Know Thy Enemy
Now, according to the lesson in our parsha, what’s one of the first and most important remedies to heal those who are bitten by the snake of the yetzer hara? Lift it on a pole! Let everyone see! Because that’s the opposite of what the yetzer hara wants. He wants to be as low as possible so that nobody should see him, nobody should think about him. “Don’t talk about me. I’m an anav. I don’t want publicity.” Because that’s when he’s most effective.
It’s like the spy that comes from Moscow, he doesn’t want anyone to pay attention to him. If he reads in the headlines in the New York Times, “Suspicious Russian Agent Arrives Today From Moscow,” he knows he’s finished. Headlines?! That’s the last thing that he wants.
And it’s the same thing with the yetzer hara; he doesn’t appreciate when people talk about him. Even right now, the yetzer hara would appreciate it if we wouldn't be mentioning him so much. He’s the one entity in this world that does not look for kavod. Everybody likes recognition, publicity, but he prefers to remain unseen and unnoticed because that’s his way of succeeding. And that’s why Hashem says, "Put him on a high pole. Let everybody see the great peril so that they can overcome it.”
Now, there are many ideas included in this big subject of putting the yetzer hara on a high pole for everyone to see, because on all sides there is wickedness and lies masquerading. And that means there’s so much to talk about, so much to raise up from its camouflage. And we should do it. It has to be done! We have to unmask him in all of his disguises. We need one lecture about television and one about sports. Another about clothing and about politics and about newspapers. We’d have to unmask some frum people too, some shuls. It’s a very big job and therefore we certainly cannot do justice to the subject with merely an hour sitting together; each disguise must be spoken about because the snake is very cunning. It’s a big job to lift him up for everyone to see.
The Grass is Greener...
But one of the biggest yetzer hara of all is the one in our parsha, the one that caused the entire story of the nechashim haserafim and the resulting command of Hashem to raise the yetzer on the pole for everyone to see. Because how did it all begin? When the nation began to see what’s doing elsewhere, in Edom, and they began to imagine that times could be better elsewhere.
The seforim often refer to it as dimyon, imagination. Rav Yisrael Salanter in his famous epistle called Iggeres Hamussar, the letter of mussar, he writes that this world is like a sea, like an ocean with waves, big waves. And the waves are dimyon, imagination. We are being buffeted by huge waves of imagination. We are imagining things that we could do and have fun in life. And there’s no rest; we’re being pushed up and down, and from side to side.
The Snake in Your Head
Now, this is already an entirely new type of disguise. Because we’re talking now about our own thoughts! He’s not disguised as a college professor or even as a man with a beard. It’s much worse than that – he’s disguised as your own thoughts! Ach!
Now that’s not my statement; it comes from the Chovos Halevavos. He says that the yetzer hara participates in all of our thinking in order to see to it that things turn out the way he likes to see them turn out. And one of his favorite weapons is imagination, dimyon. That’s why most of mankind are enticed by the yetzer hara – because they don’t dream that they have any contact with it. It doesn’t even enter their mind because it’s concealed in such a manner, in their thoughts, that nobody who is being ensnared by it realizes what’s taking place. He’s talking to you and crawling around your thoughts, but he’s camouflaged among everything else in your head.
The Stealth Attack
And so now you understand how it can happen that the most fortunate generation in history, they who were soon going to enter into Eretz Canaan as the conquering nation, and instead of being full of happiness, they were dissatisfied with their station. How could it be that they’re imagining maybe it’s better somewhere else? Because it doesn’t happen openly – it happens stealthily, disguised as your own thoughts! “It’s better over there!”
And that’s the famous verse that Shlomo Hamelech taught us in Mishlei: The eyes of a fool are on the end of the world (17:24). The yetzer makes you into a fool and you’re looking for things beyond and beyond and beyond. Over there the grass is greener; maybe over there I’ll find something happier.
You remember when you used to go on a picnic with your family – in the good old days when it was still possible to picnic in public parks – so your parents took out the basket of lunch to sit down on the grass. And you said, “Ma, the grass here is all trodden out. Let’s go down that road there; you see there on the hill, it’s all green over there!” Now, when you finally get to that hill, you see that the grass is even less green over there. But no matter, you’ll do it again next time.
Childish Adults
Not only children; adults too. You can prove it immediately by walking out into the street. Why are so many cars going in two directions? If everything is so good in Coney Island all the cars should be going in this direction. If everything is so good in Manhattan, all the cars should be going there. But you see there are two streams of cars, from Coney Island they’re going to Manhattan and from Manhattan they’re going to Coney Island. And not only are they going in these two directions, they're going crisscross too. They're travelling down Avenue R and Avenue S, up and down. People are traveling in every conceivable direction. Because they are imagining that there are better times someplace else.
The great outdoors! There are plenty of people who buy camping equipment and they go and seek happiness someplace out in the forest and the fields. It's nothing but imagination because when they come to the fields they'll find people there – the loggers working there – who look at them like lunatics. “You forsook your comfortable home in the city and you came out here?! We can’t help ourselves. We have to work in a logging camp; it’s our livelihood. But you meshugaim, what are you doing here?!
“And you're going fishing too?! What dumbbells you are! Go to a fish store in the city and you can buy the best, the choicest fish. Here you’ll sit all day long, maybe you'll catch one fish. What in the world were you thinking?”
The Amazon Fraud
I remember, there was a doctor I knew in Manhattan, an am ha’aretz. So when he was very old, he told his family that he wasn’t yet satisfied – he was searching for something still. And so this old fool traveled to Brazil to visit the Amazon Rainforest and he took a trip down the Amazon River in a boat.
I can picture how it went. An old man with his creaking bones – he had arthritis already – is traveling down the river and he’s having chai times charata why he didn’t remain home in his flat in Manhattan. And he’s waving off those huge mosquitoes that were zeroing in on him. Back home he couldn’t get such mosquitoes – he’d have to go to a pet store to see such big creatures.
Anyhow, when he came home so this faker told his family – he couldn’t admit that he was the kesil, the fool of Mishlei – so he said, “Now, I’m ready to die.” Of course he was ready to die. Anybody would be ready to die after such a trip!
Emigrating and Immigrating
Why are airplanes taking off every minute to different parts of the world with travelers? I’m talking now about frum Jews! They’re traveling for things that they imagine they're going to find someplace else. All over the world people are doing their best to get a visa to America but Americans are spending so much money on visiting those places where the people would like to leave.
Oh, but you read a description in the National Geographic Magazine of an island in the South Seas or a certain country, let's say a Spanish province, oh how wonderful it is. You’ll enjoy the view and you’ll see the grapevines and you see the peasants gathering their produce from the fields. And you're so inspired by this lovely landscape.
But don't you realize that all these peasants are barefoot? They can't afford a pair of shoes. And they're all hoping that someday they'll be able to go to New York and live in a slum. They'd do anything for that because they understand the sheker of their environment. The romance, the glamor, is only in the eye of the beholder. It's because he is a stranger, because it’s the other side of the world, that he is able to imagine these things.
Travel Buffs and Travel Bluffs
That's the cause for the entire travel business. The yetzer hara is disguised as the travel agents and he’s busy bluffing the world. They have pictures of beaches someplace else, an island someplace, and they want to persuade you to buy tickets and to travel there. All the places that sell tours are making a living out of imagination. “If I travel someplace else, then it’s going to be enjoyable over there.” And then when they get there, they discover that people from over there are traveling over here and that the whole thing is nothing but imagination.
And that's what Rav Yisrael Salanter is telling us, that this world is an ocean of waves. Not only for traveling – all forms of wanting something else,
