[Avodah] "Borei nefashos rabbos VECHESRONAM"

[Michael Makovi]

> >
This brings to mind Isaiah 45:7  "I form the light, and create
darkness: I make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord Who does all
these things."
Actually, the term evil (ra) here denotes calamity and suffering. These
serve as means of punishment for the sins of man. Moral evil, on the
other hand, does not proceed from God, but is the result of man's
actions. Moral evil is an absence of God's morality.

> Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits in God Man and History makes an interesting
> interpretation on how Hashem created moral evil too: He created the
> possibility for it when He gave us free will. He ties this into Hashem
> creating all the creatures we see today via evolution - He didn't
> actually create them, but He creatured their possibility.
>
> Mikha'el Makovi

Some may say this is banal, peshita. However, I don't think it is
quite so clear that Hashem created moral evil by giving us free will.

In the Apocrypha, for example, IV Ezra, quoted by Rabbi Leo Adler in
The Biblical View of Man (Urim Publications), it is argued that man is
doomed by Adam to sin, without hope of rising from sin. Different
sections of Enoch argue that fallen angels or other extra-human means
brought evil. Another part of Enoch swears that evil is due to man's
free will - Rabbi Adler notes that if an oath is necessary to affirm
this, it was apparently a hotly debated question.

So it is not at all clear that we don't need to be told that moral
evil is in our hands.

However, the pasuk from Yishayahu would, if anything, make the
confusion worse. People would misunderstand this to mean that davka
man does NOT have free will, but rather he is doomed to sin, for
Hashem creates (moral) evil. This is a kashya on the proposal that the
pasuk refers to moral evil.

Even if we are wrong about the pasuk speaking of moral evil, we have
learned more about the Apocryphal origins of Christianity however - it
didn't grow out of a vacuum, not by a long shot.

Mikha'el Makovi