Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jide

Bringing back the good old days when I had time to learn chassidus in the middle of the day... here's a post, originally entitled The veins which deals with some chassidic topics. It's been a long time since October 24, 2007. Yup.

Back to the original topic,(how difficult it is not to tangentalise [Google doesn't like this word])I was affected by a recent Maamar that I just completed. The Yetzer Hora, the evil inclination, the angel of death (as the Talmud says) is intent on causing the downfall of man, leading him from the trodden path of Torah and good deeds, and bringing him into the ditch of iniquity, sin, and eventually death, whether spiritual or physical (which is why they call him the angel of death). Now this inclination dude is variously described as being a doddering old king, and sometimes a brilliant young nuclear physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Library who somehow got mixed up with the young crowd, irradiated himself with (what else?) nuclear radiation, and is now The Yetzer Hora. Regardless, he has two ways of causing man to sin. The first, which is superior, is when the guy sins, and feels incredibly guilty, repents, and leads an irreproachable life for the rest of his days. How beautiful.

Alternatively, the Yetzer Hora convinces man that what he's doing is really fine, and then there's no knowing what will occur. "Hey," our local friendly sinner says, "not only am I your local friendly sinner, but I'm not sinning! I have an excuse for everything!" This guy is basically all of us.

The solution? Get a spiritual adviser, or start gaining girth. Nothing like chocolate-chip cookies to increase spiritually and physically, right? Of course, I'm only kidding. About one of these two options anyway. As Fox says, you decide.

Oh, and by the way, do to the insistence of the almighty editor, the source for all the above genius is a Sefer called Kuntreisim Aleph, Maamar Ki Karov, by the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe. He says thank you.