is not what a righteous person does, but how a person becomes righteous. They become righteous through falling down seven times and getting up. Because they learn from their failures, they grow from their failures, and they correct their mistakes. And it's through that process of picking themselves up after defeat and learning from their mistakes and growing from their mistakes that they grow. And that's what helps them become a "tzadik," a righteous person.
The "yetzer hara" is like our personal trainer. And it will keep on challenging us. When you begin playing chess or any other game or sport, your competition doesn't need to be on the greatest level. You don't have a world champion playing against someone that's just beginning. You normally play with people on your level. So beginners will play with beginners. But the better you get, the stiffer your competition will get. The world champion is going to play people who are on a very, very high level. They're going to play the best players in the world. Their competition seeks to beat them. But what they do is they bring out the best in their opponent.
The most famous chess competition rivalry in modern history was between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov. They played dozens and dozens and dozens of games together, and they were bitter rivals. In his time, they would say that Garry Kasparov was the greatest chess player of the age. But what made him the greatest chess player of his time? It was Anatoly Karpov. His greatest enemy was ultimately his greatest friend, his greatest beneficiary. Because without an opponent being able to play on that highest level against him, he would not rise to the level that he ultimately rose to.
The Talmud, in Tractate Sukkah, teaches us something amazing. It says, "In the future time, the Holy One, Blessed be He, will bring the evil inclination and slaughter it in the presence of the righteous and in the presence of the wicked." To the righteous, the evil inclination will appear like a high mountain that can hardly be scaled. And to the wicked, it will appear like a strand of hair that can easily be snapped. These will weep, and these will also weep. The righteous will weep and say, "How are we ever able to overcome such a high mountain?" And the wicked will weep and say, "How were we not able to overcome this strand of hair?"
The Talmud cites afterwards a similar teaching. The evil inclination initially resembles a spider's thread, and ultimately it resembles the rope of a cart. What the Talmud is teaching is that in the beginning, the evil inclination looks like a spider's thread. It can be snapped very easily. As the righteous person overcomes that thread, it grows and it grows and it grows until the evil inclination for a righteous person becomes like a tall mountain, a huge obstacle. Because the Talmud tells us, our "yetzer hara" grows with us. As we become on a higher level, our competition has to become on a higher level. But to the wicked person who never defeated their opponent in the beginning, the "yetzer hara" for them remains a thread. So that when the "yetzer hara" will finally be exposed in the front of their eyes, the wicked person will say, "How is it possible? I was never able to defeat that." And the righteous person will will marvel at how they were able to overcome a mountain.
In our daily recitation of the Shema, the great declaration of Jewish faith, we speak about serving God with all of our heart. "Levavcha." And the Holy in Tractate 54a teaches that this word can be understood to serve God with both of our hearts. That we're supposed to serve God with both our "yetzer tov." And how is it possible to serve God with our evil inclination? So what it means is that we're supposed to, in the same way, spice the "yetzer hara." And we're supposed to be that rider to the horse. So we're supposed to harness and co-opt, we're supposed to harness and co-opt the passions and drives and energies of the evil inclination and use those energies and drives and passions to get closer to God and to grow spiritually.
For example, each one of us has inside, we get jealous. We have to struggle with being jealous of other people. Or we have ambition, competition. We want to compete with others. So the sages speak about "kinat sofrim," become jealous of other people's spiritual progress. Don't become jealous of their house or their possessions or other things, but maybe become jealous of their spiritual accomplishments. If someone you see or you know has accomplished tremendous things in studying the Bible, studying Torah, it's good to be jealous of them, if that will spur you on to becoming a better student.
