THE TWO INCLINATIONS IN JUDAISM

John D. Rayner

Introduction

Two facts about the human condition stand out. The first is that, like all animals, we are doomed to die; the second that, unlike other animals,‘o'r at least to an incomparably higher degree, we are capable of both good and evil -

unlimited and evil. virtually good V Between these facts - of our physical mortality and our moral ambivalence -

it has sometimes been thought that there is a connection. For since evil often

leads to death, it is tempting to think that to conquer evil would be to conquer

death as well. But that is logical fallacy, since evil is not the cause ,of .. only , ‘ a V

death. Even if we were all saints, we should still die.

Because that is fairly obvious, there has sometimes been a tendency to

change the subject from physical death to spiritual death. The good, it is said, will live for ever in some other world; the bad will be destroyed or else suffer a fate worse than death in the form of eternal torment. Such notions have

‘ui- been entertained in different ways both in Judaism and in Christianity - the COLLEGE

._.—\...4

/. famous ‘resurrection verse‘ in Daniel (12:2) played a key role in them; but I

.. mention them only to make it clear that they do not fall within our purview. CK Of the two basic facts about the human condition, it is only the moral ( .4 -—.U. LEBRARY ambivalence that concerns us. Whether or not there is a hereafter, our life on B! earth is of limited duration. But while it lasts, we can and do perform both ~

A—v- which’has good and evil. The question is why. It is a theoretical question LEO h-

,\ exercised the philosophically minded all through the ages; But it is also a EU practical since the maximisation of good and the diminution of evil .1 .— question,

is the most urgent of all practical tasks. But in order to make any headway

with it we need to understand what causes the twofold tendency. To that question many different answers are to be found in the literature of Judaism, as of Christianity. But on the Jewish side most of them are contained in, or related to, the Rabbinic doctrine of the Two Inclinations,

which it is my assignment to expound.

Since it is a Rabbinic doctrine, I need not spend much time on its

antecedents in the biblical and intertestamental periods. Nevertheless I

cannot entirely avoid it. For Judaism is the religion of the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by the Rabbis, and the interpretation cannot be entirely separated from the text.

Body and Soul

One way of accounting for the duality of human beings in the moral sense is to point to their duality in a more fundamental, constitutional sense. They

are, it is said, a compound of two' kinds of stuff: matter and spirit. In so far as they are made of matter, they are prone to sin; in so far as they are made of spirit, they tend to act nobly.

This dualistic view is not, however, characteristic of the Hebrew Bible. Of

course, the contrast between the high and low status of human beings is

frequently noted and emphasised, not least in the 8th Psalm: 'When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have established - what are human beings that You are mindful of them,

mortals that You care for them? Yet You have made them little less than divine, and crowned them with glory and honour!’

But the contrast is not generally stated in terms of a matter-spirit dualism in

which matter is bad and spirit is good. To quote Otto Baab, ‘Matter is not intrinsically evil or corrupt, and carnality is not a sin in Hebrew thought' (pp.

__;10_8f). ‘And again: 'man's physical nature is not the reason for his sin,.._I-Iis proneness to yield to the lusts of the flesh results from his eagerness to escape the problem created by the conflict between his spiritual freedom and the limitations of his physical nature. His sin consists in choosing sensuality, not in the possession of a body which makes sensuality possible' (The Theology of the Old Testament, p. 248).

On the contrary, the chief locus of sin is not 1273, the flesh, but :‘7 or :25, the

heart which, though in its literal sense a bodily organ, stands as a metaphor for the mind. There are of course traces of matter-spirit dualism, apparently showing

Greek influence, especially in the later books (e.g., Eccles. 12:7). But they become a great deal more pronounced in the Apocrypha, Philo and the New

Testament, and they left their mark on Rabbinic Judaism. Of special interest here is the Rabbinic exegesis of the phrase in the Second Creation Story that God 'formed Adam out of the dust of the ground' (Gen.

