In today’s polarized world, the terms good and evil are presented as opposites that are always and permanently opposed. We are overwhelmed by the evil we see around us and feel helpless and fearful.
From a Torah perspective, however, the question is more nuanced. It is a Jewish belief that people have been given a choice between good and evil — the evil inclination (yetzer hora) and the inclination toward good (yetzer tov) — and that change is possible.
Given the Torah’s acknowledgement of the presence of evil and the need to resist it on a personal level and oppose it on a national level, the Torah also makes a quite different statement. In Genesis, God creates the world and “God saw all that he had made and found it very good” (1:31), meaning that creation itself is inherently good, both as a divine creation and a model for humans, who are made in God’s image.
Joseph and his brothers, who are fiercely jealous of him, sell him into slavery in Egypt. Miraculously, he rises to become the next in power to the Pharoh himself. They are reunited when they come to Egypt to purchase food during a drought in Israel. They repent and he forgives them: “Don’t be afraid. Am I in place of God?” (Genesis 50:19-20). Joseph’s generosity of spirit ends the period of rivalry between brothers that had dominated society from the days of Cain and Abel and is illustrative of a life choice that set an example for humankind.
The Torah’s description of the Flood (Genesis 6:13) conveys the idea that a whole society can choose evil, but the consequences are dire. They will drown, physically or metaphorically, in the world that they have desecrated. As we see in the story of the Flood, when too many choose evil, entire societies bring destruction upon themselves. In the words of Aldous Huxley: “So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.” Bad choices lead to disaster for all.
Writing in Psychology Today, Dr. Steve Taylor said “good means a lack of self-centredness, while evil means an inability to empathise with others … one way to view goodness is that it expresses something fundamental about human nature, while evil represents an aberration from it.” Good is benevolence, altruism and selflessness; evil is selfish, self-absorbed and narcissistic. However, as indicated in the Torah’s idea of good and evil cohabiting in every person, good and evil are fluid and complex rather than irreconcilable opposites. Psychology suggests that much evil behavior is not intrinsic but learned, as in an abusive childhood, bad models at home or religious or political indoctrination.
Other than confirmed cases of mental illness, what we call evil is a learned condition. Jewish teaching and modern psychology concur that evil is a range of behaviors that can be renounced, given proper conditions — a choice that can be changed. The despair that one experiences in witnessing the horrors visited on the world by evil is understandable but should be balanced by the knowledge that fate does not dictate our future.
Jewish teaching and modern psychology concur that evil is a range of behaviors that can be renounced, given proper conditions — a choice that can be changed.
Amid the worst atrocities, there were what Yad Vashem calls “the Righteous Among the Nations,” those who resisted hatred and saved the lives of the persecuted at the risk of their own lives. Today, for example, the “son of Hamas,” Mosab Hassan Yousef, rebelled against the death cult of his father and chose instead to embrace both life and Jews.
Nelson Mandela said that “no one is born hating another person … People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Instead of anger and grievance, Mandela chose love and led a peaceful revolution in South Africa.
The American writer Toni Morrison portrays good and evil in an imaginative fashion: “Good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding; evil is silly. It may be horrible but it’s not a compelling idea: It’s predictable, it needs blood … in order to get anyone’s attention, but the opposite, which is survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are just more compelling intellectually if not spiritually.”
Mandela and Morrison see good and evil as choices for which every person must ultimately take responsibility, regardless of what they are taught in their youth. People are accountable for their decisions.
Religious tradition that teaches the power of the individual to choose good, and democracy, which gives responsibility to people to choose their leaders, stand as bulwarks against evil on a personal and a national scale if we are wise enough to profit from those opportunities. Religious ideals and good governance are necessary to resist the rise of extremism and hatred. Evil will always be with us, but the aim should be to minimize it and contain it. It is like an insurgency that will never be completely defeated but can be controlled.
As with the Son of Hamas and the Righteous Among the Nations, even indoctrinated people have human agency and can choose peace. Free choice comes with great responsibility. The exercise of that choice determines the fate of individuals and nations.
Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies Program.
