Double your translations for double your fun! First Joseph Hertz:
R. Joshua said, The evil eye, the evil inclination and hatred of his fellow-creatures drive a man out of the world.
And then Jacob Neusner:
R. Joshua says, “(1)Envy, (2)desire of bad things, and (3) hatred for people push a person out of the world.”
The Hebrew idiom yetzer ha-ra, the evil impulse, is used a lot in the Pirke Avot, so it would be helpful to develop, as it were, an English idiom to use for it. It’s not just desire for bad things, as Mr. Neusner would have it (not, I must say, that I am qualified to pick at Mr. Neusner’s translation, nor that he is unjustified in his choice of it, given the lack of that corresponding English idiom), but a sort of shorthand for giving in to your passions, for a lack of control. For the bestial nature that requires control. There is a strand (as we’ve talked about before) of mind-body split thinking, of angels and demons on your shoulders, of the impulse for good and the impulse for evil.
The commentary on this verse notes that the evil impulse is older than the good impulse by thirteen years. For everyone is born with an evil impulse. Infants break the Sabbath, they put their hands in the fire, they use profanity and . What prevents a toddler from committing murder is not conscience but a lack of ability; they don’t understand the consequences of their actions, and can’t control their impulses. When a young child does something wrong, minor or major, we don’t consider that child to be responsible. But at thirteen, we consider the good impulse to exist in them, to prevent them from acting on their evil impulse. That all seems wildly reductive, so much so that it misrepresents the world as I know it. I don’t want to reject the tradition entirely, but I will keep looking for ways to incorporate it without accepting this idea of bestial man and angelic man.
And as for lust… well, as you can imagine, there is a strong tradition to associate the evil impulse with sexual appetite (and with gluttony as well, of course). The Avot of Rabbi Nathan takes this verse as an opportunity to relate various stories about sages being presented with beautiful women and refusing to have sex with them. These are disgusting stories (some of them more than others) and frankly speak more to misogyny than virtue.
On the other hand, to the extent that the evil impulse means anything, it must be admitted that lust can lead people to do stupid things, harmful things. Evil things. And can put a person out of the world, both in the sense that having done stupid things for the sake of lust, people will cast off our friendship or even acquaintance, but also in the sense that lust, when it is the evil impulse, is the replacing of the object of the lust with the fantasy of the lusted-after object. Er, that was unclear and pompous. Let me put it this way: if I have a crush on someone, let’s call her, oh, Jezebel. I have a crush on Jezebel. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But there is, in that crush, an evil impulse, which is the impulse to take my crush on Jezebel as being more important than Jezebel. This impulse is Not Good, it leads to bad behavior of various kinds and drives us out of the world as it is, to dwell in the world that is not.
Similarly, the evil impulse for food—hunger isn’t an evil impulse, nor even is a desire for tasty treats or fine foods. The evil impulse is what leads me to eat an entire bag of tortilla chips, not even tasting them properly, just mechanically stuffing them in my mouth and chewing. The evil impulse is what tempts me to have a dessert, even though I am not hungry, even if the dessert is not properly speaking what I want anyway, but it is dessert time. I’ve let the idea of the food take over from the food, and the evil impulse take over from my bodily response. It’s not eating the chocolate, which can be a great thing, it’s sneaking the chocolate bar up to your room without anybody knowing it, that’s the evil impulse. That impulse is driving you out of the world.
And as with that, so with other impulses. The impulse to shout and swear, when I am angry, which replaces the actual people involved with my idea of them as the cause of my frustration, and replaces the actual problem with my grievance. The impulse to belittle people, to replace the actual people with my idea of my superiority. And so on.
I think it does take thirteen years or so for kids to break out of their bubble of self-absorption and solipsism. I think that kids are often pushed out of the world by their impulses. I don’t know that it’s thirteen that’s the issue, and of course children are different one to another, in their development and in their relationships with the world. But I think that understanding of the impulse is one I can live with, and accept that the evil impulse, that pushes us out of the world, is older than the good impulse that keeps us within it.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I was talking to some young Orthodox Jews of my acquaintance a while ago, and they were telling me (I think) that the tradition sees a positive as well as negative role for the evil inclination: sure, it’s evil, but without it, nothing would ever get done. Do you know of such an interpretation, or have I misremembered? And if you do, what do you think of it?
I can’t lay my hands on the quote right now, but I have read something that said, essentially, that if it weren’t for the evil impulse there would be no procreation, and humanity would die out. I’ve had a rabbi recently talk about it in more general terms—if it weren’t for the evil impulse, we would still be in the Garden of Eden, and thus we would have never received the Torah, etcetera, etcetera. I don’t know how old that thread is within the tradition, or how much support it had at different times, but yes, there are such quotes.
As for me, well, I’m not convinced that the whole psychomachia metaphor is very useful. I mean, yes, I do feel impulses that I know are wrong to act on, but often—I’d say far more often, but I haven’t any way of quantifying it—I feel impulses that are neither good nor evil, but have many consequences, some good and some evil, and have to attempt to balance out which is greater. Which requires an entirely different metaphor, rather than muddling up this one with nuance, it seems to me…
Thanks,
-V.