Sacred and Profane

“Events in Jewish history have a way of coming in through the back door,” he said. “Like the selling of Yoseph. Out of that came the Exodus: Moses, the Revelation, the Torah. It is said that even the messiah will not come to us openly. Why? Whenever good comes openly, the yetzer harah—the evil spirit—is there to destroy it.”

“I don’t subscribe to the concept of an evil spirit, Rabbi.”

Schulman refilled Decker’s cup.

“You don’t come into contact with it daily?” the old man asked.

“I come into contact with a lot of bad people,” Decker answered. “And most of them know darn well what they’re doing is wrong. They just don’t care. Ask them why they robbed or raped or killed and you’d be surprised at how creative their excuses are. It’s a rare criminal who’ll accept responsibility for his own actions. An evil spirit seems to me to be another way to pass the buck. The devil made me do it, et cetera.”

“Judaism sees it as just the opposite of what you’re saying,” Schulman explained. “Evil is in all of us. So is good. Man has free will to choose either. There is a very interesting midrash about that. Before Mount Sinai the angels asked Hashem to give them the Torah instead of mankind. After all who is better equipped to do mitzvot—good deeds—than an angel? Hashem refused. Mankind was the only acceptable recipient of the Torah because only mankind could elect to honor Hashem. The angels were programmed only for good. It’s no challenge to be good if good is the sole component of one’s makeup.”

Decker took a sip of schnapps and said nothing.

Schulman asked, “Did you have a bad day, Peter?”

“A little on the rough side.”

“Let me ask you something? What do policemen do when they have a bad day?”

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