Open Secrets

It is good that you are aware of your own personal capacity for evil, your own ability to rationalize selfishness and excuse wickedness. Admitting this is the first step to controlling it. Now you are concerned that we humans are innately evil, something you heard from a Christian neighbor.

You are right to be concerned. But you are wrong to equate what I said with what you have heard. Talk of original sin is totally alien to Judaism, though it is a good way for me to introduce the Jewish view of human nature.

As I understand it, and I admit to having but a surface knowledge of this teaching, it is the position of the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, that the sin of Adam and Eve is carried by all humanity. Each of us is born bearing that original sin of the original human couple. And the only way to free ourselves from this sin is to believe in Jesus of Nazareth as the only begotten son of God, for in exchange for our belief he will cleanse us of our sin.

While I am in no position to claim the Church is wrong, I can say quite simply that nowhere in the story of Adam and Eve does Torah speak of sin. True, the first couple disobeyed the command of God, but this is not called a sin in Torah.

Read your Torah carefully and tell me why Eve violated the only commandment God had laid upon her. “And the woman perceived that the tree was good for eating, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable as a means to wisdom, and she took of its fruit and ate....” (Genesis 3:6).

Torah does not waste words. Why not simply say: the woman ate? That would have made the point if the point was eating. But the point is not eating. The point is why she ate.

First she sees that the tree is good for eating, but she does not eat. Then she sees that it is beautiful to look upon, but she does not eat. Only when she realizes that it is the source of wisdom does she eat.

Meaning? It is not desire or beauty that compels the human being, but wisdom, and in quest of wisdom we are willing to sacrifice everything. We are not driven by sin, but by the quest to know. A wonderful myth! A timeless message! So where is the original sin in this?

Jews do not see the eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil as the fall of humankind, but as its first step toward fulfilling its destiny. Life in Eden would never have resulted in the awakening of a mind capable of realizing Yesh and Ayn as the two poles of God. Eve and Adam had to leave paradise if they were to grow.

A second difference between Judaism and Christianity: We do not believe that we need the intervention of another to effect our getting right with God. We do not need faith in a messiah to mend our relationship with God. God is always waiting for us. All we need do is return, make teshuvah, pay attention to the present, and discover the Presence. Teshuvah and tikkun, returning to God and godliness, are totally up to us. It is a matter of will not faith.

Of all the differences between these two faiths, it is the matter of teshuvah that is the greatest. Christians do not believe in teshuvah. Ultimately only the Son of God can bring you back to God. There is nothing so un-Jewish as this. Our messiah returns us to Israel, our decision to make teshuvah returns us to God.

So when I say that human beings have the capacity for evil, I in no way mean to imply that we are born with some original sin that only a messiah can forgive.

Torah tells us clearly that we are created in the image of God, the One who is both Yesh and Ayn. As beings created in God’s image, we too must contain both Yesh and Ayn. And so we do. In human beings Yesh and Ayn appear as Yetzer haRah, our capacity for evil, and Yetzer haTov, our capacity for good.

The human equivalent of the divine Ayn, the Yetzer haTov is that innate human capacity for unity. Yetzer haTov is our ability to bridge differences, to build community, to effect harmony. Without the balancing vision of Yetzer haRah, however, it is also the tendency to erase diversity, to ignore uniqueness, to work toward a homogeneity that can be quite dull and even lifeless. Thus our sages taught that without the Yetzer haRah a person would not marry, or build a home, or raise a family, for these rely on our ability to differentiate and celebrate diversity (Genesis Rabbah 9:7).

Yetzer haRah, despite its unfortunate label, is the human capacity to honor differences, the human equivalent to the divine Yesh. Yetzer haRah sees differences where the Yetzer haTov sees sameness. Yetzer haRah sees every living thing as an entity unto itself, as unique and apart from the whole. Yetzer haTov sees no separate forms or beings, but the formless unity of God.

Why call Yetzer haRah rah, evil? Because without the balancing insight of the Yetzer haTov, the Yetzer haRah’s insistence on separate self and independence pits one life against another, destroying any hope for community, justice and compassion, all of which rely on the notion that we are at root one.

Yet a world without Yetzer haRah, a world run solely by Yetzer haTov is no less evil. For without the ability to recognize and respect individual differences, justice is reduced to conformity, compassion to pity and community to uniformity. A healthy world needs both Yetzer haRah and its welcoming of and respect for individuality, and Yetzer haTov with its insight into interdependence and harmony.

Let me try to set this in a more practical context.

When you walk in the forest and come upon an especially beautiful flower there is an immediate perception of beauty with no sense of I and Thou, self or flower. The selfless meeting with the flower arises from Yetzer haTov. No sense of separation exists. No “I” that sees or flower that is seen. There is only a sense of wonder and beauty. The self and the flower are one in Ayn, divine emptiness. Our initial encounter with the world of Yesh involves no sense of separate self, no “I.” There is only experience, awareness, knowing, but no self who experiences or is aware or knows. In a sense one can say that our initial encounter with Yesh is from the perspective of Ayn.

Almost immediately, however, the Yetzer haRah, the inclination for separation, is activated and we say to ourselves: “Ah, what a beautiful flower!” At that moment self is born. As soon as the flower’s beauty is known there must be a self that knows it. It is the Yetzer haRah, the inclination to discriminate between self and other, that interprets the experience and posits a self. We go from simple wonder and beauty to “I see the beautiful flower.”

Please do not imagine that one way of meeting is good and the other bad. Seeing the flower through the eyes of Yetzer haTov is no more a choice we make then is seeing the flower through the eyes of Yetzer haRah. Both are completely natural and necessary. This is simply the way we encounter the world. To encounter the world fully means to allow for and to understand both ways of seeing.

If you look closely at your meeting with the flower, you will also see that the initial selfless encounter is timeless. There is only the immediacy of beauty. As soon as the Yetzer haRah intervenes with a sense of self and other—I see a beautiful flower—time enters the equation.

Time and self are intimately connected. Indeed, the one cannot be without the other. That is why the experience of Ayn appears timeless. Self, time, form, and being are all of the same aspect of reality. End one and you end them all. The human cry for eternal life is but a misguided glimpse into the timeless nature of self-emptying into Ayn.

If the experience associated with the “I” is a pleasant one, the self seeks to hold on to it. If it is a negative one, the self seeks to avoid it. Both holding and avoiding lead to unnecessary suffering, because both fly in the face of the transitory nature of reality as experienced by self in time.

The world of Yesh is fleeting. It is the world of time, change, impermanence, and death. To seek to control your experiences in this world, either by clinging or avoiding, is to set yourself up for needless disappointment. And yet this is precisely what the Yetzer haRah tends to do.

As long as you live under the dictates of the Yetzer haRah, the illusion of separateness and independence, you will forever seek to control what happens to you. You will strive to hold on to pleasantness and avoid pain. You will go to great lengths to fulfill your desires, and when you are frustrated in your efforts, which must happen since you are not in control of what life brings, you become angry or despairing or both. As long as you identify solely with the Yetzer haRah you will be unbalanced, selfish, isolated, anxious, and prone to all sorts of physical and mental diseases.

When you understand the nature of God and yourself as a manifestation of God, you will allow form to be form and emptiness to be emptiness and each to embrace the other without rancor or upset.

Think on this and write me when you can.

B’Shalom