- 5786/2025
- Rabbi Fein
Yom Kippur 5786/2025
Rabbi Leah Fein
Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Los Angeles
With All Your Heart: A Yom Kippur Reflection
For these sins, our God, we ask forgiveness, al chet shechatanu lefanecha…
These words are from the Al Chet prayer which we will recite later in our service amid our communal confession. This prayer is one our people have been reciting on Yom Kippur for over 700 years, beating our hearts with each sin that we say. The sins we list in Al Chet are straightforward: for the sin of lies and deceit, for the sin of disrespect to parents and teachers, for the sin of abusing our power…
But there is one sin for which we beat our hearts during this prayer whose meaning is more elusive than the rest: al chet shechatanu lefanecha beyetzer hara - for the sin of giving into our yetzer hara - giving into our evil inclination.
We recite this phrase every year on Yom Kippur, multiple times throughout this holy day. But to understand it, we first need to be invited into the world of the ancient rabbis, our Sages two thousand years ago who coined the phrase yetzer hara, the evil inclination.
In the Talmud, our ancient rabbis imagined a world where people didn’t ever lie or shame or cheat. A fantasy existence free of betrayal or exploitation. Imagine that with me: living in a society where no one sought revenge or humiliated others online or twisted the truth just to serve their own agenda. Imagine…A life without secretly resenting that coworker, without lusting after someone, without envying that wealthy friend. How many problems could be solved, how much better would life be, without all those temptations?
The name the rabbis gave to these temptations, to these urges toward pure self-interest, is yetzer hara.
It was their fantasy to rid the world of yetzer hara. Who wouldn’t want to be rid of it? - they wondered. What’s the worst that could happen? So in their fantasy world, the rabbis captured yetzer hara and locked it into a soundproof lead box. And just like that - yetzer hara was gone from the world forever.
But then, the rabbis’ fantasy takes a strange turn. What does a world without yetzer hara - without any evil or bad or purely self-serving inclinations - what does that world actually look like? Well, according to the rabbis, not as good as we might think. In this fantasy, without yetzer hara, the world just seemed to…pause. Fields and gardens, once cared for with pride, became overgrown. People no longer tended to their homes or work, finding it easier to just stay in bed. Without yetzer hara, most of what sustained life and society was gone.
Through what started as a fantasy story, the rabbis revealed an unsettling truth: for the world to keep going, human beings actually need the very impulse they’d tried to imprison. Because, the rabbis explained: “were it not for yetzer hara, a person would never build a house, would never marry, would never have children, and would never engage in commerce.” Meaning, as a society, there are elements of yetzer hara that we need, including the ambition to build and create, and the drive to succeed. And so, for the world to continue, some measure of greed and selfishness is necessary - but only as long as it remains in check, only as long as we control those urges.
And so, reluctantly, the rabbis knew what had to be done. In their fantasy, they unsealed the box and let yetzer hara go free, which is why, they say, it still “dances among us” today.
We all have yetzer hara within us. It doesn’t mean that we are evil or bad, or that we will even act on that inclination. But knowing that we can’t get rid of it, our task is to control it and keep it in check. For example, when yetzer hara feeds our hunger for profit, it can lead to a ruthless hoarding of wealth, OR that type of ambition can allow for generous giving to tzedaka. Yetzer hara can make us feel outraged, leading us to lash out at home or at work, OR that outrage can be a catalyst toward making positive change.
When left unchecked, however, yetzer hara is an inclination that can lead to the worst version of ourselves and even harm those around us. The rabbis who defined the idea of yetzer hara knew that its temptations are hard to resist in any place or age. There is no denying that ours is a culture inclined, and even encouraged, to recede into our own echo chambers, where it’s easier than ever to blame and shame and hold onto fury. In our contemporary world, we see our worst impulses targeted and exploited for click-bait and profit. A recent study examined the headlines of 47 prominent American news publications and found that from 2000-2019, the percentage of headlines intended to provoke anger rose by 150 percent. Whether it’s the brand of news we consume, the Instagram accounts we follow, the Whatsapp groups we’re in, everyday we are bombarded by temptations to give into yetzer hara.
So, since yetzer hara is forever free to roam and “continues - as the rabbis wrote - to dance among us,” how can we resist its seductive pull?
Many of you know that before I came to Wilshire, I was a rabbi at Columbia Hillel, including in the immediate aftermath of October 7th. One night during that time, while I was in my apartment near campus, singing the Shema to my son and putting him to bed, my phone buzzed. A flood of angry text messages poured in from a student with whom I had built a close relationship. He and I first met during his orientation days at Columbia, when he didn’t know anyone. I was the adult he confided in as he navigated this new world of college and New York City. We’d regularly meet for coffee, and through our conversations, he connected with Judaism for the very first time and found his first Jewish home within our community at Hillel.