2:7), where the Hebrew word 13‘”. for 'formed' has a double yod, which is interpreted as pointing to the duality of human nature. According to one interpretation, which sees in the verb an allusion to the noun 13’ for 'inclination‘, God compounded Adam of two inclinations, good and evil (Gen.R. 14:4), According to another, which relates the verb to the noun .178” for 'creation', the process involved two stages which brought into being respectively the earthly and heavenly aspects of human beings. This led the Rabbis to say of them: 'Like animals, they eat and drink, procreate, secrete and die; like angels, they stand erect, speak, think, and see visions‘(Gen.R. 14:3). The matter-spirit duality of human nature is certainly found in . Thus the Rabbis could conceive of an sun E‘Jw, a world-to-come in which 'there is no eating or drinking or procreation or trading or jealousy, but the righteous sit with crowns on their heads, feasting on the radiance of the arm, the Divine Presence' (Ber. 17a) - in other words, a purely spiritual form of existence. Yet one senses a hesitancy to concede that the two

components are ultimately separable, and therefore a reluctance to let go of the belief in D’nnn n‘mn, a resurrection in which body and soul are finally reunited. Above all, there is no straightforward identification of the two aspects with good and evil respectively. As Moore points out, it is not the case 'that the evil impulse resides in the body while the good impulse proceeds from the soul. That the physical organism, as material, is evil per se, sense the origin of error, the appetites and passions the source of moral evil - these ideas, which through prevalent philosophies had gained wide currency in the Hellenistic world, have no counterpart in Palestinian Iudaism' (Iuduism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Vol. I, p. 485). The general Rabbinic view sees the two components of human nature as different but inseparable, and both alike involved in good and evil. Typical is a well known passage in which body and soul together appear before God to be judged, and each accuses the other, whereupon a parable, found also in

.other traditions, i_s told about two orchard keepers, one lame and one blind. During the royal owner‘é‘aAbsence the lame man stands on the shoulders of the blind man, and picks the fruit. When the king returns to find the fruit gone, each has a ready excuse: the lame man that he can‘t walk ahd the blind man that he can't see. Then the king orders the lame man to climb on-the blind man's back, and judges them together. So, too, is the moral, God judges body and soul together (Mekhilta on Exod. 15:1; Lev.R. 4:5).

The Divine Image

As we continue our search for the causes of the moral ambivalence of human nature, we should remind ourselves that it is both sides of it, not only the evil but also the good, that call for an explanation. Why do we generally recognise and desire, and often though by no means always do, what is good? About that, at least, Judaism has been clear and consistent all through the ages: the good in us is a consequence Of our having been created in the image of God. God, says the first chapter of Genesis, created Adam n‘nbx E1533, in the divine image (1:27). D’n'7R man, in the divine likeness, reiterates the fifth chapter (5:1). And the greatest of the Rabbis, Akiva, remarked: ‘I-Iow privileged we are to have been created 1353:, in the divine image; how much more privileged still to have been made aware that we were created in God's image' (Avot 3:14).

This doctrine is central to the Jewish understanding of human nature; It has never been questioned, let alone repudiated, and it has been regarded as a necessary and sufficient explanation of the 2m "13*, the Good Inclination, which is the voice within us that prompts us — often, alas, unheeded - to choose and do what is right. It does, however, raise a question, which we can't ignore: What then of the story of the Garden of Eden? Does it not mean that the high status of human beings, and with it their Good Inclination, has long since been forfeited?

There is also a prior question: How seriously should the Garden-of-Eden story be taken? Some modern Bible scholars have regarded it, partly on account of its pessimism about human nature, as atypical of other Pentateuchal material and derived from a separate source which Otto Eissfeldt called L for 'Lay Source', Julian Morgenstern ‘K' for 'Kenite‘ and

Robert H‘ Pfeiffer 'S' for 'South' or ‘Seir', meaning Edomite (Introduction to

' the Old Testament, pp‘ 161-65). But whatever one makes of these views, the story is clearly mythological, and mythology is not dogma On the contrary, myth is allusivel It lends itself to interpretation on a variety of levels. One obvious interpretation of the

