MISC-----the yetzer hara

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Mod, you'll forgive my ignorance but is Yetzer Horah another name/word for the Devil?


Not really.

Judaism doesn’t believe in a "devil" the same way Christians do. There is a Satan, but, unlike the Christian concept of a war between the Satan and G-d, we know the Satan is G-d's loyal servant, more like a sparring partner who fights us savagely, but whose goal is for us to be able to knock him out. There is no force in the world that is not subject to G-d's will.

But the Satan is just one source of temptation. The fact the we are not only spiritual beings but also physical ones means that we have a natural inclination towards physical, material things.

Our natural inclination toward physicality, and the Satan's mission to tempt us are, in combination, what is referred to as the Yetzer Horah.


Indulge if you would in a few more questions. My understanding of this is somewhat infantile compared to posters on this board but Hey it did say "Anything" didn't it.

Is Yetzer Tov (I assume the contra of Yetzer Horah) synonymous with the Holy Spirit such as that placed Saul or David?

I can grasp "Satan" as being under the dominion of G-d as everything is, but I don't understand how you perceive him as a "loyal" servant. Is that in the Torah? Didn't he try to usurp G-d's authority?

Since, Yetzer Horah is not Satan, is it you? I mean is it a sinful nature vs. your willpower?


Yetzer Tov is not "holy spirit." It is your soul, which tells you to do good. It is also your mind, which tells you to do good, since reason and logic always demand making the right decision.

Nothing can rebel against G-d unless it has free will. Only humans have free will. Rocks, trees, grass, planets, animals and angels do not. Only humans were given the gift of free will.

Everything else are just tools that G-d animates and moves as He wishes. The rebellion story is a Christian myth (Note: It is a corrupted version of a Jewish tradition about Satan wanting to rule over the human soul, which is a long story, but a rebellion against G-d? Not possible.) Only people can rebel against G-d.

The reason the Satan is a loyal servant of G-d, is because just like a fighter needs a good sparring partner to train him to fight well, so too humans need a good spiritual sparring partner and trainer to make them grow.

The Satan is our trainer. He gets into the ring with us and makes us fight him. We are fighting for good, he is fighting the other side. But his sole purpose is to train us to beat him. The stronger we get, like any good trainer, the more pressure he puts on us, the harder he tries to knock us down. And sparring partners often knock down their students. But they get pleasure when the student knocks them out.

So too the Satan is there to train us. He often wins, but he is happy when we knock him out.
But even when we do, when we get up again, he will try harder to knock us down.

His goal is to develop our spiritual muscles to the point where he can be proud of us because, no matter how hard he fights, we can still lay him low.

Yezter Horah has two parts, or, you can say, there are two Yetzer Horahs:

(1) the sinful nature of a person (that is, the materialistic nature of a person), due to the physicality of his body which exerts a constant pressure on the soul to do "physical", not spiritual, things, and

(2) the Satan, that sparring partner above, which is an "external" Yezter Horah, designed to keep us on our toes.