Face of Evil

Gut Yontif - Shanah tovah!

This summer my family and I spent a few days in New York City. During our stay we visited the relatively new Jewish Heritage Museum. For me, one of the most striking displays at the Museum was on the 2nd floor. It was a room filled with pillars upon which were thousands of photos of people who perished in the Holocaust. Beneath each pillar of photos was a book telling the stories of the people in the photos displayed above. Reading through the book humanized the loss of our people during the dark night of the Holocaust in a way most exhibits do not. It took me beyond mere statistics, and personalized the tragedy. As I read the stories and looked at the faces of mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, sisters and brothers I was reminded yet again of the power of human evil. Confronting the evil of the Holocaust is not new. Yet, this display touched me in a different way. It touched me in much the same way that reading the stories about the families and dreams of the victims of terrorist bombings does. And it was very much like the series of vignettes which ran each and every day in the New York Times following the horrific events of 9/11. These vignettes brought the reality of the victims and their stories to life.

Our hotel was in lower Manhattan's Battery Park City. At the time I made our reservations I did not realize that our room was just across the street from Ground Zero. At one point during our stay we walked around the massive site. Now cleaned of the debris of 9/11 and given over to construction, the cavernous crater is haunting. I could not help but recall the faces of those people whose pictures we'd seen - in news reports, newspapers, and on flyers posted around the city in the days and weeks after the horrific events of that day. As we made our way around the massive site I learned the area has become not only a site to which people come to reflect and pay their respects, but it has also taken on somewhat of a carnival atmosphere, with vendors selling all manner of memorabilia - books, tapes, buttons, postcards, t-shirts, hats and the like. Although in truth, I was hardly surprised, I was deeply offended. I wanted to shake these merchants. I wanted to scream, "How dare you turn this place and the tragic events that transpired here into a money-making venture." I didn't say anything. But I was very troubled as we made our way around the site and I remained so in the days after.

Okay, maybe it's the American-way to turn nearly everything into an opportunity. Yet, I was haunted by what I'd seen. What would make someone want to cash in on so horrific an event? What is it in our human make-up that leads someone to profit from the losses of others? Is there something in the human dynamic that drives some to commit evil acts, and others to seek profit even from tragedy, to gain even from devastating loss? I remembered that in this same spot two years ago, the world witnessed both the best and the worst of human behavior. I found myself reflecting not only on what I had seen, but also on conversations I've had with numerous people over the past year. It strikes me that more and more people are concerned with the state of our world and of humanity. Why is there so much evil in our world? Why do human beings, who are capable of such incredible good, so often do things of questionable moral character? Our visit in lower Manhattan this summer reminded me that our Jewish tradition has much to say on this topic. Indeed, Judaism teaches that the question of evil is not a simple one. My visit to New York reminded me of our tradition's clear differentiation between the type of evil represented by the acts recalled on the second floor of the Jewish Heritage Museum or at a site such as Ground Zero and other, surely less sinister, but questionable human behaviors. In the eyes of Jewish tradition acts such as those of people looking to profit from the tragedy and location of Ground Zero fit this less admirable category of human behavior. They are surely not evil in the same way as those of the Nazis or the terrorists of 9-11. But they, too, constitute a part of the larger picture of Judaism's understanding of evil.

Put simply, Jewish tradition recognizes that good and evil are part of what we commonly call the human condition. Our Rabbis teach that human beings were created with two inclinations. One is what they call the yetzer ha-tov - or the "inclination to good." In their book The Jewish Moral Virtues, Rabbi Eugene Borowitz and Francie Schwartz define the Yetzer ha-tov as "our angelic good impulse." Our other inclination is what the Rabbis call the yetzer ha-rah. Borowitz and Schwartz define the yetzer ha-rah as our "lusty urge to do evil." Life, as the Rabbis view it, is a struggle between these two inclinations, our "angelic good impulse" and our "lusty urge to do evil." Some, like philosopher Martin Buber, suggest that we can understand rah as something other than absolute evil. Buber suggests that some forms of evil can be looked upon as that which is "not-yet good," thereby recognizing the potential for good in nearly everything. Either way, it is important to note that in their characterization of yetzer ha-tov and yetzer ha-rah the Rabbis do not mean to infer that we are born either good or evil. They reject that notion. Rather, they look to the Torah and teach that we are created as free agents, capable of making free choices. However, as free agents we are still subject to struggling with these two variant impulses. And we wrestle with them every day of our lives. In the eyes of the Rabbis, both the yetzer ha-tov and the yetzer ha-rah are natural and normal. They are a part of the human condition.