Garden-of-Eden myth is that it illustrates the dawning of the consciousness of choice, and therefore an advance rather than a retrogression. At any rate, there is not the slightest him in the story that the wrong choice made by Adam and Eve deprived subsequent generations of the ability to choose rightly. Nevertheless, something of that kind has been inferred from the story, chiefly in Christianity, at least Western Christianity, but to some extent also Both in and Rabbinic literature we do occasionally in Judaism. Apocryphal . encounter the View that on account of Adam and Eve‘s sin, death came into the world - a logical fallacy we have already noted - and some kind of blemish is transmitted from generation to generation. Thus we read in Ben Sira:

'From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die' (25:24). And in the Fourth Book of Ezra: 'For a grain of evil seed was sown in Adam's heart from the beginning, and how much ungodliness it has produced until now, and will produce until the time of threshing comes!‘ (4:30). According to the Rabbis, when Adam sinned, the Shekhinah distanced itself from the world (Gen.R. 19:7), and because of that first sin, all human beings are doomed to die (BB 17a; Shab. 55b). But the typical Rabbinic View stresses rather the opposite, George Foot Moore sums up a passage in Midrash Tanchumaz ‘Death came in with Adam, but every man has deserved it for himself; his descendants die in consequence of his sin, but not for the guilt of it' (op. cit, 1, p 476). More generally, he concludes: 'there is no motion that the original constitution of

Adam underwent any Change in consequence of the fall, so that he transmitted to his descendants a vitiated nature in which the appetites and passions necessarily prevail over reason and virtue, while the good is

'It enfeebled or wholly impotent‘ (I, p. 479). He is careful to add in a footnote: may not be superfluous to remark that the Augustinian doctrines on these points had no influence in the Eastern'Church, and were variously mitigated in the West‘ (ibid.). With reference to the assertion in the Ten Commandments that God visits the iniquity of parents on subsequent generations (Ex. 20:5), that principle was already challenged by the prophet Ezekiel (18:20), and the Rabbis took the sting out of it by explaining: only if the children are wicked in their turn

(Mekhilta ad loo; cf. San. 27b on Ex. 34:7) Perhaps most characteristic of the

Rabbinic attitude is a prayer which found its way from the (Ber. 60b) into the daily liturgy (Singer's, 1990 ed., p. 15) and begins: 'My God, the soul 5

which You have given me is pure. For You have formed it within me, afid

breathed it into me, and You preserve it within me...‘ The Evil Inclination TM We have seen tWe Good Inclination is a necessary consequence of ,the Divine Image wfiich Judaism regards as a continuing fact, uncancelled by the Garden-of—Eden myth. But if that is so, then all the more does its opposite, the Evil Inclination, call for explanation.

In simplest terms, the answer of Rabbinic Judaism is that, just as God created the Good Inclination, so God created the Evil Inclination, in order that human beings may have the possibility, and the responsibility, of choice. Of

Spgrse that raises the quggtjon how _a good God can create an 9i inclination; arid the answer to that, at least in large part, is that the Evil Inclination, in

spite of its name, is not intrinsically evil. We have already seen that the double yod in the in the word 13m in Genesis 2:7 gave rise to the interpretation that God created Adam with two kinds of

yetzer or inclination. But that, of course, is not the origin of the term. The noun yetzer does indeed come from the verb yatzar, 'to form‘, and therefore means something like ‘a fundamental aspect of the human make-up' or 'a basic human disposition‘. But the noun occurs already in the Bible, for instance at the beginning of the Flood story: 'God saw that the wickedness of humankind was.great in the earth, and that every yetzer of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil

continually' (Gen. 6:5). And again at the end of the Flood story: ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the yetzer of the human heart is evil from their youth‘ (Gen. 8:21). There are also other occurrences

(e.g., Deut. 31:21), but these Genesis verses, whose negative context is to be noted, are the most relevant. There are also one or two evidences of the concept in the intertestamental literature, for instance, when Ben Sira says that God 'created humankind in

the beginning, and left them in the power of their own yetzer (15:14). But it is

in Rabbinic Judaism that the concept is fully developed, particularly as regards

the Evil Inclination. Indeed, when the word yetzer is used on its own, it usually refers to the Evil Inclination.

