rav yitzchak hutner teaches us that one of the biggest problems with telling stories about tzadikim is that we never tell the background story.
a story about a tzadik always involves a certain temptation that is presented, and the tzadik comes along a and resists it. just like that! clean and simple... this leads us to believe that tzadikim had no yezer hara and that there was no battle with it. the tzadik overcame the problem with a quick swoosh!
this is not true!!!!
tzadikim worked hard! they fell and crashed and burned and suffered until eventually they were strong enough to overcome. but we only hear about the final result. we never hear where the
process of beating the yezer took place.
so says rav hutner.
i personally believe therefore, that the best type of story to tell, is that of rav amram who battled his yezer head on, and used a trick to humiliate himself into stopping. check it out in kidhshin 81 א.
another one is the story of the chofetz chaim on the train speaking loshon hara about himself... even though he was already a big rabbi, he was still fighting...
here are a few such storie - (in hebrew) -
www.ima-adama.co.il/religions/kabbala/judaism_hrikeren11_badness_words.htm these are stories where we see the long way that all the gdolim have come in order to become gdolim.
stories of perfection can give us something to strive for, but sometimes they can knock the wind out of us. that's when it's time to remember that they all had to start somewhere...
M