In a Midrash Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahman teaches: "(In the story of creation we read following each of God's acts of creation) the words 'Behold, it was good.' (These words) refer to the yetzer ha-tov, the impulse to good. (Yet after the creation of human beings we read ) the words 'Behold, it was very good.' (These words) refer to the yetzer ha-rah, the impulse to evil." Rabbi Shmuel wonders, "How can the impulse to evil be termed 'very good'?" He explains that "(Our tradition) teaches that were it not for the yetzer ha-rah, a man would not build a house, take a wife, beget children, or engage in commerce. All such activities come, as King Solomon noted, 'from a man's rivalry with his neighbor.'"

According to Rabbi Shmuel, our sense of creativity, of competition, our drive to be better than we are comes not from our inclination to good, but rather from our yetzer ha-rah, our inclination to do that which is not-yet good. He is not suggesting that creativity is evil. Rather, he is suggesting that of our two competing urges, the "angelic urge to do good" and the "lusty urge to do evil" it is our yetzer ha-rah, that makes life interesting. It is our inclination to evil that drives us to form new relationships, to try to new things, to take risks. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Twerski, our yetzer ha-rah represents "the desire within us to satisfy all material and bodily urges." I saw this form of yetzer ha-rah in the commercialization of Ground Zero. These were not evil acts like those which caused the tragedy which took place at that spot. But profiting from the tragedy sure seemed to be that "lusty urge," the creative side of life borne by the yetzer ha-rah.

The Rabbis teach it is our task to hold both of our inclinations in check, in balance. They teach that through study, prayer, deeds of loving-kindness and acts of tikkun olam we enable our yetzer ha-tov to overwhelm our darker urge. They believe these acts help us harness our yetzer ha-rah so that we control it, rather than allowing it to control us. Again, Rabbi Twerski teaches, "The ability to choose the yetzer ha-tov over the yetzer ha-rah, and to strive for moral perfection is unique to the human being . . . The ability to volitionally improve oneself is distinctly human." It is, he says, part of what makes us different from animals.

The Rabbis teach that we cannot escape the reality of the yetzer ha-rah. Indeed, we need it. Properly harnessed, our yetzer ha-rah can and should drive us to be creative and even competitive at times. Yet, we are responsible to ensure that it never overwhelms us. As we struggle to harness it for creativity and drive, tradition insists that our yetzer ha-rah must not be used for evil purposes. And in the case of most people, it is not.

Is the yetzer ha-rah some sort of manufacturing defect? Is God to blame for creating human beings in a flawed manner which lays the groundwork for acts that are evil. The Talmudic answer is no. Yetzer Ha-rah is not about something that went wrong in the process of creation. In tandem with our God-given free will, our yetzer ha-rah is that quality within us which ensures that we are not robots programmed to respond in predetermined ways. Our struggle between our two urges involves free choice. It engages our minds as well as our hearts as we face life's various challenges.

Following the Rabbinic line of thinking we can point to examples, both in history as well as in our own time, of people whose yetzer ha-rah, whose inclination to evil, has clearly overwhelmed any inclination to good and, as it were, won the upper hand. Viewing our world through this Rabbinic prism, the past several years have certainly given us too much painful evidence of individuals whose yetzer harah is not only engaged, but in control. Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, suicide bombers who fly planes into buildings and who blow up buses filled with men, women and children, envisioning their acts as martyrdom leading them immediately to paradise. For me, these are living models of yetzer ha-rah uncontrolled. They define evil and our tradition instructs that we must fight against such evil acts, and as well as against those who commit them.

Yet, if we are to change the course of events; If we are to change the tenor of the world in which we live, we cannot look to all the shortcomings of our world in those whose acts of evil are larger than life. We are not responsible for the evil done by others. We are not responsible for their yetzer ha-rah. But we are most assuredly responsible for responding to such to evil. We must train ourselves, and our children, to recognize and stand up against such evil. At the same time, we must also train ourselves, and our children in the task of harnessing our own yetzer ha-rah. It is our task to use the time granted us, our lives, our hearts, our minds, our hands and our feet to fight against evil and to live the good.

