Page 11 - Mizrachi-RZC Sefer Berachot 5782

The “Moral” Yetzer Hara
Rabbi Noach Goldstein
Rosh Beit Midrash, YU Torah Mitzion Kollel

Incredibly, the Chumash entirely skips the three days that Avraham
and Yitzchak walk from Be’er Sheva to Har HaMoriah. What
possibly went through their minds approaching the mountain with
knife and wood? The midrashim fill the gaps, and the Midrash
Tanchuma records one particularly fascinating episode that sheds a
unique light on the yetzer hara’s nature.
Satan confronts Avraham in the guise of an old man: “It’s
impossible that Hashem would actually command you to sacrifice
Yitzchak! He gave you the boy as a miraculous gift; are you really
going to murder him and then expect Hashem to give you another
child?!” That doesn’t work, so Satan tries his luck with Yitzchak.
He assumes the image of a young man and taunts Yitzchak: “Are
you going to do this to your mother? After all her years of fasting
and prayer, you’ll allow your hallucinating father to kill you?!” But
of course, Yitzchak perseveres as well.
The midrash offers two basic takeaways. First, the yetzer hara’s
most sophisticated ploy is to disguise itself as our yetzer tov. Who is
the “old man” hounding Avraham and the “young man” tormenting
Yitzchak with messages perfectly tailored to haunt each of them?
The Satan pretends to be each person’s better nature, and he makes
moral arguments that we should do what “Hashem”—i.e. we—
really want.
Second, this gives us necessary perspective to forgive others. The
more sensitive we are to how the yetzer hara lures us to the wrong
decisions for “good” reasons, the more we can understand and thus
forgive those who hurt us over the course of the year. Even as we
vigilantly combat the yetzer hara, we must remember that so many
times, people who hurt us did so out of misplaced conviction rather
than maliciousness. Let us treat them with the same compassion that
we would hope for on the other end.
For all the talk nowadays about each individual person’s “moral
compass,” Chazal warn how easily we can make moral arguments for
the choice that we want to make rather than for the one we know we
should. At the end of the day, as we pray for a year of life, we must
heed Moshe Rabbeinu’s declaration about what it means "םייחב תרחבו"
- to choose life: "וֹב הָק ְבָדְלוּ וֹלֹק ְ בּ ַﬠֹמ ְשִׁל , יֶק ֱא 'ד ת ֶא הָבֲה ַאְל": to love
Hashem, to listen to His commandments, and to cleave to Him
(Devarim 30:20). Obey God. Nothing more, nothing less.