Original Sin vs. the Yetzer Hara – What’s the Real Difference?

Clarifying where Judaism’s concept of the evil inclination actually diverges from the Christian idea of original sin.

Q. I engaged in a conversation with a Christian and wasn’t quite able to make a clear distinction between their notion of “original sin” and our notion of the two impulses. Our position is that man has two impulses the yetzer hara and the yetzer ha-tov. Man isn’t necessarily born evil, he simply has an inclination to do evil which can be tamed by performance of the mitzvot. He (the Christian) responded by claiming that it’s inconsistent because we Jews acknowledge that man is flawed by nature, but leave open the possibility that man can become “perfect” by our performance of the mitzvot, that the messiah we wait for will be a man claiming to be perfect and the Sanhedrin we establish will be led by “perfect” men. We both recognized that there are NO perfect men. I have to be honest, I didn’t know how to respond. How would the rabbinical literature respond to this.

Please excuse me, but there are several inaccuracies mentioned here. For reasons of clarification, we sometimes refer to 2 “different” drives, but in fact there is no drive which is inherently “bad”, and surely no “original sin”. Man has a G-dly soul which is inherently good! In fact, everything G-d created is good unless man, with his free will (which is also good), misuses it. Eating is a good drive, but if you over-do it, you turn it into a yetzer-ra, a negative inclination. Same thing with sleep, sexual attraction or really everything is good, unless one takes it out of its proper proportion. In other words, man is not flawed by nature, but we have Free Will to choose bad, if we sometimes wish. Nevertheless, as soon as we sincerely regret, apologize and resolve to improve, that is as perfect as man can get: the strive for perfection is as perfect as you and I, Moshe Rabbenu and the future messiah/Sanhedrin (and your friend!), can get. Only G-d is perfect, and messiah, who will be a man, will not be perfect and neither will the Sanhedrin who are mortal flesh and blood (what he mentioned to the contrary is a totally Christian and anti-Jewish idea, but it is true what you both agreed in the end that “there are NO perfect men”).