Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Yetzer hara
Summary
In Judaism, yetzer hara (יֵצֶר הַרַע yēṣer haraʿ) is the congenital inclination to do evil, by violating the will of God. The term is drawn from the phrase "the imagination of the heart of man [is] evil" (, yetzer lev-ha-adam ra), which occurs twice at the beginning of the Torah (Genesis 6:5 and Genesis 8:21).
The Hebrew word yetzer having appeared twice in Genesis occurs again at the end of the Torah: "I knew their devisings that they do". Thus from beginning to end the heart's "yetzer" (plan) is continually bent on evil. However, the Torah which began with blessing anticipates future blessing which will come as a result of God circumcising the heart in the latter days.
In traditional Judaism, the yetzer hara is not a demonic force, but rather man's misuse of things the physical body needs to survive. Thus, the need for food becomes gluttony due to the yetzer hara. The need for procreation becomes promiscuity, and so on.
The Jewish concept of the yetzer hara is similar to the Christian concept of a "sin nature" known as concupiscence, which is the tendency of humans to sin. However, concupiscence stems explicitly from original sin, while the yetzer hara is a natural part of God's creation.
According to the Talmudic tractate Avot de-Rabbi Natan, a boy's evil inclination is greater than his good inclination until he turns 13 (bar mitzvah), at which point the good inclination is "born" and able to control his behavior. Moreover, the rabbis have stated: "The greater the man, the greater his [evil] inclination."
The underlying principle in Jewish thought states that each person — Jew and gentile alike — is born with both a good and an evil inclination. Possessing an evil inclination is considered neither bad nor abnormal. The problem, however, arises when one makes a willful choice to "cross over the line," and seeks to gratify his evil inclination, based on the prototypical models of right and wrong in the Hebrew Bible.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.