But over text that night, he laid into me and did not hold back. He berated me for working at Hillel, a zionist organization. His messages included misinformation about Hillel, as well as antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, which I suspect were the influence of his friends. The texts were long and they just kept coming, like a stream of consciousness tirade.
My hand shook as I held my phone and read his piercing words. As he wrote he was becoming more and more enraged, and as I read, so was I. The words were painful and designed to sting. His yetzer hara had taken control. He could have let his anger and frustration motivate him to have a conversation with me, one of openness and dialogue. Instead, his yetzer hara used that anger and frustration to lash out.
I spent most of that night either awake in bed or sitting on my couch in our dark living room. My yetzer hara tempted me to respond by listing all the reasons why he was wrong about me and about Hillel, by calling out the internalized antisemitism in his messages, by letting him know that hostilely texting his rabbi through the middle of the night was unacceptable, abhorrent behavior.
I didn’t send him a response, at least not immediately. I knew not to. He was writing compelled by his yetzer hara, and nothing good could come of a response motivated by mine. As I read his texts over and over again, I realized they hurt so much because of all the effort and care I and my colleagues had invested in this student. Our relationship was one of trust and respect, which had now been broken. The messages were painful because I knew the truth: this student is a good person. He got angry and frustrated and chose not to control, or maybe had never learned how to sufficiently control, his yetzer hara.
Awake on my couch that night, I drafted then redrafted potential responses. I saw my own yetzer hara emerge in those first drafts fueled by MY anger and frustration, and I didn’t like what I saw. I was determined not to meet rage with more rage, bitterness with more bitterness. So each successive draft I wrote was less and less inflamed, contained less agitation, and more compassion. As I drafted, I realized how many times my own yetzer hara had led me down a similar path. When I sent a text or email that I immediately regretted. When I hid behind the safety of a screen instead of having the courage to engage in person. When I made snap-judgements based on a social media post or influence from others.
So the next morning, I replied, telling him that I understood he was frustrated and that I welcomed an in person conversation. I said he mischaracterized a lot. I said I was still here for him. Sent.
My phone buzzed immediately with another message. This one began with a heartfelt apology, both for what he said and how he said it. He was genuinely remorseful. He wanted to listen and talk in person, he said, but wasn’t ready for a conversation quite yet. He thanked me for caring about him. He apologized again.
Both of us had taken back control over our yetzer hara.
The Mishnah teaches: “Who is strong? One who conquers their evil inclination.” Strength, we know, is not just physical. True strength, Jewish strength, is the courage to look deeply inside, face our yetzer hara and resist its destructive power. The strength of controlling our yetzer hara is a muscle like any other that we exercise and build with time. It requires literally or metaphorically saying al chet shechatanu lefanecha beyetzer hara - I have sinned, I have erred, I have messed up by following the temptations of my yetzer hara. This is not who I am. This is not who I want to be. This is not who I will be.
But when we beat our heart as we say Al Chet, we know that our heart doesn’t only hold yetzer hara. The great 11th century sage Rashi teaches a beautiful lesson about the Veahavta prayer, which we recited earlier in our service and is taken directly from the Torah, from the book of Deuteronomy. During Veahavta, we said the words bechol levavcha - meaning “with all your heart.” Levavcha is spelled with a double Hebrew letter vet. One vet, Rashi says, represents yetzer hara, and the other represents yetzer hatov - the good inclination. And that is because two inclinations, evil and good, are both necessary and both present in your heart. That is why the Torah says “with ALL your heart.”
In our sacred texts, yetzer hatov, the good inclination, is the counterpart to yetzer hara. It’s behind the courtesy we extend when we hold the door for someone, when we’re patient with our kids during their tantrums, when we put down our phones to instead focus on the people around us. And, it’s what brings us to sit in synagogue on a Thursday morning, missing work or school in order to focus on our mistakes and missteps and where we’ve come up short so that we can be better. It’s the muscle we cultivate to do good, to be good.
So when we bring our fist to our heart during our vidui, during our confessional prayers today, perhaps we are not so much beating our hearts, as reminding ourselves what is within them. Yes, our hearts contain yetzer hara, which even in the imagination of the rabbis of the Talmud, we can never fully lock away forever. But our hearts also contain yetzer hatov. Maybe the beat of our fists on our hearts isn’t as much a reproach of yetzer hara, as it is a knock to awaken yetzer hatov. That is our sacred obligation of this day: to face the ra - the worst within us, and to overcome it with the tov - with the best of who we are.
This year, may it truly be a shanah tovah - a year guided by yetzer hatov, a year of channeling our inclinations for good. With ALL my heart - with my yetzer hara and my yetzer hatov - that is my wish and my blessing for us in this new year.
Shanah Tovah and Gmar Chatimah Tovah.