The liturgy of our shofar service this day proclaims: HAYOM HARAT OLAM - "This is the day of our world's birth. This day all creatures stand before You, whether as children or as servants. As we are Your children, show us a parent's compassion; as we are servants, we look to You for mercy: shed the light of Your judgment upon us, holy and awesome God." As we enter this period of judgment, it is not simply that we stand in judgment before some power beyond us. We must also judge our own lives. How have I contributed to good in this world? How have I stood up to evil and against evil? How have I worked to control my desires, my passions, and to harness them so that my yetzer ha-rah functions in a healthy balance with my ultimate drive for good - to do good, to be good, to seek good. On this Yom Harat Olam, this day when we celebrate the world's birth, our Rabbis urge us to face human nature and the world with our eyes open to reality. They teach us to acknowledge the reality and even the pervasiveness of evil in our world. At all levels, on this day we are called to remember and celebrate the goodness of creation. We must reach for the good and not wallow in that which is "not-yet-good" in our world.

About a week after the attacks of 9/11 scientist Stephen Jay Gould wrote an op-ed piece which was published in the New York Times. Gould had been in New York with his family when the airplanes hit the World Trade Center Towers. In the aftermath of the attacks people were lamenting the evil that exists in the world. Gould wanted to put the good and evil experienced in human history into some sort of perspective. Drawing on his experience as a scientist of human and animal development Gould wrote: "We need to expose and celebrate the fallacy of [the] conclusion [that there is somehow an equal balance between decent and depraved people.] . . . In this moment of crisis, we [must] affirm an essential truth too easily forgotten, and regain some crucial comfort too readily forgone. Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. . . In what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, ever spectacular incidents of evil will be balanced by10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the 'ordinary' efforts of a vast majority." Gould observed that in the week after the attack Ground Zero became "the focal point for a vast web of bustling goodness, channeling uncountable deeds of kindness from an entire planet. [These] acts must be recorded to reaffirm the overwhelming weight of human decency." In 9-11 we saw both sides of the Rabbinic equation. We saw some of the worst that the yetzer ha-rah can produce. Yet, in response, we also saw many more examples of what our yetzer ha-tov - our natural, human inclination to do good can produce. As devastated as we were by the evil, let us not forget how touched, moved and inspired we were by the good.

Today begins a New Year. Today is Day One. In the eyes of Jewish tradition it is YOM HARAT OLAM - the anniversary of the birth of our world. What better gift could we give our world - and our family, friends, neighbors, strangers - and yes, ourselves - than to use these days as a time to recommit ourselves to the pursuit of good. So many of us view the beginning of the New Year as an opportunity for a fresh start. Let us embrace that opportunity, recognizing that we have within our hands the power to harness both of our inborn, natural human inclinations - to good and that which is not-yet good.

At Ground Zero I was stunned by those selling trinkets and memorabilia. I came to recognize that, for better or for worse, their own yetzer ha-rah had driven them in that direction. At the Jewish Heritage Museum, as I reflected on the lives displayed before me, I was reminded yet again of how a person's yetzer ha-rah can be driven to unspeakable evil. Returning home, my heart and mind turned towards these days and my own yetzer ha-rah. I knew that the important lesson was - and is - to reflect on these two competing drives in my own life. For that is where I have the greatest power to make a difference, and God-willing, by extension a difference beyond my own life. So it is for each of us in the New Year which lies before us.

As Wendy Mogel writes in her book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, "While the yetzer ha-rah should be treated with extreme watchfulness, it must not be eliminated, because it is necessary for human survival. It's our juice, our spark, our zip. We live [most] fully by balancing two forces: our burning passions and our ability to exercise self-restraint." May the year before us, be for each of us, a year of worship, study, deeds of loving-kindness and acts of tikkun olam which enable us to find that balance, reaching for the good even as we harness our yetzer ha-rah to live most fully in the year ahead. L'shanah tovah tikateyvu - May you be inscribed for a good year!