EVIL

My dearest Aaron Hershel,

 

I am pleased you have such a deep mind and are willing to wrestle with my often jumbled thoughts. These letters have given me a chance to sort out my thinking somewhat, but I still have a long way to go. But of course the real joy of your last letter was the word about the impending marriage between you and Sarah Leah!

You had not mentioned that there was a woman in your life, and so to read of your engagement was such a surprise. There is no need to explain why you kept her a secret. I was in love once, and preferred to keep my feelings quiet until I was certain of them. I did not wish to become burdened with feelings I did not feel simply because I once loudly announced that I felt them.

When I was ready I spoke to Faige’s father, may they both rest in peace. It was not a pretty sight. I hope your experience was better than mine. I had so little to offer. I wanted to be a scholar, he wanted someone to go into business. I wanted to teach, he wanted someone who could sell. I could never have convinced him. I think it was his daughter that turned him in my favor. She had that power over him. Over me as well. We should talk about death and grief some time.

But not now. Now you want to talk about evil. If the task of humanity is to know God, how is it that we experience such evil? Could there be a more difficult query? And yet I can tell by the way you write of evil that you grasp much.

You are right to go back to first principles, to the dual nature of God as Yesh and Ayn. Good and evil are twins birthed by the singular source and substance of all reality. Thus we read: “I am the Source and Substance of Reality, there is nothing else. I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I, the Source and Substance of All, do all this,” (Isaiah 45:6–7).

Evil is not the opposite of God, evil is a manifestation of God. What then is the purpose of evil? Why does God allow evil to exist? You answer wisely: It is not a matter of purpose and allowing, it is a matter of the unconditional nature of God’s shlemut. If God is God, God must contain all possibility, everything and its opposite. Good and evil are but two of the infinite possibilities of God.

All this you understood on your own. Excellent. I cannot tell you the joy I feel at the mind you have. So now let us go a bit deeper, for while the possibility of evil is of God and therefore necessary to the divine shlemut, the various manifestations of evil are not always necessary.

I shall speak of two types of evil: necessary evil and unnecessary evil. The first refers to the simple sorrows of everyday life: accident, sickness, old age, death. The second refers to the wickedness we humans inflict upon each other and the world around us.

The first is necessary or natural because it arises from the fleeting and transient nature of the world of Yesh, our everyday world of seemingly separate selves. Suffering, old age, death, accident, natural disaster, all the pain that arises from the passing of time and circumstance—these are called evil by those of us who imagine ourselves to be separate and permanent beings. They are called evil because they thwart our desires and, in the case of death, shatter the façade of our own permanence. In fact, most of what we call evil is simply the order of things in time and space. For all the pain this causes, there is no real evil here.

The proper response to the natural suffering caused by necessary evil is to grieve and accept. Free from the illusion of separation and permanence we are able to embrace the natural suffering of impermanent reality with a deep sense of grace and perhaps even humor. We understand that sickness, accidents, the ending of relations both business and personal, old age, and death are all part of the nature of Yesh, and while we do what we can to minimize these we do not pretend that we can eliminate them.

One who understands the nature of Yesh opens to a deep calm that allows one to feel fully and respond constructively to whatever life brings.

There is a story about Rabbi Akiva who was once lost in a shipwreck at sea. He alone survived, and when asked how he did so he said, “Whenever a wave arouse I bent into it.” He bent to the wave and it washed over him. This is how we are to live in the world: bending into what happens and allowing it to wash over us rather than to sweep us away.

So much for dealing with the natural or necessary evil of the world. Let us turn to what I call real or unnecessary evil. Unnecessary evil is the evil we humans do when we refuse to fulfill the dual human obligation of teshuvah and tikkun, returning to God and repairing the world with godliness. Real evil happens when we act in ways that disrupt unity, that foster discord, that promote division, hatred, and fear.

How does this evil arise? Real evil arises from an inability to get beyond Neshamah, the hard-packed ego we are supposed to till, and to love another as oneself.

Last year the winter was harsher than most. The cold was unbearable, especially for the aged and very young. There were some in our village who called the cold evil, but this is foolish. It was winter and it was cold. Nothing more. But there was evil that winter. The evil came in the decision to raise the price of firewood so high that many of us could not afford to purchase enough to warm our homes.

My point is this: Real evil is an act of self-gratification that disregards the worth and holiness of other beings. Real evil is generated by a self out of touch with life, a self cut off from the oneness of God and the compassion, love, and justice that oneness commands.

What is the antidote to such evil? Tilling the soil of self and selfishness; letting in the breath of life that awakens the self to its true nature as a being created in the image and likeness of God whose purpose is to serve life through love. Unless and until the self is broken open before the Greater Unity of God there is no hope for real compassion, justice, or love. And how do we make for self-opening? Through the practice of teshuvah and tikkun, continually returning our attention to God and our behavior to godliness.

Look for yourself and see.

 

B’Shalom