It’s gotten so bad that I hate to open the newspaper.  I get sick to my stomach reading about the latest suicide bombing in Israel, the latest slaughter in, the latest kidnapping and beheading in Iraq.  Often I feel helpless and hopeless at the rampaging evil in our world.  Often I feel angry to the point of rage at the murderers and fanatics.  I’m sure you do, too.

What are we to do?  How do we cope with the terrible evils that have already occurred?  How do we continue in spite of the fear that worse may be yet to come?  How do we deal with the grinding frustration that we really are powerless to conquer such evil?  The Jewish mystical tradition has a unique view of evil that may be of some help to us.

In Jewish tradition, darkness is often used as a metaphor for evil.  Remember the ninth plague, the plague of darkness?  So it was dark.  What’s so bad about that?  Say the mystics:

…this was not the kind of darkness that descends every night.  It was a far more terrible darkness, for it was not merely the absence of light…

… during the ages that the world was spared its curse, where, then, was this darkness to be found?  It is said in certain esoteric texts that when the Holy One withdrew the primal darkness from the world, He concealed it in a secret place on this planet, should the time come when it was necessary to call upon the darkness to demonstrate the danger of turning too far from the light.

Where was this dread darkness concealed?  In a cave, whose location is… hidden.  It is further said that the entrance of that cave has been closed by a curtain woven of the original primordial light.  In fact, in certain obscure writings it is said that this curtain is none other than the very tallis of light that Moses used to protect the Children of Israel from the effects of that dread darkness.

… that wonderful tallis… holds back the darkness better than any seven locks and seals.

Yet the danger remains that should the inhabitants of this world turn their faces too far from the light, the Holy One could be compelled to lift the tallis for as long as needed to remind men of their mortality… So does the danger exist that some mad or evil men will seek to locate that hidden place and tear down the protective tallis that guards all life on this planet.  And if this, God forbid, should happen, then it would be too late.  [ Howard Schwartz – Adam’s Soul, pp. 45-9.]

So the distance between light and darkness, good and evil, life and death, is the thickness of a piece of cloth.  They are so close to each other they almost touch.  They are always there.  We choose which side of the cloth to be on.

The mystics have a wonderfully creative explanation for why evil was created in the first place, and what we human beings are called upon to do about it.

Before there was anything, they teach, there was only God.  Where could God create?  There was no room, no place that wasn’t God.  God could only create by contracting, by creating a space, very much like a womb, that was not God.  Then, in order to structure creation as God wanted it to be structured, God created a series of vessels.  Into them God poured the creative force, depicted as the Primordial Light.

And then the trouble started.  God had made a mistake!  Can you believe it?  The creator of the universe, say the mystics, didn’t realize that the vessels weren’t strong enough to contain the Divine Light.  They shattered!  They flew all over non-God space, each broken piece trapping within itself a bit of that light, a spark.

So our universe is flawed, not structured the way God originally intended it to be, one in which evil has as much power as good, sometimes more.  Our task is to find those broken vessels and free the spark within so that they can return to their Creator.  In doing so we repair the shattered universe and make it whole once again.  The mystics call this hastening the coming of the Messiah.

Obeying the commandments, performing deeds of loving-kindness, having courage in the face of adversity, all are part of the process of freeing the sparks.  All through the mystical writings of the Hasidim are beautiful tales like this one, of people whose acts helped bring the Messiah a little closer.  So, one final story:

Rabbi Yoel wanted to know who would be his next-door neighbor in the Garden of Eden, because the Jewish tradition teaches that everyone has a neighbor or partner in paradise, someone whose spiritual qualities and virtues are somehow equivalent to his own.  Rabbi Yoel was curious, so he asked in heaven and they told him, “There is a rich Jew named Yankeleh in Lemberg; he will be your neighbor.”

Rabbi Yoel went to Lemberg, imagining that Yankeleh, his partner in paradise… must be somebody special!

Rabbi Yoel arrived in Lemberg, went to this rich Jew’s home and asked for hospitality.  Yankeleh was very happy to receive him.  After all, Rabbi Yoel was one of the greatest rabbis!  Rabbi Yoel carefully watched Yankeleh, to see what kind of person he was.  He turned out to be a fine Jew:  he prayed regularly; he gave charity generously according to his wealth.  But he was nothing special!  Rabbi Yoel was there for one week, and he was actually disgusted.  He thought to himself, “I’m giving my life for God and the Jewish people day and night, and this is all I’ll have, this simple Jew as my neighbor?”  He was just about to leave when he heard that Yankeleh was marrying off his son the following week.  So he decided to stay for the wedding.

At the ceremony, Rabbi Yoel watched as his host, Yankeleh, walked with his son to the bridal canopy.  Then, suddenly, Yankeleh heard someone sobbing from the depths of his heart.  This was a celebration — everyone in town was invited, including all the poor people; why was someone crying?  Yankeleh stopped and he said to one of his servants, “Please go see who’s crying there.”  The servant came back and told him, “There’s a boy, the same age as the bridegroom who’s crying.”

Yankeleh said, “Bring him here.”

They brought him over.  The boy was in rags.  Yankeleh said to him, “Why are you crying?”

The boy said, “Do you really want to know?”

He said, “Tell me.”

“Do you remember,” said the boy, “that rich Jew who went bankrupt last year?  I’m his son.   I was engaged to the bride, the girl that your son is going to marry.  I’ve been engaged to her my whole life.  [In those days of arranged marriages, some people engaged their children when they were three or four years old.] We love each other so much.  But because my father went bankrupt, her parents did not want her to marry me, a penniless boy.  So they broke the engagement and engaged her to marry your son, because you’re rich.”

Yankeleh said to his servant, “Please, call the bride.”  They brought the girl over and he asked her, “Is it true that you were engaged to this boy all those years?”

She said, “Yes.”

“Is it true that you love him the most?”

“Yes,” she said, “it’s true, I love him the most, but my parents won’t let me marry him!”

He turned to his son and said, “Did you hear this?  I’ll find you a girl who will be your true soul mate.   But now, go back to the house.   Take this boy with you…  and give him your new suit.”

And he said to the boy, “I want you to know that I am going to treat you as if you were my own son.  All the money and gifts I was going to give to my son, I’m giving to you.”

When Rabbi Yoel told this story, he would say, “I’ve never seen a father dance at the wedding of his own son with as much joy as this man danced at the wedding of this boy he didn’t know, whom he reunited with his intended bride.

“When I came to Lemberg, I couldn’t understand why he deserved to sit next to me in paradise; when I left, I couldn’t understand how I deserved to sit next to him.”  [Buxbaum, pp. 45-7]

If that doesn’t help gather the sparks, if that doesn’t help repair a broken universe, I don’t know what does.

And that’s the key.  There is terrible evil in our world.  There are also possibilities, countless possibilities, for good.  Remember:  Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and all the rest are gone.  Bin Laden will be, too – and we will still be here.  Our job is not to run the planet.  Our job is not to be super-heroes.  Our job is to repair the breach, free the sparks, one small act at a time, one person at a time.  As one of my colleagues suggests,

For each of us, the question is not how we slay the dragon, but how we tend the sheep.  [Rabbi David Wolpe]

We are not the dragon-slayers.  We are part of the flock.  Let us combat the world’s evil by tending to each other with kindness and with love.