Ultimately, the sages teach us, we should not see the evil inclination as an enemy. There's a very wild passage in the Talmud, Tractate Kiddushin 81, where there was a sage named Plimo. And we're told that Plimo used to curse Satan every day, saying, "An arrow in the eyes of Satan." So we're told that once on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Satan appeared to him in the guise of a poor man. And the Satan came and knocked on the door of Plimo. So Plimo gave him some bread. And the poor man said, "On a day like today, when everybody is inside their home, you leave me standing outside the home." So Plimo brought him into the house and gave him some bread to eat. But the poor man said, "On a day like today, when everybody sits around the table, I should sit alone, not with the rest of your family." So he seated him at the table. And as he was sitting there, he caused himself to break out in festering sores, and he behaved in an obnoxious manner. So Plimo said to him, "Sit properly. Be quiet." So he said, "Let me have a glass of wine." So Plimo poured him a glass of wine, and he vomited and spit up into the cup. And Plimo reprimanded him for this repulsive behavior. And he then pretended to drop dead. Everyone inside the house heard people outside saying, "Plimo has killed someone." So ran away and hid himself in a toilet at the outskirts of the town. Don't forget, this is the eve of Yom Kippur. And Plimo now has to take refuge in a public toilet at the outskirts of the city. And the Satan followed him. And when Plimo saw him, he fell down in front of the Satan. And when he, the Satan, saw how much Plimo was suffering, he revealed, he revealed himself to him. Satan said, "This, this is me. I'm the Satan. I'm the 'yetzer hara.' Why did you curse me, saying 'a curse in Satan's eye, an arrow in Satan's eye'? Why did you do that?" The Satan asked him. So Plimo said, "What else should I say to prevent, to prevent you from enticing me to sin?" And so the Satan said, "You should rather say, 'Let the Merciful One remove Satan from his job.' Meaning, just ask God to let me off your back. Don't ask God to put an arrow in my eye. Don't see me as some horrible, evil enemy."
The Midrash even tells us that we, as a people, complain to God about having free will. And we ask God to remove the "yetzer hara." We don't want this. And they complained and they said, "If a potter leaves a pebble in the clay and the jar leaks and leaks, is the potter not responsible? Here you're making a pot, and you left a pebble in the clay, and the pot then leaks. Isn't the potter responsible?" So the Israelites said to God, "You have left the evil inclination in us. Remove it, and we will do Your will. We'll be able to serve You without any problems." So God replied, "I'll do this in the time to come." Meaning, in the afterlife, when you don't need to have the "yetzer hara" anymore, that's when we'll take care of it. But now, we need to have our "yetzer hara."
The truth is that our sages teach us that the "yetzer hara" is wishing all along that we will resist it. The "yetzer hara" is rooting for us and hoping that we'll be able to best it in battle. One of the places this is seen is in the famous passage in the book of Bereshit, in Genesis chapter 32. We're told there that Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. Who is this mysterious wrestling opponent? It's certainly not clear. But the Midrash and our sages identify this man with the Satan, with the evil inclination. And Jacob has an all-night wrestling match with this Satan. Now, again, this is obviously, in many ways, symbolic and is telling us that Jacob engaged in an incredible battle with his inclination, with his evil inclination, that night. That's a long fight, all night long.
We're told that when the break of dawn came, and he perceived he could not overcome Jacob, he struck the socket of his hip. So Jacob's hip socket was dislocated as he wrestled with him. And then the angel said, "Let me go, for dawn has broken." And Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." What's going on here? So the Kitzur Maggid, one of the great Hasidic masters, said that when the angel says to Jacob, "Let me go, for I have to go ultimately and sing praises to God. I have to sing "shira" because the angel is saying that my mission has been accomplished. I wrestled all night with you. I was hoping you would defeat me, and you did. I was not able to trip you up." And so the angel says that I have a time of great joy now. I'm thrilled, the angel says to Jacob, because I have to go now and sing praises to God. I've succeeded in perfecting a human being.
Why is it that Jacob wants to get a blessing from Satan? Why is it that Jacob wants the "yetzer hara" to bless him? So the Be'er Mayim Chayyim, a great Hasidic master, says because Jacob understands that he can only be blessed in life if he has an evil inclination to wrestle with. That ultimately, blessing comes to each of us not by having a life with no struggles, not by having a life with no obstacles, not by having a life with no difficulties, but by facing our struggles and our difficulties and our obstacles and overcoming them. Jacob doesn't want to give up his hold on Satan. He doesn't want to let go. And he says, ultimately, "I want you to bless me because that's where blessing can come from in life."
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