The Wonderous Pill | Rabbi Yoir Adler

The Gemara tells us in Masechta Sukkah, The Yetzer Hara has seven names. He is called a רע, The Yetzer Tov, as we know, has only one name. Yetzer Tov. Why is that fair? What's the understanding in this? I heard from my brother a most beautiful and entertaining answer. And he said the following Mashal. There was once this professor that claimed he was very wise and very smart, and he spent a lot of time and resources into inventing something that he called, The Wondrous Pill. And he claimed, If you take this pill, you will become healthy and wealthy. This will bring you satisfaction, this will bring you happiness, this will give you children, this will give you everything you desire. All you have to do is buy this pill. And he was looking for a company that would advertise it for him, so he called up a friend of his that recently invented a certain type of oven, and he called him up and he said to him: Friend, which company did you use to advertise it? So he named him a certain company. How much did they charge? $25,000, top to bottom. Beautiful. Give me the number. This professor calls this company and he says to them, I just invented the most incredible thing ever, a Wondrous Pill, and I want you to advertise this for me. How much are you going to charge and will you take this on? They said: Give us 24 hours. We'll get back to you. Twenty four hours later, his phone rings. He picks up the phone. How much are you going to charge? They said, $200,000? I just spoke to my friend who used the same company to advertise his oven. You only charged him $25,000. They said: Listen here, Mr. Professor. There's a fundamental difference between his product and your product. His product actually works, so it didn't take much to advertise it. Your pill is useless. It doesn't work. The only way how we can sell this product is if we keep changing our strategy, and we keep coming up with creative ways of advertisement. We need to invest a lot into fooling people in buying your so-called Wondrous Pill. So we'll charge you $200,000. This is the difference between the Yetzer Tov and the Yetzer Hara. The Yetzer Tov doesn’t need any other name, other than the Yetzer Tov. He speaks for himself. The Yetzer Tov tells a person, Just try it. Listen to me. Resist the temptation. Be strong. and you'll see that the feeling is amazing. The Yetzer Hara, on the other hand, is שקר, is a lie. He says: Follow me and you'll become happy. Follow me and you'll get pleasure. It's not true. It doesn't work. So he has to keep changing his name. He has to try this tactic and that tactic and tell us: Just do this and just do this. Look here, look there. We have to understand with all clarity that the Yetzer Hara has nothing to sell. It won't bring us happiness. On the contrary, when we will listen to the Yetzer Tov, and we will close our eyes, we’ll look the other way, then we will feel satisfied, we will feel accomplished, we will feel the