The Separation of Good and Evil
“There is no evil without a little good in it.” This is true only until the Final Redemption, when evil will be totally separated from good, and eventually fade away. Our efforts at doing good since Adam and Eve have made that separation process occur. LECHA LECHA
“Tell them that You are My Sister”
Abraham and Sarah finally arrive in the Land of Cana’an; the land that G-d had promised them would bring them all of His blessings. No sooner do they arrive there they were compelled to leave because of a devastating famine that plagued the “Promised Land.” Of course, this was a test for Abraham.
Upon their arrival in Egypt Abraham expresses his fear to Sarah:
Behold I realize that you are a beautiful woman. When the Egyptians will see you, they will say, “It’s his wife!” They will kill me and keep you alive! Please say that you are my sister, so that they will favor me because of LECHA you, and my life will be spared thanks to you.
What About Murder?
The question asked by many of the commentators is, if Abraham was concerned that the Egyptians were so immoral that they would commit murder, they would also commit adultery. If so, why would they have to kill Abraham to take Sarah, they could simply take her and spare Abraham’s life? Why would murder be countenanced by these depraved people, but adultery would be shunned by them?
A simply answer is that Abraham was concerned that the Egyptians would think that Abraham would fight to the bitter end to prevent Sarah’s defilement at the hands of the Egyptians He therefore surmised that they would kill him to get him out of their way.
There is another explanation, adapted from the work “Me’ayin Yavo,” by R. Yaakov Cohen, a nineteenth century Tunisian rabbi, which addresses this difficulty:
LECHA
Rationalizing Indirect Murder
The Egyptian officials would not commit outright murder or adultery, but they would find ways of indirectly eliminating Abraham by causing his death. In their mind, causing the death of a person was not tantamount to murder. Poisoning Abraham or otherwise facilitating his demise was not considered a crime to them, but outright murder or adultery was.
Hence, Abraham knew that they would not take Sarah and violate her because no legal justification could be found for that; but the indirect death of Abraham was something which they could justify.
At first glance this explanation appears specious. How could any rational person think that causing the death of an innocent person to get his wife was legal? And if they were so immoral why wouldn’t they simply kill Abraham?
Historical Precedents
Upon review of the history of evil and despotic governments this answer is not so farfetched. Virtually every tyrannical LECHA government in recent history looked for ways of legalizing their most heinous crimes. The depraved communists would torture their victims to sign a confession to their “crimes.” If they were so faithful to the law that requires a confession how did they justify torture? And why couldn’t they simply sign the confession themselves. Better still, why did they need a confession to execute the people they didn’t like?
Why did the Germans have to legislate the Final Solution if they were bent on the wholesale slaughter of millions of innocent men women and children? And while we cannot always understand the mindset of these diabolically evil people, we can learn an important lesson from this phenomenon.
Evil’s Siphoning of Power
Evil likes to cloak itself in the mantle of respectability and legality. Frequently, the greater the evil, the greater is its attempt at deception.
Kabbalah explains that evil cannot exist on its own. Contrary to other belief systems that posit the independent nature of evil that is LECHA pitted against G-d, Judaism asserts, as is stated in the book of Isaiah, that evil was created by G-d to serve as a challenge to us.
Thus evil must always look for ways of “siphoning” off some of the energy from the G-dly forces of goodness. Otherwise evil would not exist.
New Dynamic
In today’s world we are witness to a new phenomenon. Brazen and unmitigated evil is being perpetrated by men women and children in the name of killing as many innocent men women and children! No need to find circuitous and devious ways of killing others. No need to find “legal” rationalizations for their most barbaric actions. How does one explain the appearance of naked evil?
Again Kabbalah advances the following explanation. The intermingling of good and evil, which is responsible for evil seeking ways of justifying itself, began at the time Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree. That sin inaugurated a process known as “birur,” which demands of humankind to work at refining everything in our world. This means LECHA that we are to look for the good in every aspect of our behavior and in all of our experiences and reject the evil parts of it, thereby separating the good from the evil and restoring the world to the idyllic Garden of Eden state of existence.
In the thousands of years that have elapsed since Adam and Eve, and particularly, after the 3,300 years since we received the Torah at Sinai, our cumulative efforts towards this goal have successfully achieved a significant measure of separation of good from evil.
Evidence of this is the incredible explosion of unadulterated, unmitigated and altruistic goodness in our world. Billions of dollars given to help others; millions of people involved in doing good for the sake of good, demonstrates how far we’ve come.
And here we have the “bad news-good news” situation. The “bad news” in this phenomenon is that the evil that has been separated is of the raw brand of evil that is not tempered by the admixture of good in it. It is evil in its most ferocious and brazen form. The “good news” is that this evil since it has no source of energy to nourish itself, by definition, will have a short life span.
LECHA
In the remaining moments of exile, before the onset of the Messianic Age when evil will be abolished forever, our little actions therefore carry that much more weight. Any action can be the final act of goodness that will tip the scales and usher in an age of perpetual and naked goodness.
LECHA
LECHA
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Lech Lecha by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