That the yetzer 110—171 is not intrinsically evil is a clear implication of some of the most important Rabbinic teachings on the subject. For instance, the

Creation Story reaches its climax with the creation of humankind, at which

point the text says: mm mm mm, 'and behold, it was very good‘ (Gen. 1:31). Here the pleonastic word ‘and' is seen by the Rabbis as a hint that human beings were created with two inclinations, good and evil, the verdict 'very good' covering both. 'But, ' continues the Midrash, 'can the Evil Inclination

be called very good? That would be astonishing!‘ Then it explains: ‘If it were not for the Evil Inclination no man would build a house, marry a wife, beget

children, or engage in business'; and it concludes by quoting an Ecclesiastes 6

verse (4:4) to the effect that all human effort is the result of rivalry between

persons (Gen.R. 9:7).

What transpires from this illuminating passage is that the yetzer ha—m is an umbrella term for the self-regarding drives that motivate human beings: their desire for self-preservation, pleasure, power, property, prestige, popularity, and so forth. These drives are not evil. On the contrary, they are good in the sense that they are biologically beneficial. But they are extremely powerful and therefore, unless they are controlled by a lively conscience, they can easily lead us to disregard the rights and needs of others, and cause them

harm. It is in this sense - because it so often prompts us to do wrong - that' the

yetzer ha—ra is eviL But it need not do so; the psychic energy it represents can be directed to good ends.

That is the clear implication of a Rabbinic comment on the , Deuteronomy .

verse, 'You shall love the Eternal One, your God, with all your heart' (6:5). Because the Hebrew word 12:15 for 'your- heart' is spelt, slightly unusually,

with a double beit, the lesson is drawn: with both your inclinations, the yetzer ton and the yetzer ra (Ber. 9:5; Sifrei Deut. 32). That is to say, we should use even our self-regarding drives in the service of God.

Which of these drives is the most powerful? That question is not, so far as I know, directly discussed in the literature of the Rabbis, but the general

impression one gets is that, like Freud, they would have been inclined to say: the desire for pleasure, or the libido. Often when the term yetzer ha-ru is used

without further qualification, it is clear from the context that the sex-drive is chiefly meant. At any rate, these drives, in their totality are, as we might say,

what makes the world go round. As it is said in the Talmud, if the Evil Inclination were destroyed the world would go down (Yoma 69b).

Nevertheless, to say it yet again, it is not evil in itself.

Another term sometimes used for it in Rabbinic literature is 'the leaveh in the dough' (Gen.R. 34:10; Ber. 17a; Mekhilta on Exod. 14:11). The leaven

causes the dough to rise, and makes the bread palatable. But it can also cause fermentation, which serves as a metaphor for moral corruption. As Urbach

puts it, God 'put the leaven in the dough', ‘but for the fermentation of the

leaven man alone is responsible' (The Sages, p. 482).

The Hypostatisatian of the Evil Inclination

That the yetzer hit-m, in itself, is morally neutral, emerges very clearly from

the key passages we have discussed. But it is not a view that is consistently maintained. For the Rabbis, we must remember, were not philosophers, and

what they have to say about human nature is a product of experience and observation rather than the exposition of a clearly formulated intellectual system. And on the experiential level they did see the yetzer ha-ra as a nasty and insidious force which they did not hesitate, on occasion, to hypostatise and even to‘ personify. It begins, we are told, not indeed at conception, but at birth (Urbach, op. cit., p. 481). It grows stronger every day, and seeks to destroy us, and if God did not help us, we could not prevail over it (Suk. 52a-b). It entices us in this world and testifies against us in the world to come (Suk. 52b). At first it is like a spider's web, in the end it becomes like a cart-rope (San 99b). At first it is a passer-by, then a guest, and in the end it occupies the house (Suk. 52b). It is called by seven epithets: evil, uncircumcised, unclean, enemy, stumbling- block, stone (as in Ezekiel‘s 'heart of stone') and the hidden one (ibid.; Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, pp. 243E). Not surprisingly, therefore, the yetzer ha-m is sometimes seen as 'the tempter within' (Moore, ‘a 1, p. 482), kind of malevolent second personality' (ibid.), humankind's

‘implacable enemy' (ibid.); and even as a personification of Satan and the Angel of Death (BB. 16a; Moore, p. 492)‘ The question, however, is how seriously these descriptions of the yetzer ha- m are to be taken. Are they merely graphic metaphors or do they imply belief in a truly evil force within and perhaps beyond human beings?

