Yeshiva
Beit Midrash
- Sections
- Chemdat Yamim
- Ein Ayah
Ein Ayah: Evil and unsightly things, from an ethical perspective, can come among living people only when they are enveloped by external beauty. Beauty is innately respectable, and it makes a positive impact internally on the spirit, which "expands" in the face of the feeling of clear, clean delicateness that it contains. However, if the beauty envelopes something that is ethically disgusting, in relation to the person looking at it, then the beauty itself is destructive.
It is not just that the beauty is liable to serve as a trap for the beholder (i.e., cause him to sin), to capture the one who is beguiled by it within the internal unsightly matter. Rather, the impression that this beauty that envelopes something disgusting is itself bad, as it is in any case of prohibited gazing. As such, it weakens the healthy foundation of the stable morality of the purity of the spirit. This is because the beauty draws one internally to it as something that is specially connected to the morally disgusting matter. The spiritual weakness that it creates puts a person at ease with the feeling related to horrible sins because the attractive nature of the beauty covers the unsightliness. Even if the beholder’s spirit has not deteriorated to the point that it is drawn into the trap of disgustingness and sin [to act upon it], still the filth that weakens a life of purity certainly makes a mark with the help of the feeling of the external beauty. For this reason, the jewelry of the outside is connected to the jewelry on the inside.
Various Rabbis
Various Rabbis including those of of Yeshivat Bet El, such as Rabbi Chaim Katz, Rabbi Binyamin Bamberger and Rabbi Yitzchak Greenblat and others.
Moreshet Shaul Moreshet Shaul: A Crown and its Scepter – part II
Based on Siach Shaul, Pirkei Machshava V’Hadracha p. 294-5
Rabbis in Midrash
Lessons
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Various Events FOR WHOM NOT TO VOTE
Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook stressed that Israeli politics is G-dly, so I have no problem answering this common question on a Torani blog. Also, Free-Will is a G-d-given right and obligation, to "destine one's fate" (R. Soloveichik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 67), so I obviously don't tell others how to vote. But once not a few (especially young) have already asked, a couple of personal words from experience and thoughts from chazal & Rav Kook which may be of help to others, mainly for whom NOT to vote.
P'ninat Mishpat Fallout from Failure to Install Elevator – part II
based on ruling 85007 of the Eretz Hemdah-Gazit Rabbinical Courts
