פרשת נח
This week’s Parsha records the decay and decadence of the moral fabric of the human race post-creation. The Torah reveals that it had gotten so bad, that God decided to bring a complete end to all life on this earth. The verse says, “Man’s desire was solely to do evil the entire day”. However, God saw that Noach was righteous and therefore decided to save only him while he brought the deluge onto the rest of the earth. The Torah then goes on to tell us that when Noach exited the ark, he built an alter and offered up sacrifices of thanksgiving to the Almighty. When God observed this act of service to Him, He vowed that he would never bring another deluge onto the land reasoning, “In any event, a person’s inclination is bad from his youth”.
The Slonimer poses two powerful difficulties on this episode in the Torah. Firstly, he presses, what positive effect did God hope to have on the world by bringing the flood? The Torah records that man’s inclination was bad before the flood, and was seemingly equally bad after the flood. What then was the point of the flood? And secondly, how does God’s reasoning make any sense. Before the flood, God said that he would be bringing destruction upon the earth because peoples’ inclination was constantly and continuously evil. And after the flood, God uses this very same reasoning to vow that He would never again bring this kind of annihilation upon the world? How can we resolve these seeming contradictions?
The Slonimer explains beautifully, that to answer these two difficulties, we must analyze the text of the Torah carefully, and this scrutiny will yield a proper understanding. Before the flood, the Torah says that man’s desire was solely to do evil the entire day, and after the flood, the Torah says that man’s inclination is evil from his youth. The Slonimer explains that there is a big difference between the two depictions of the human race. Before the flood, man’s essence was bad, to the point that the evil that men were doing was being generated from a malicious desire to perform evil. This kind of evil is so destructive, that it even has the ability to affect the animal and plant life around a person and has such a negative effect on the world, that it will eventually destroy it if left unchecked. This evil was so rampant and destructive, that Hashem decreed the world must be undone. However, after the flood, although man was strongly swayed by his animalistic desires, these desires were not coming from a malicious motivation to hurt the world, but rather from a lack of self-control. Since this kind of evil was more benign, it lacked the ability to bring destruction on the world as a whole, and could only harm the perpetrator alone. Hashem felt that this kind of evil could be tolerated to a certain extent, since each and every individual would now be responsible primarily for himself, and made a pact never to destroy the world again. However, it goes without saying that each person must be responsible to face the fact that his desires and passions will always try to sway him to perform evil, and to be on constant vigil to never allow himself to fall into this dangerous trap.
The Gemorah in Berachos, (5) says, “A person must always be using his good inclination to fight his evil inclination. This is his preliminary defense. If this doesn’t work, he has four other levels of defense that he can use”. However, one thing we see clearly from this Gemorah’s use of the word “always”, is that a person is in a constant struggle against his evil inclination, even when things seem to be calm.
Similarly, the Chovos Halevavos in the chapter of “Yichud” says, “Son of man – you must know that your biggest enemy is your evil inclination. He is well aware of your deepest secrets and weaknesses. He knows your tricks and your tactics. Even when you are sleeping, he is awake and scheming to massacre you. You can try to ignore him, but make no mistake, he never ignores or forgets you.”
After reading these powerful words of the Chovos Halevavos, one might feel a bit despondent. How can I beat such a powerful and ruthless enemy? However, R’ Leib Chasman in this week’s Parsha comes to the rescue and tells us not to fear. The Gemorah in Berachos, (61) says, the verse says, “And God created man”. The word “created” is spelled with to Yuds instead of one. R’ Shimon ben Pazi explains, “This is to teach us that a person must say, ‘woe to me from my desires, woe to me from my creator’”. In other words, just like a person has a powerful desire to do bad in the world, he has an equally powerful force in him to do good in the world. Just like it feels good to pursue the forbidden worldly pleasures, it feels equally good if not better to pursue the spiritual pleasures of this world such as learning Torah and performing kindness. It turns out that doing the right thing isn’t that hard after all. All a person must do, is redirect this natural desire that every person has to chase his desires, to chase the ‘good’ kind of desires instead of the ‘bad’ kind. This is what the Gemorah in Berachos means when it says, “A person must always be using his good inclination to fight his evil inclination.” Meaning his “good inclination” is his most powerful weapon against his evil inclination, not to fight it, but rather to divert and redirect the negative energy that it could have had.
With this explanation of R’ Leib, we can now understand another esoteric Gemorah in Berachos, (17). The Gemorah says, “When the Rabbis would take leave of one another, they would bless each other by saying, ‘May you enjoy your next world in this world’”. The Shitah Mekubetzes explains this blessing to mean that the Rabbis were saying to each other, “May the spiritual pleasure that you are destined to feel in the next world, be yours in this world as well.” If we can harness even a fraction of that unimaginable spiritual pleasure that is in store for us in the next world, in this world, the meager pleasure that a sin can offer will certainly be a lot less attractive.
I would just like to end with one other piece of practical advice on how to help overcome one’s evil inclination. Although everything we said is true, a person must always be keenly aware that all the advice in the world will not help him to conquer his evil inclination without the help of God. The Gemorah in Kidushin (30) says that a person’s Yetzer wakes up every morning with the malicious intent to destroy him, and were it not for God’s direct intervention, the Yetzer would succeed. So it comes out that prayer for success is another key factor as to whether or not one can conquer his Yetzer. Similarly, the Gemorah in Kidushin (61) relates that Plimo used to taunt the Satan by saying that he would gouge his eyes out. At one point, the Satan attacked him and he was in grave danger. So Plimo asked the Satan, what then should I pray for? The Satan responded that it would be more appropriate to pray that God should help him to beat the Satan and that this prayer would surely help him.
May we all merit to overcome our formidable enemy with the help of God!