Principles in Life

  Principles in Life                                            By Rabbi Yitzchak Zweig

When I look back on my youth, I am often reminded of the many “principles of life” that we were taught in school as truisms that turned out to be patently false. “You better learn math; you won’t always have a calculator!” I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people in the developed world are welded to a device that will calculate the square root 375,769 in the blink of an eye (even if most primarily use it to watch cat videos).

"You need to learn and practice cursive penmanship in order to be taken seriously as an adult.” Hardly. Another classic from English class: “‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c.’” But what about the following sentence: Your foreign scientist neighbor Keith receives eight counterfeit sleighs from caffeinated weightlifters.

"You'll never make a living playing computer games.” Pretty sure Silicon Valley was built by those folk. “You need to get good grades in school in order to become successful and wealthy.” Yet, in law school, the maxim is: “Most A and B students end up working for the C and D students.”

The list is endless: “Pluto is a planet,” “margarine is healthier for you than butter or eggs,” “in 20 years, quantum entanglement will allow people to teleport” ... yep – I’m still waiting for that one to materialize.

Many of the above maxims are – at best – half-truths. Perhaps it is just part of the human condition to try to simplify life by looking at facts superficially, though it often leads to shallow and erroneous conclusions. Unsurprisingly, we do this in many areas of our lives including some of our long-held religious beliefs.

Perhaps the greatest example of this is a general misunderstanding of the “yetzer hora – evil inclination.” We tend to view certain things as good or bad, for example, Satan and the Angel of Death are both generally perceived as “bad.” But living in a theocentric universe we need to keep in mind that they too are messengers of the Almighty, and they are merely doing what they were created to do.

In order to fully grasp these concepts, particularly when it comes to understanding the purpose of the yetzer hora, we need to pay careful attention to what the sages teach us. This is crucial to understanding ourselves, who we are, and what life is truly about.

There is a rather astonishing teaching from the sages related to this. On reflecting on the events of the sixth day of creation the Torah says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The sages are bothered by this description as every other day the Torah simply writes “good”; what was it about the sixth day that was VERY good?

According to Rav Nachman this refers to the creation of the good and evil inclinations (see Bereshit Rabbah 9:7). He explains; “Without an evil inclination man would not marry, build a home, have children, or run a business.” Rabbi Shmuel says that this refers to the Angel of Death – and he goes on to explain why this creation is called VERY good (see ibid 9:10). The idea that the Angel of Death and evil inclination are catalysts for living a “good” life is obviously a different perspective from what most people harbor.

Likewise, in the Talmud we find a whole discussion regarding the Men of the Great Assembly, who were active at the end of the First Temple and beginning of the Second Temple. Upon seeing the decline in spirituality of the general population, they prayed to eliminate the evil inclination. The Talmud says that their prayers were granted, but for the next three days not even a single egg was laid throughout the land (Yoma 69b). They quickly changed their request.

In reality, the “evil inclination” merely represents one’s self-interest. The Almighty saw it fit to create a world wherein man chooses between good and evil, and this is the essence of his existence in the physical world, because it is the source of man earning a reward (or punishment) and thus self-interest “makes the world go round.” One can choose selfish pleasures and meaningless endeavors in pursuit of ephemeral physical gratification, or choose to become a better person and cater to his holy soul and grow in that way – which would be in line with the yetzer tov – the “good inclination.”

The Talmud (Kiddushin 30b) makes a remarkable statement, “The Almighty told the Jewish people, ‘I have created the yetzer hora and I created the Torah as it’s antidote.” Fascinatingly, the word the Talmud uses for antidote is “tavlin – spice.” This alludes to a very deep concept.

According to the Talmud, the essence of the world is, quite surprisingly, the evil inclination and, just as salt is used to “cure” meat from further deterioration, the Torah is needed to ameliorate the effects of the yetzer hora. In this way the Torah is there to adjust the essence of man, which God created to be rooted in his self-interests – his good inclination and his evil inclination.

There was a fascinating study done in 2008 that clearly demonstrates this. Researchers presented rats with food they enjoyed, requiring a simple lever press to obtain it. Under normal conditions, rats would eagerly press the lever and consume the food. However, when researchers eliminated dopamine neurons through a neurotoxin, an interesting pattern emerged.

The dopamine-depleted rats could still enjoy the food when it was directly in front of them. They would eat it and show signs of pleasure. But when placed just one body length away from the lever, these same rats wouldn’t make the minimal effort to obtain the food. The ability to provide for themselves was quite literally right in front of them, yet they didn’t feel motivated, and they chose to die instead. In contrast, rats with intact dopamine systems would readily move to the lever, press it, eat, and thrive.

In another study, when the pleasure center was overstimulated, they chose to only experience the dopamine pleasure, and they starved to death because eating was less pleasurable than the intoxicating dopamine (much in the same way a crack addict stops eating).

We can see that everything in this world is driven by selfish desires necessary for balance – and the Torah allows us to channel them into positive growth. When Dr. Henry Jekyll, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, figures out how to separate his primal inclination and his moral inclination into two separate beings, he creates a monster on the one hand, and a feeble wimp on the other. In reality, there is no way to separate the two – they are merely two sides of the same coin, and they are both necessary. We find a similar lesson in this week’s Torah portion.

“He made the copper washstand and its copper base out of the mirrors of those that congregated; the ones that had congregated at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting” (Exodus 38:3).

The copper washstand, otherwise known as the kiyor, was used primarily to dispense water onto the hands and feet of the Cohanim or “priestly caste” to sanctify them prior to their service in the Tabernacle. The great medieval Biblical commentator Rashi (ad loc) relates a fascinating incident pertaining to its creation: 

“The daughters of Israel had in their possession copper mirrors which they would look into when they would beautify themselves, even these mirrors (which had great sentimentality to them) they did not withhold from bringing for the contribution toward the Tabernacle. Moses rejected them because they were made for the evil inclination. The Holy One, Blessed is He, said: ‘Accept them, for they are dearest to Me of all, for through them the women established legions in Egypt.’”

Rashi goes on to detail how the women used these mirrors to entice their husbands to procreate, and presumably Moses was against accepting the mirrors because they were used for impure purposes.

Many commentaries question why Moses was willing to accept all sorts of personal items from the women including “armbands, nose-rings, finger-rings, and chastity belts” (Exodus 35:22), yet initially refused their mirrors. Aside from the fact that most of those items were used to make themselves more attractive, the chastity belts in particular seem to be wholly inappropriate for use in the Tabernacle. So the commentators ask, “Why did Moses accept those items yet reject the mirrors?” (see Maharal ad loc).

The gift of the mirrors was different from all the other donations made to the Tabernacle. Every other item given was melted down to be used wherever it was needed. But the women came “en masse” to make a special request. They wanted to designate their mirrors to be a perpetual monument to what they had done in Egypt. They wanted the kiyor, which symbolizes purity and sanctification, to be created solely from their intact mirrors in recognition of their initial use in building the Jewish nation.

Moses had happily accepted all types of personal items as donations to the Tabernacle, even those items that were of a VERY personal nature. But to set aside a specific vessel to remember something that he felt was a tool of the evil inclination, Moses did not agree. He argued with the women and rejected their plea.

The Torah tells us that the women vehemently protested, and the Torah even refers to it as “the mirrors of those that congregated.” This gathering was to protest Moses’ rejection and refusal to give their efforts to build the Jewish nation a lasting testament. The Almighty tells Moses that these mirrors were most precious of all and were therefore quite appropriate for the vessel that provided the waters of purification to the Cohanim.