“You yourself must also provide us with sacrifices and burnt offerings to offer up to our God.... for from them we will take what we need to serve Havayah our God.”
Our master, the Baal Shem Tov taught that, “Evil is the seat of the good” (הרע כסא לטוב). The deep purpose of evil is to elevate the good. But how exactly does this happen? We will now see three ways in which evil can elevate the good. Each of these ways corresponds to one of the three stages of true transformation also taught by the Ba’al Shem Tov: submission, separation, and sweetening.
The first possibility is that when evil threatens us, it motivates us to repent. As the sages said, if the Jewish people do not repent, the Almighty places them under the rule of a wicked king like Haman until they repent. Thus, evil is used to bring us to submission before God, and once evil has fulfilled its role, there is no longer any need for it.
A second possibility is that evil sharpens our appreciation of the good. When we see wickedness at the height of its ugliness, we say with a whole heart, “Happy are we, for how good is our portion.” When everything is coasting along nicely, we usually cannot feel the joy and novelty that can be found in goodness. But when evil serves as a dark background, then the good shines and is emphasized, suggesting the adage from King Solomon, “the advantage of light derives from [i.e., can be appreciated when it is contrasted with] darkness.” In this case, evil emphasizes how different the good is and so we say that it encourages our sense of separation—separating the good from the evil and embracing the good as Divine.
Yet, a third possibility is what Moses says to Pharaoh: “You yourself must also provide us with sacrifices and burnt offerings to offer up to our God.... for from them we will take what we need to serve Havayah our God.” Even from the most wicked, something can be taken for the service of God. For example, we learn from them how to act with desire and pleasure. Thus, it turns out that there is some sweetening of the evil that taught us how to be good.
