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I n t r o d u c t i o n The Riddle, or: How Did the Evil Yetzer Become a Mighty King? Shortly before coming to a close, Ecclesiastes tells us of a small city that was besieged by a great king. The city was saved by the wisdom of a “poor wise man,” who, however, was forgotten a short while later. Ecclesiastes dryly comments: “So I observed wisdom is better than valor, but a poor man’s wisdom is scorned and his words are not heeded” (9:16). This critique of urban warfare and politics did not seem to interest the rabbis. Although they still understood these verses as reflecting on the themes of power, wisdom, and military tactics, for them the narrative was referring to an entirely different kind of warfare; not one of siege engines and adjutants but rather a form of combat completely private and internal.1 R. Ammi bar Abba said: What is the meaning of the passage: a little city, with few men in it? (Ecc 9:14) A little city—is the body; with few men in it—these are the limbs; and to it came a great king, who besieged it—this is the evil yetzer; and built mighty siege works against it—these are sins. A poor wise man was in the city (v. 15)—this is the good yetzer; who saved it with his wisdom—this is repentance and good deeds. But nobody thought of that poor man—for when the evil yetzer [dominates], the good yetzer is not remembered. (b. Ned 32b) This passage envisions the individual as a site of conflict that involves control , repression, and submission, that can best be described using the image of a city under siege. This use of the public sphere as a metaphor for the private is of course a commonplace in the Classical and Hellenistic tradition. It goes back 2 Introduction at least to Plato, who famously portrayed the individual as a microcosm of the city-state.2 The players in our rabbinic drama, however, are quite different from the standard Hellenist dramatis personae. While Philo and Paul, to take two famous examples, present conflicts between soul and body, or mind and desires, this homily presents a race for control between two tendencies inside the soul itself: the good yetzer and the evil yetzer. Several other aspects of this battle are noteworthy. First, the two opposing powers in this struggle are not symmetrical. The evil yetzer is a “great king.” The good yetzer, though “wise,” is a “poor man,” who despite his wisdom and tactical maneuvering cannot change the basic balance of power. Second, contrary to prevalent Hellenistic conceptions, the evil yetzer is not identical to the body; in the parable, the body is the city, the neutral battleground for the two yetzarim. The struggle is between two forces inside the body, not body and soul.3 Moreover, the evil yetzer is an invader, laying siege to the body from outside, not an integral part of it. Third, the evil yetzer is clearly antinomian. It does not attempt to draw the person to questionable behavior in general, but specifically to sins. Similarly, the good yetzer wages war by means of “repentance and good deeds.” The adversaries in this battle are not wisdom and passions; they are obedience to God and transgressions. The asymmetric balance of power between the king and the poor man compels the latter to engage in various stratagems in order to defeat the king and lift the siege. To the rabbis, this is the picture of a person’s struggle against the evil yetzer, a contest in which all manner of ploys must be implemented, and yet the balance of power between the great king and the poor man can never be altered. This vivid portrayal of the evil yetzer as a dominant, antinomian entity raises a series of questions. This figure of the yetzer is unparalleled in pre-rabbinic literature. Even the term “yetzer (ha)ra” itself appears only a few times before the rabbis. Who, then, crowned the evil yetzer a “great king,” capable of besieging and even conquering the whole city, and why? How did it acquire such a central place in rabbinic anthropology? More than anything, what drives this study is the enigmas posed by the fundamental place of the yetzer and the powerful demonic traits ascribed to it in the world of the rabbis. The “good yetzer” is yet another problem...

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