[Avodah] (no subject)

[Akiva Miller]

.
R' Joel Rich asked:
> Does hkbh give one a nisayon that one cannot pass? I guess the
> answer depends a lot on how you define the terms but in its
> strongest sense doesn’t this imply that anyone who ever sins
> hasn’t tried hard enough?

I once asked Rav Elazar Mayer Teitz z"l about this. He answered yes, there
is most definitely at least one situation where a person will definitely be
unable to avoid sinning, and that is when he is confronted by an Eishes
Y'fas Toar.

But I later pondered this answer, and realized that it might be taken two
different ways, and I regret that I never got around to asking him about it.

One possibility (surely the one that REMT intended) is that Eishes Y'fas
Toar is the ONLY such example. There are no other cases where it is
impossible for a person to overcome his yetzer hara. If there were other
such cases, the Torah would have prescribed some procedure to help for them
too.

But isn't there another possibility? Maybe Eishes Y'fas Toar really is just
one example, to illustrate that we are human and fallible. Maybe there ARE
other cases where the temptation really is overpowering. Maybe there is a
reason why Eishes Y'fas Toar was singled out to get a procedure for heter,
and I just don't know what that reason is.

But, as R' Micha Berger wrote, it doesn't really matter. Let's suppose that
Hashem does have a list of unpassable tests for which failure is not
counted against us. When I get to a difficult situation, I have no way of
knowing whether this situation is on that list or not. Therefore, I must
always try my hardest, on the safek that this situation IS passable.

BTW, as I understand it, even Eishes Y'fas Toar is NOT carte blanche to do
what you want. If the soldier wants that woman, he must follow the halacha
and the prescribed procedure. He CANNOT simply say "I can't stop myself"
and get away with it.

Wherever this concept came from, I strongly suspect that it was intended to
help us and strengthen our yetzer tov. (Hashem would not have given you
this test unless He was confident you'd pass it, so find a way!) I find it
hard to accept that it was intended as a loophole. (This one is just too
hard; do what you want and don't feel guilty about it.)

Akiva Miller

PS: By the way, a quick Google search suggested that the source for this
idea is in the Christian Bible, specifically 1 Corinthians 10:13.

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