Do Sins Intoxicate the Soul?

There is something about modern politics that I sometimes find almost impossible to understand. 

Some of the most militantly progressive voices in the West can be intensely hostile toward religious Jews and Israel while expressing sympathy for radical Islamist movements whose values contradict almost everything progressives claim to believe.  

On sexuality, religion, women’s rights and personal freedom, the ideological distance between Western progressivism and radical Islam could hardly be greater. Yet religious Jews can somehow become the enemy. 

Consider the irony.  

The Torah prohibits male homosexual relations and, in Vayikra 20:13, attaches a capital punishment to the offense. But classical Torah criminal law surrounds capital punishment with an extraordinarily demanding judicial process. This is not a license for individuals to attack anybody. Capital cases belonged to a qualified court and required witnesses and stringent evidentiary requirements. 

Unlike radical Islam, where there is no due process or even justice, Torah law demands due process and is not governed by mob rule.  

So why do progressives love Hamas and hate Israel?  

Simple answer: They are seeped in wickedness.  

By their actions, they repeatedly train themselves to love what God hates, and hate what God loves.  

With this conclusion comes an uncomfortable question: 

Could the same thing happen to us? 

The First Drink 

In Pirkei Avot (4:2), Ben Azzai teaches: 

Run to perform a minor mitzvah as you would a major one, and flee from a transgression; for one mitzvah leads to another mitzvah, and one transgression leads to another transgression; for the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and the consequence of a transgression is a transgression. 

We usually understand Ben Azzai too mechanically. I do one mitzvah today, so Hashem gives me an opportunity to perform another tomorrow. I commit one aveirah, and that makes another aveirah more likely. 

But perhaps something deeper is happening. Maybe the mitzvah changes me. And maybe the aveirah does too. 

Imagine that you are attending an important professional conference. A prominent leader in your industry is speaking about something important to your parnasah (income). You arrive dressed properly. People are mingling. Business cards are changing hands. There’s a bar in the corner. 

You know exactly why you came. 

You want to learn. You want to meet intelligent people. You want to have serious conversations. Maybe you will meet your next client, employer, or business partner. You want to make a good impression and, hopefully, be impressed by somebody else. 

Then you walk over to the bar. 

One drink.  

Then another. 

Then another. 

Two hours later, you are still physically standing in the same conference hall—but you are not the same person who walked into it. 

The speaker you were excited to hear suddenly seems boring. The serious conversation no longer interests you. Instead of making an impression, you want attention. Instead of listening, you want to make jokes. 

What changed? 

Not the conference. 

You did. 

Spiritual Intoxication 

Alcohol does something frightening: It changes what seems desirable at that moment. 

And that makes me wonder about an aveirah. 

Do sins intoxicate the soul the way alcohol intoxicates the body?  

Militant progressives refer to a loving husband, hard worker, and God-fearing Jew as toxic. To the way they see things, it most certainly is.  

Suppose a decent Jew commits an aveirah. Then another. Then another. 

At first there is resistance. Something inside says, I shouldn’t be doing this. 

The next time, there is less agony.  

The third time you do it, it’s normal.  

The Gemara backs this up in Yoma 86b by warning: 

Once a person commits a transgression and repeats it, it becomes permitted to him. 

If you do it too many times, not only is it permitted, it can be required. Right and wrong are now according to the obligation to perform this “mitzvah.”  

Maybe it is treif food. Maybe it is two hours watching entertainment saturated with things you would never invite into your living room in person. Maybe it is what you look at online when nobody else is watching. Maybe it is lashon hara. Maybe it is a relationship you know you should not be pursuing. 

Nothing dramatic necessarily happens. There is no lightning bolt. The sky does not turn black. 

But something inside can gradually become quieter. Your desire for it changes what is good and bad. Suddenly, you want what Hashem hates, and you get it by disregarding what Hashem loves.  

This is a trap that awaits all of us, all the time.  

When Netflix Starts Looking Better Than Numbers 

What if I sit down to learn Torah and after thirty minutes think, That’s enough. An hour? What am I, Meah Shearim? What if keeping another halachah feels “too Bnei Brak”? 

What if Netflix starts looking much more attractive than Numbers (Bamidbar)? 

What if Shabbat starts feeling restrictive rather than liberating?  

We should at least consider an uncomfortable possibility. Maybe Torah didn’t become less beautiful. Maybe our spiritual taste buds changed. 

Think about what happens to someone who constantly eats foods loaded with sugar. A simple piece of fruit can eventually seem bland because the palate has become accustomed to overwhelming sweetness. But the peach didn’t change. The tongue did. 

Scale this up to millions of people, and you have a progressive movement that embraces terror cults like ISIS and Hamas, who have killed thousands of Sodomites, women, and liberals, while rejecting Torah Jews who want for them nothing more than their repentance, Divine approval, and eternity in Paradise.  

The Other Direction 

Ben Azzai does not leave us trapped there. The same principle works in reverse. 

Mitzvah goreret mitzvah. A mitzvah pulls another mitzvah behind it. 

One interpretation of Ben Azzai’s teaching is that performing a mitzvah awakens a person toward additional mitzvot. 

Start small. Say a brachah (blessing) slowly. Give a few shekels to tzedakah. Learn Torah for ten minutes. Call your mother. Hold your tongue when you desperately want to say something deliciously terrible about somebody. Put the phone away during a conversation with your child. 

Say one chapter of Tehillim. Do one mitzvah that you could easily have skipped—and do it deliberately because Hashem asked you to. 

You are not merely placing another jewel into some celestial bank account. You are training the soul to want another jewel. 

Getting Spiritually Sober 

There is tremendous hope in this. 

Sometimes we look at ourselves and become discouraged. We see where we are spiritually and compare it to where we think we should be. We see the Torah we aren’t learning, the mitzvot we aren’t performing properly, the temptations we haven’t conquered and the person we haven’t yet become. 

The mountain looks enormous. 

Ben Azzai tells us not to begin with the mountain. Begin with the next step. 

Run to a minor mitzvah. Why run toward something minor? 

That tiny mitzvah may change the next decision. And that decision may change the one after it. Slowly, almost invisibly, the spiritual landscape begins changing direction. 

One mitzvah becomes two. Two become four. The soul begins sobering up. 

Things that once seemed burdensome start feeling meaningful. Torah that once seemed tedious becomes interesting. Shabbat starts feeling different. Giving becomes pleasurable. Prayer becomes less like an obligation and more like an appointment. 

Not overnight. But drop by drop, the river begins carving a different canyon. 

That is the breathtaking promise of mitzvah goreret mitzvah. 

And, it’s the frightening message of aveirah goreret aveirah. 

Our actions do not merely reveal who we are. They help determine who we are becoming. 

The people who have fallen into the deepest pit descended one deed at a time. Covered in darkness, they can no longer see which way is up. It’s up to us to learn from this tragedy and always make sure our soul sees the next step ahead and is pushing you to take it.  

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, 60,000 passionate Israelis, and Matilda, our local camel.