Yom Kippur - 2023-5784 - Evil Makes Us Good

Yom Kippur - 2023-5784

Evil Makes Us Good

This summer I had the opportunity to see the movie Oppenheimer. As we know, this epic three-hour movie tells the story of the creation of the atom bomb through the eyes of the lead scientist on the Manhattan Project - Robert Oppenheimer. It is a fascinating film, one which I highly recommend, which touches on a variety of themes - not least of which is the role scientists played in creating a weapon of mass destruction.

Scientists from across the US and around the globe were recruited by Oppenheimer - and the US Army - to design the atomic bomb. Einstein is depicted in the film as laying the scientific foundation, and Oppenheimer is depicted as carrying that science to its terrible, logical conclusion. As the theory of nuclear fission became more real and practical, the scientists paused to deliberate their work. Is this, they ask, really what we are meant to do? Is science meant to be exploited for nefarious purposes? Isn’t scientific knowledge meant to provide benefits for society? Isn’t scientific discovery meant to enhance humanity, not destroy it? 

In what I consider to be a pivotal scene in the movie, and the point on which the whole nuclear bomb project depends, Oppenheimer responds to the serious moral questioning of their work by saying: “I don't know if we can be trusted with such a weapon, but I know the Nazis can't.” That is a remarkable and deeply troubling perspective. It reflects the idea that the scientists needed to put aside any moral misgivings about creating a bomb, and understand their work from a different moral perspective. The question about whether they should devote their pure pursuit of knowledge to the cause of an evil creation, pales in the face of the greater cause - namely, defeating the most evil empire on earth. Even morally neutral scientists needed to recognize that their scientific talents were required to ensure that the world would be safe from the Nazis.

The question the scientists needed to answer is whether they could justify having their knowledge exploited by the government and weaponized. These scientists in laboratories and universities, were all working on different aspects of Einstein’s theories. Some realized that the science could eventually lead to harnessing what had been known as a natural phenomenon - the power that causes stars to exist. That nuclear fission that occurs in the sun and all the other stars in the sky could now be replicated in the laboratory. Though science had been used before for evil purposes, for example Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, never before could science possess such an awesome power of mass destruction.

At the same time, the Nazis were overtaking Europe, threatening the lives of millions of people and killing millions of others. The movie makes clear how the Jewish scientists involved in the project were doing what they could to save their relatives and fellow Jews, and the rest of humanity. The Nazis were America’s enemy, but the Nazis were also the enemy of a moral and ethical society.

What Oppenheimer ventures to explore is the multi-layered issue of Good and Evil. Moral dilemmas cannot be understood simply in black and white terms. Every choice we make has a gray area to it and we need guidance to understand how much into the gray area we can go without going over to the dark side. And moral questions make us understand that more often than not decisions we make will be gray and not black or white and we have to accept that. 

But what's more difficult to accept is the role that Evil plays in the moral decisions we make. In other words, when we try to resolve a moral question in our lives, we would hope that the factors that we use to make our decision would be clearly defined as good or bad. And we would hope that we would only use good factors to make a good decision. But what Oppenheimer showed is that sometimes evil is involved in making a moral, good decision. The scientists should have been able to say, in the course of their work, that science was leading them to the possibility of creating a weapon of mass destruction. Though  science can be used for positive purposes, namely creating a clean source of energy, it can also be used for evil. Therefore, the scientists could have thought that regulations were needed to be put in place to ensure that science would  not be exploited - that regulations would ensure that the new technology would be used solely for good purposes.

During WWII, scientists had to weigh that ideal with the practical reality that Nazi scientists were going to make the bomb. Were scientists justified in creating evil? Was the evil of the bomb less evil than the possible victory of the evil empire? That truth, that we had the power in our hands for mass destruction and we had to live with that grave moral consequence, is the human dilemma. Though Oppenheimer discussed this on a grand scale, this is a question we face every day. We often have to weigh decisions that are gray and hope that we are doing mostly good and not bad. And we have to accept the consequences of our actions.

During WWII, people in Nazi occupied Europe faced a dilemma. If a Jew, or a Jewish family, asked to be hidden, what was the non-Jew to do? Certainly the non-Jew would be right to want to save his own life but he had to weigh that against saving someone else’s life. How much should the non-Jew have risked and which moral truth is more important? Saving your own life or trying to save someone else’s?

Unfortunately, many of us may be faced with end of life decisions for our loved ones. Do we encourage extraordinary measures or do we let nature take its course when a disease is terminal? Telling doctors to keep intervening could take away quality of life. But letting nature take its course could deprive someone of extra months of life. Neither option is ideal even though both take into account the best interests of the patient. 

We also could face difficult decisions at the beginning of life. A fetus could be discovered to have a fatal and incurable disease. Do the parents opt to abort the pregnancy saving themselves the anguish of watching their child die, and saving the future child from pain and suffering or do the parents endure the pregnancy because the fetus has a beating heart and is a life? Either decision can be Jewishly validated and either decision can be right. But which is the more correct decision to make?

There will be times throughout our life when we will be confronted with ethical dilemmas. We may be faced with these emotionally heart wrenching life decisions, or we may be faced with decisions concerning work, family and friends. Our jobs could be at risk, family relationships may be severed, friendships may be lost because there never is a clear cut decision upon which everyone will agree. Someone inevitably gets hurt - and we pray that we choose the path with the least amount of pain.

