Sukkah 52
“Why isn’t
my life getting any easier?” Sadie asked me, sounding simply exhausted, “It
seems like the more I do for G-d, the more troubles He sends my way. All my life I’ve believed that if I bend over
backwards to help people and go the extra mile to be a good Jew, then G-d will
reward me with a good life. But He just
keeps piling it on! Why, rabbi, why?”
Describing the scene in the messianic era, the prophet Zachariah writes, “The land will eulogize each according to their family.” While Rabbi Dosa explains that the subject of the eulogy will by Mashiach ben Yoseph (a precursor to the Messiah who will be killed during Armageddon), the rabbis teach that they will eulogize the yetzer hara (evil inclination), as evil will be eradicated from the world.
Why would
they eulogize the yetzer hara? Shouldn’t we breathe a sigh of relief at the
news of his demise?
Rabbi
Yehuda taught, “In the future, the Almighty will bring the yetzer hara before the righteous and the wicked and slaughter him
in their presence. To the righteous, he
will appear as a tall mountain; to the wicked, he will appear as piece of
hair. Each group will then begin
weeping.”
The wicked
will weep at the realization that they did not have the strength of character
to “conquer this piece of hair,” i.e. they were not prepared to resist even the
slightest temptation. But why will the
righteous weep?
Before our
souls descend into this lowly world, they are spiritual beings inhabiting a
certain heavenly plane. We are placed on
this earth in order to be challenged by the vicissitudes of life and grow to
greater spiritual heights. The more we overcome temptation, the greater we
become.
But at the
same time, as we become stronger, our yetzer
hara becomes stronger in order to offer us even greater levels of
temptation. Once we pass one level of
the ‘videogame’ of life, we climb to a more difficult level. And thus the more we conquer the yetzer hara, the more he grows. That’s why he appears to the righteous as a
tall mountain.
In the
messianic era, the righteous will weep at the yetzer hara’s demise, because at that point, it will be ‘game over.’ They will realize how much they grew and what
they achieved with every level of temptation they conquered. But no more yetzer hara means no more spiritual growth; and that absence of
growth potential will be eulogized by the righteous.
Growth in
life only comes from being placed by G-d in challenging situations. You don’t learn to love people when you are
given only nice people to deal with. You
learn to love people unconditionally when G-d puts annoying, difficult people
in your life. You don’t learn patience sitting
on the beach drinking margaritas. You
master the attribute of patience by resisting the temptation to scream at your
kids when they’ve just dropped your heirloom vase.
Next time
you feel the urge to get upset at G-d for sending bad stuff your way, think
about the growth opportunity He is providing you! Next time temptation knocks at your door,
think about how the yetzer hara will
appear to you in the messianic era – will he appear as a tiny piece of hair
that you couldn’t overcome or will he appear as a mighty mountain that you
succeeded in conquering?
