Slowly but Surely
A man who came to see me in Lyon showed me the depths to which the Yetzer Hara can drag a person. His clothes indicated the lifestyle of someone in the underworld. He was dressed in the wildest way imaginable. He wore a short shirt and leather jacket with a metal belt. His demeanor was in complete contradiction to anything tinged with yirat Shamayim. I was relieved to note that I did not recognize him from any previous encounters.
But my relief was short-lived. Suddenly, his face brought back memories of my yeshiva days. When I inquired if he was so-and-do from this-and-this prestigious yeshiva, he admitted that was the case.
I was shocked. When we were youths, this man had been a tremendous matmid. He was the one who learned my first masechta with me. Here he stood, a man at the abyss, captive of his Yetzer Hara.
Chazal teach us (Shabbat 105b), “This is the method of the Yetzer Hara: Today, he says, ‘Do this,’ and the next day, he says, ‘Do that,’ until he eventually convinces a person to serve idols.” The Yetzer Hara never strikes a person down in one fell swoop. This was how the Yetzer Hara was able to ensnare my previous classmate, causing him to fall from the heights of greatness to the depths of depravity.
