Sometimes, all evil wants is to slow us down

Have you ever experienced an “aha” moment? It happened to me last week, and it happened, of all places, at a wedding hall.

An aha moment is not when you learn something new or get new information. It’s a moment when something clicks, when you finally comprehend information you had for a very long time. It’s not just knowing, it’s “getting it.”

So this is what happened. I attended a wedding of my wife’s cousin, the daughter of Rabbi Moshe and Zeesy Grossbaum, the rebbe’s shluchim to Paramus. The wedding was lovely, and as we enjoyed dinner, they distributed a memorable memento to all participants: a blue-covered booklet.

The booklet contained pictures of original letters from the rebbe to Mr. Benjamin Saacks, the grandfather of the groom, of London, England. Some of the letters are rather long. Like thousands of people around the world, Mr. Saacks wrote to the rebbe about his deep fears and challenges, and the rebbe responded with care, support, and counsel.

As I flipped through the booklet, a letter caught my eye. The rebbe was addressing a new business venture that Mr. Saacks was embarking on, for which he asked the rebbe’s advice.

At the end of the letter, the rebbe wrote:

“As for the other anxieties about which you write with discouragement, etc., this is the doing of the Yetzer whose job is to undermine a person’s confidence and wellbeing, both spiritually and materially.”

The letter continued, but I had to pause for a moment to take it in.

The rebbe was obviously referring to the yetzer hara, a concept I have been familiar with since a very young age. Essentially, the idea is that we each possess two forces within us: the yetzer tov (a positive, good inclination) and the yetzer hara (the negative, evil inclination). They always struggle for control, and it’s up to us to decide which one will win the battle.

The way I saw it, yetzer tov wants us to do a mitzvah, so it will keep on pushing us in that direction. The yetzer hara, on the other hand, wants us to sin, so it always tempts us to do the wrong thing.

But the way the rebbe described it here was very different. The yetzer hara undermines our confidence and wellbeing, both spiritually and physically. It’s not that it’s some scary power trying to drag us into the dark alley. Instead, it just keeps throwing rocks in our path, trying to slow us down and chip away at our focus and energy.

That was a real aha moment for me. The time I woke up in the morning and felt like I wasn’t enough? That was the yetzer hara. And that moment when I needed to do something, but I was afraid of doing it? Yes, that was yetzer hara too. Oh my, this list is going to get very long, very fast. Because sometimes, all that evil wants to do is to slow us down.

I wish I could tell you that this newfound understanding has transformed my life and I am now fully confident and energized to fulfill my G-d-given purpose. I still have work to do. But at least I am better at detecting the patterns. And that is a good beginning.

As we read in the Torah last week: “You must appoint judges and sheriffs for yourselves in all your cities.” The chasidic sages explain this mitzvah also as an individual call to each of us, to have a “judicial system” that evaluates each thought and action, and an “enforcement mechanism” to align our lives with our understanding.

With G-d’s help, thanks to this aha moment, my internal judges and sheriffs can work more efficiently.

Mendy Kaminker is the rabbi of Chabad of Hackensack and an editorial member of Chabad.org. He looks forward to your comments at rabbi@chabadhackensack.com.

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