There is, I think, relatively little in Rabbinic literature to support the View that there is an inborn human impulse to do evil for evil's sake, to do wrong because it is wrong, to do what is forbidden because it is forbidden. There is more of that, as a matter of fact, in the Hebrew Bible. There we do encounter frequently the concept of sin as rebellion, as rejection of the Divine Will. The recurring description of the people of Israel as ‘stiff—necked‘ (Ex. 32:10; 33:3, 5; 34:9) testifies to that. 'EVil,’ says Otto Baab, 'appears, not so much as an extraneous force or supernatural power, as the inner pride of man, who defiantly sets himself against his Creator' (op. cit, p. 230). But in the Hebrew Bible such rebelliousness is generally associated with idolatry, and that, in the View of the Rabbis, ceased to be a major problem shortly after the Babylonian

' Exile (Yoma 69b).

We do indeed hear in Rabbinic literature of the epikoros, who rejects all moral restraint (San. 10:1), the one who says 1”‘I W51 r1 n’b, that 'there is no judgment and no Judge' (LevR. 28:1), and the 1pm: 1513, who denies the very basis of religion (T05. Shevuot 3:6). But by and large it is assumed that human beings mean well, that they are weak rather than wicked, though often so weak that they allow themselves to be lured by the yetzer ha-m into very serious wrongdoing.

Here let me interject that Paul's confession in Romans 7, ‘I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do‘ (v. 19) does not seem to me to contradict, but rather to confirm, that fundamentally positive View of human nature. For it clearly implies that we want good and not evil, though we continually fail to act accordingly; that we have a desire to do right but not a corresponding desire to do wrong. ' To a large extent, at any rate, the Rabbinic analysis of sin as due to the yetzer ha-m, and of the yetzcr ha—ra as a set of drives that are in themselves ethically neutral though conducive to terrible consequences if uncontrolled, does seem to explain what needs to be explained, while the tendency to personify the yetzer ha-ra should be seen as the kind of metaphorical language which is the bread-and-butter of Rabbinic Aggadah. Nevertheless, the occasional identification of the yetzer ha-ru with Satan requires some further comments. The whole concept of a superhuman cosmic power of evil independent of God, or even subservient to God, is manifestly incompatible with the purest . Hence Deutero- Isaiah‘s majestic proclamation, in God's name, against Zoroastrianism, '1 form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil' (or, as the New Revised Standard Version translates the second clause, '1 make weal and create woe‘); I the Eternal One do all these things' (45:7). In the words of Kaufmann Kohler, ‘The Jewish conception of the unity of God necessitates the unity of the world, which leaves no place for a cosmic principle of evil‘ (jewish Theology, p. 189). Therefore, too, the concept of a superhuman person embodying such an evil power did not gain ready admittance into Hebrew thought Satan does indeed make one or two appearances in the Hebrew Bible, but only in its latest books, and even then only as a 'counsel for the prosecution'. In .the words of Otto Baab. 'The occasional appearance of Satan or of minor demons has little significance in the religion of Israel...Throughout the literary records of Israel one finds no real belief that the power making for evil is outside of man; there is unanimity in asserting that this power resides in man himself'

(op. cit, p. 247).

It is true that in the Intertestamental and New-Testamental Literature, Satan assumes a malevolent personality and, along with a varied assortment of individually named demons and angels, plays a prominent role, which is generally taken with humourless seriousness. The same is true to some extent of the Rabbinic Aggadah, especially of Babylonian origin, and to a much greater extent of the Heikhalot and Kabbalistic texts. But with that last ex'ception, Satan does not generally rise in Judaism above the level of folkloristic fantasy. As Kohler, who made a special study of the subject, remarks, ‘the belief in evil spirits and in Satan, the Evil One, remained rather a matter of popular credulity and never became a positive doctrine of the

Synagogue‘ (op. cit., p. 192).

Today, I should like to think, most Jews would go along, as I do, with Joseph Conrad's quip: 'The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness' (Nicolas Bentley & Evan Esar, The Treasury of Humorous Quotations, p. 61).

