When a rabbi says he has “looked evil in the eye,” it sounds suitably biblical — the kind of line that makes front pages and reassures the frightened. But it’s nonsense. It’s the vocabulary of superstition, not theology, and certainly not Judaism.
In Jewish thought, “evil” isn’t some sulphurous entity out there in the shadows. The yetzer hara — the so-called evil inclination — lives in every human being. It’s the part of us that wants, craves, competes, builds, and yes, sometimes destroys. The Talmud is clear: without it, no one would marry, build a house, or start a business. The task isn’t to cast it out, but to master it.
So when a rabbi calls an attacker “evil,” he’s not quoting Torah, he’s borrowing from Christian dualism — that tidy, comforting fiction of pure good versus pure evil. Judaism never promised that luxury. The man who attacked in Manchester wasn’t “evil.” If he was disturbed, then he was lost. If he acted consciously, he had surrendered to his own yetzer hara — the same destructive urge that every one of us wrestles with in miniature. Either way, he was human, and that’s what makes it horrifying.
To call such a person “evil” is to abdicate responsibility. It ends the inquiry before it starts. You don’t ask what failed, what isolation, ideology, or grievance led to it — you just slap on the moral label and move on. It’s tidy, it’s self-righteous, and it explains nothing.
Religious leaders, of all people, should know better. Their job is not to curse the darkness, but to understand the human heart — that messy intersection of reason, instinct, and frailty. To say “evil” is to surrender to myth; to say “lost” is to admit that something might one day be found again.
If the pulpit can’t tell the difference, then we’re in far greater trouble than one violent man could ever cause.
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