Death Before Defilement

Wherever you look, there is something within your range of vision that forces your thoughts to lust. It’s time to deploy the Jewish People’s WMD. 

I know this isn’t forever. When my time in this world ends, so does the test of every half-dressed sensuous image bombarding my eyes. G-d willing, Mashiach will come and the world will transform long before that. In the meantime I have to decide to deploy the weapon of last resort to hit my Evil Inclination as hard as I can to keep him at bay for just one more moment.

It’s an act of pure religious extremism.

I say extremism because religious extremism is a pretty nasty term. It’s something people do in the Name of G-d that all too often goes against the Will of G-d.

Extremism is something that should be very rare. Something is considered extreme because either a very few handful of people are doing it, or everybody is doing it, but only in very severe circumstances.

The fact is that we are obligated to choose death before any type of spiritual defilement as a result of physical immorality. The fact that these types of behaviors have become so ubiquitous to the point that we have lost the sensitivity to take each individual act seriously doesn’t change the lengths we must go to avoid them at all costs no matter what the consequences.

A Jew is ordered by G-d to die rather than to engage in a single act of sexual immorality.

How do we know this?

Hashem is so concerned with our physical well-being that He allows us to suspend the performance of any mitzvah if our health is in critical danger.

• A soldier is allowed to carry a firearm and a radio throughout Passover.
  

• A father is allowed to drive to a hospital on Shabbat to take his wife to the hospital to give birth.
  

• If there is a special phone in a Synagogue for emergencies and it goes off during Yom Kippur, it is the Rabbi of the Shul who is most responsible to take the phone call to communicate to the members of the community how important it is to favor Hashem’s commandment to safeguard human life over the mitzvah of guarding the holiday.

There are only three circumstances when we are not allowed to choose life: murder, idolatry, and sexual immorality. That means even if someone puts a sword to our neck and says “have relations with those three 22 year old models or die!” we are obligated to say the Shema and give up our lives to Hashem.

If we are obligated to die when someone is forcing us to commit sexual immorality, what about when we are not forced? What happens when we live in a world where nobody is demanding that we do anything wrong, and still we are faced with this temptation?

In every situation when we are faced with giving into our lusts, we must remind ourselves that a Jew must choose death over defilement. In this physical world there exists no limit on the length that we must go to in order to rein ourselves in. This is the test of our lives. Understanding the amount of determination we must build up, and the lengths we must go is a rallying cry to perform this crucial commandment.

We can perform a great service to G-d by resolving to choose the worst physical pain over the greatest physical pleasure.

That’s the spiritual WMD every Jew can use to combat the worst evil of our time.