Ordinary and Extraordinary Evil

The self-regarding drives, which constitute the yetzer havra, do seem to go a very long way towards accounting for the evil that men, and women, do. But do they got!” the way? Is human evil basically nothing more than selfishness? At the end of the 20th century, Conrad‘s phrase, that human beings alone are capable of every wickedness, conjures up horrendous images, of the murder of the little children of Dunblane, the Hebron massacre and the suicide bombings, the killing fields of Cambodia and Bosnia, the Gulag

Archipelago and, above all, the Holocaust. In the face of evils of such enormity, the Rabbinic account of the yetzer ha—m seems less than adequate. Perhaps, therefore, we need to distinguish between two kinds of evil: normal and abnormal or, perhaps better, ordinary and extraordinary. Sin, as

such, if not normal, is universal. We all do it. ‘Surely there is no one on

earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning,’ says Ecclesiastes (7:20;

cf. 1 Kings 8:46, 11 Chron. 6:36; Prov. 20:9). The Rabbis do speak of three classes of human beings, good, bad and middling (Ber. 16b; RH 16b); but the implication always seems to be that most of us fall into the middle category.

And they took a pretty realistic if not cynical View when they said: ‘Most people are guilty of robbery, a minority of uncha'stity, and all of slander‘ (BB 165a). Perhaps we may generalise and say that those sins which are committed out of selfishness, greed or lust can be satisfactorily explained in terms of the

yetzer hu-m as the Rabbis understood it; and they do seem to constitute the vast majority of ‘every-day' sins. But what about those that are committed out of hatred, anger or sheer cruelty and viciousness, and those that are to

most of us altogether incomprehensible? It does seem that these call for some additional explanatory categories.

An obvious one is insanity. In that respect an important teaching of the

Rabbis is that 'no person commits a transgression unless a spirit of mmw has entered into them' (Sot. 3a), where the word shetut is usually translated 'folly‘ but also means ‘madness‘. _ There clearly is such a thing as criminal insanity, even though most forms

of mental illness have no such implication. Are the kinds of evils which I have called ‘extraordinary' to be explained as pathological? By calling sadism

a perversion we do seem to imply that it is pathological. Is it, however, a mental or a moral condition? And how does one explain the phenomenon

of the psychopath, whose conscience is totally inoperative? And how are we to account for the frenzy that takes hold of crowds, and even whole populations, when they are brainwashed by an evil ideology like racism or mesmerised by a rabble-rousing demagogue like Hitler? What is the effect on human behaviour when a whole people is demonised? How large a part was played in the history that culminated in the Holocaust by Church teachings which held the Jewish people responsible for the Crucifixion and portrayed them as rejected by God? Is there such a thing as mass psychopathology? If so, what are its causes and its modus operandi, and

how much is to be attributed to the little understood forces of the occult, in

' which Hitler is said to have dabbled? All these are questions to which there are no easy answers. They call for a concerted study to which theologians have no doubt important contributions to make, but which demand, at least equally, the scientific contributions of psychologists, sociologists and criminologists. What is not admissible, in my 10

View, is to attribute all these phenomena to an evil force, personified or

otherwise, outside humanity. That is merely a projection, and therefore an

evasion of the real problem, as well as a huge oversimplification. It is the

‘ human psyche that needs to be understood.

Countermeasures

And therefore, too, the question, how to combat these extraordinary evils, cannot be easily answered. But let us, in conclusion, return to the ordinary, every-day evils which are a constant feature of human behaviour. Must they

be accepted as inevitable or can they be overcome? The Jewish answer is

clear. We have been given free will. That is the meaning of the Garden—of-

Eden story, and it is implied in virtually all subsequent Jewish literature. Neither the commandments of the Pentateuch nor the exhortations of the

'I Prophets make any sense without it. call heaven and earth to witness

against you this day,‘ says God in Deuteronomy, 'that I have set before you life or death, blessing or curse; therefore choose life' (30:19). 'If you will,‘ says

Ben Sira, 'you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your choice' (15:15).

