[Avodah] Yetzer HaRa channeled for good?

[Ken Bloom]

On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 11:53:08PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
> Ken Bloom wrote:
> 
> >>Mogel relates a Talmudic legend about men from a great synagogue who
> >>wanted to kill the wild yetser hara. They captured it and locked it
> >>up for three days. But during that time, not a single new egg hatched
> >>anywhere in the land. The men understood that the yetser hara was the
> >>source of procreation — without it, there could be no creative life
> >>force. So they let it go.  The yetser hara is tov me’od, the rabbinic
> >>authors concluded — very good.
> 
> >AIUI, it isn't about the Yetzer HaRa being a good influence. It's a
> >more universal fact about the balance between good and bad in the
> >universe. When such a potential for evil was removed from the universe,
> >a corresponding potential for good had to be removed with it.
> 
> Huh.  I thought it was specifically about the yetzer hara for arayot.

That too, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise about the language of
Yetzer HaRa here. But AIUI, it's a general principle applying to
whatever part of the yetzer hara. When avodah zara was removed, so was
nevuah, when arayot were removed, so was the good that comes with it.

But R' Shlomo Argamon mentioned to me that he thought that yetzer
harah was something that could be channeled for good, that the term
Yetzer HaRa corresponded to the animalistic soul, and it was something
that was meant to be channeled for good (as opposed to something meant
to be conquered). So when the yetzer hara for arayot was removed,
that meant it could no longer be channeled for good either.

I'd appreciate sources understanding this either way.

--Ken

-- 
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/
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