Rafi was in trouble. He had gotten into a fight with his little brother, Yoni, which had ended with him throwing Yoni's favorite toy fire engine over the garden wall, where it landed in a clump of vicious stinging nettles in a neighbor's garden. Yoni was inconsolable, and Rafi's mother had not been pleased.
The truth was that Rafi wasn't feeling very happy with himself either. He wasn't feeling proud of his behavior at all. How had he done such a horrible thing? At the time, though, it seemed he had not been able to help himself doing what he had done.
Why was it, he wondered, that people always ended up doing bad things, even though they knew it was wrong. He knew it was wrong to hit and take away his brother's toys, yet he had still done it. Maybe his father would know.
The next day, Shabbat, when walking to the synagogue, Rafi posed his question. "Daddy, why do people often seem to do bad things, even though they know it is wrong? Why don't we just want to do good?"
"You chose a good day to ask that question," answered his father. "Do you know which weekly Torah reading they are going to read today?"
"Ummm, Bereishit?"
"And do you remember what events happen in Bereishit?"
"The world was created... and Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and had to leave the Garden of Eden, and they had two sons, and one son killed the other."
"Quite right. You see, Adam and Eve were pure and innocent. They did not want to do bad things—only to serve G‑d. But then the snake came and persuaded them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, which was the one thing they were forbidden to do.
"The snake is like the Evil Inclination—called the Yetzer Hara. It tries to persuade us to do bad. Everyone has this Yetzer Hara. That is why Cain killed Abel: his Evil Inclination got the better of him. Our job is to resist it, and through this, we make the world into a better place. The Torah shows us what G‑d wants us to do. The Yetzer Hara tries to persuade us to disobey—but we have to fight back against it by doing good!"
Now Rafi understood why he had thrown the fire-engine over the wall. He had given in to that nasty snake, the Yetzer Hara. Ughhh!
"In the future I am going to be in charge of what I do," he thought to himself. "I'm not going to let that snake run my life!"
At that point they reached the synagogue, and entered.
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