The Rabbis re-emphasised the point. 'Everything is foreseen,‘ they said, 'yet free will is given' (Avot 3:16). ‘Everything is in the hand of God except the fear of God' Ber. 33b). And again: _'Those who wish to pollute themselves

with sin will find all the gates open to them, and those who desire to attain the highest purity will find all the forces of goodness ready to help them‘ (Yoma 38b). There is even, as that last saying implies, a cosmic bias in favour of goodness.

So it is possible for human beings to control the yetzer hu—m within them.

But there is no suggestion that it is easy‘ On the contrary, 'Who is a hero?‘

asks Ben Zoma in Tractate Avot, and he answers: 113* DR 27:13.1, ‘Those who

subdue their Evil Inclination' (4:1). The problem, simply put, is how to

activate and cultivate the Good Inclination so that it may exercise the

necessary control. And the Rabbinic answer is: through study, prayer and observance. Of major significance here is a parable which concludes by making God say to the people of Israel: ‘My children, I have created the yetzer

ha-ra, but I have also created the as an antidote for it; if you occupy yourselves with the Torah you will not fall into its power' (Kid. 30b, interpreting Gen. 4:7; cf. Sifrei Deut. §45; BB 16a). To ‘occupy oneself with the

'Torah‘ usually has a twofold meaning in Rabbinic Judaism. It means to study

its teachings, for to do so is to be in touch with the Mind of God and is

therefore a spiritual as well as an intellectual exercise. But it also means to practise the way of life which the Torah prescribes, which includes both an ethical code and a devotional discipline.

One Rabbi taught: 'Always stir up the Good Inclination against the Evil Inclination...1f you succeed, well and good. If not, study Torah...1f you succeed, well and good. If not, recite the Shema (Deut. 624-9, 11:13-21, Num. 11

15:37-41)...‘If you succeed, well and good. If not, remind yourself that one day you will die‘ (Resh Lakish, Ber. 5a, interpreting Psalm 425). Moore sums up: ‘To stimulate the better self to contend against the worse; occupy one‘s self intensely with the word of God; confess one‘s faith in the one true God, and

the duty of loving Him with all one's being, renewing thus the assumption of the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven; meditate on the hour of death (and the judgment of God) - these are the weapons with which victory may be won in

this battle that man wages for the freedom of his soul‘ (op. cit, p. 491). Some prayers of Rabbinic origin refer explicitly to the yetzer ha-m. One, from the Babylonian Talmud, begins: 'Eternal God, school us in Your teachings and make us loyal to Your commandments. May we never consent

to evil, or surrender to temptation or self-contempt. 9'17: 13‘ urawn 5R1, Let

,not the Evil Inclination rule over us...mmn 133:: 139211, but help us to cleayé to the Good inclination...‘ (Ber. 60b). Another, from the Palestinian Talmud,

reads: ‘May it be Your will, Eternal One, our God and God of ancestors, to break and destroy the yoke of the Evil Inclination within our hearts. For You

have created us to do Your will, and We know we ought to do it. Such is Your

desire, and such is ours. What then hinders us? nonw 1M7, the leaven in the

dough. You know that we ourselves have not the strength to overcome it.

Therefore may it be Your will, Eternal One, our God and God of our ancestors,

to destroy it and subdue it, so that we may do Your will wholeheartedly'

(I. Ber. 4:2). Of special relevance, of course, are the penitential prayers, which feature in the daily liturgy and pre—eminently during the Ten Days of Repentance, culminating in the Day of Atonement. The power which that annual spiritual exercises should not be underestimated.

Conclusion

Our study of the Two Inclinations poits to a hope and a task. The hope is for a time of redemption, which Judaism has traditionally associated with the coming of the Messiah, when good will finally triumph over evil or, as the

Talmud graphically puts it, God will slay the yetzer hu—m in the presence of

the righteous and the wicked (Suk. 52a). The task is to implement the will of

God in all aspects of human life, and especially the commandment 1m: 1915 nznm, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself' (Lev. 19:18). For if we do not love one another, says an ancient Midrash, we shall end by killing

one another (Sifrei Deut. §187). But if we do learn t'o love one another, all things are possible, even the ultimate vindication of the risk God took in creating human beings on this planet.

(5914 words)

(From a talk given at a conference of Jews and Orthodox Christians under the aegis 'of the

Council of Christians and Jews, London, 28th March, 1996)