I don’t mean to push any political buttons by referencing these examples. I do mean to highlight how gray these dilemmas are. Ethical dilemmas - choices that involve weighing certain values against others - are difficult decisions to make. The decision reached can be different for everyone as well. Ethical dilemmas don’t involve simple arithmetic - they aren’t 2+2=4; they aren’t simply black or white - because the solution for ethical dilemmas involves multiple human emotional variables. Sometimes we wish the solution to our moral problem would be easy but most of the time the solution is nuanced and challenging.

The rabbis understood this of course. They knew the human condition - that we were created with the power to choose. Humans don’t only act by instinct as the rest of creation does, we make choices. Today is a good example of that. Our animal instinct is to eat and drink - these are basic matters of survival. But today on Yom Kippur we show how we are not lowly animals by choosing not to eat and not to drink. 

But not only do humans make choices, we judge these choices. We label these choices as Good or Evil. The choice not to eat is considered a mitzvah. By doing so the rabbis created a community of people who have a basic value system. Whether it was the Greeks and Romans and their systems of philosophy and law, or whether it was the rabbis and our system of Jewish religious values, every Western community lives by a system of choices that are then labeled as good or bad. 

We make choices, we label these choices as good or bad and the rabbis say the choices we make are based on the inclinations with which we were created. We were created with the inclination to do good - the yetzer ha-tov - and the inclination to do bad - the yetzer ha-rah. Our Jewish goal is to understand that we have choices before us; to understand that these choices are good or bad; and as we make the choice we have to understand that we need to overcome the evil inclination in us so that we do the right thing. That is the religious process we undergo as we navigate our journey through life - as Judaism serves to be our moral compass.

Human beings are the most intellectually advanced animals on the planet. We have a conscience. No one would argue that having a conscience is a bad thing, but we might agree that our conscience is the bane of our existence. The nuclear scientists as depicted in Oppenheimer, the medical ethical issues we face, the non-Jews in Nazi occupied Europe among many other examples we can come up with,  all involve confronting our conscience. These dilemmas all recognize that there are choices to be made. They all recognize that these choices are good or bad. And according to Jewish tradition the people making these decisions all have to deal with their own conscience and weigh how much of the evil inclination in them will determine the choices they make. 

The remarkable lesson that the rabbis also teach us is that sometimes evil can serve a positive purpose. Sometimes we need the evil inclination in us to ultimately do good things. In a comment to chapter 1 in the book of Genesis when God commented on the creation of Adam and all of creation by saying “and behold it was very good - ve-hiney tov me’od - the rabbis say the following: “‘And behold, it was very good' refers to the Evil inclination. Can then the Evil inclination be very good? That would be extraordinary! But without the Evil inclination, however, no man would build a house, take a wife and beget children.”

The rabbis understand that there are things we do that aren’t exactly 100% pure. There are things - like building a house - that reflect going against our inclination to be pure and good. Building a home, the rabbis are teaching, involves acquiring land - land, like the land of Israel, belongs to God and not to us. Building a home could also cut us off from the rest of the community - we may be inclined to focus on our needs and neglect others in the community. Building a home involves a measure of arrogance, a trait that isn’t purely good. 

Yet, at the same time a home can be a place where many mitzvot are performed. People could observe the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim - hospitality to guests - by feeding them meals and giving them shelter. Homes are places of learning where families study and practice Jewish traditions. Out of evil then - the arrogance and perhaps selfishness of the act of building a house - comes the positive elements reflected in the mitzvot performed.

The same is true for marriage. The evil nature of sexual depravity is tempered by the institution of marriage. Instead of engaging in random and perhaps illicit sexual behavior, marriage tempers the sexual desire through a monogamous relationship. Sexulaity is transformed into a sacred act through the institution of marriage and through the fulfillment of the first mitzvah - be fruitful and multiply. 

What the rabbis then are teaching us - and what comes out quite strongly in the Oppenheimer movie - is that human beings have great power. Our minds can accomplish great things. As we do so we make choices. We judge those choices. And those choices are based on our inherent nature. But the ultimate choice we have before us is to ensure that the choices we make are always made for our benefit and the benefit of our community. We are moral human beings and it is our responsibility to always ensure that our yetzer ha-tov wins out over our yezter ha-rah.

This religious perspective on human nature is quite sobering. It highlights for us the grave responsibilities we have as moral, ethical and religious people. There is so much we have to weigh when we make decisions in life - decisions that affect other people. We have to weigh our own health, safety and desires against the needs of family, friends and community. It is a heavy burden, but understanding the process and trusting our yetzer ha-tov, can ease the decision making process. 

For the rest of this day we will be focusing on our behavior. We are forced to reflect upon the choices we made this past year and honestly admit when we have failed. But, with the help of our family and friends around us today, with the body of Jewish tradition encouraging us and ultimately with God’s love and compassion, we can hope and pray that we will make the right choices in the future. Le shana tovah tikateivu veteichateimu - may the choices we make cause us to be inscribed and sealed for a good and blessed new year. Amen.