Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin — Judaism

What the specification asks for

Paper 1, Section 1, 1.3 (Judaism). Assessed on AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO2 (analysis and evaluation), weighted equally. Incandio is aligned to this specification. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's indicative content — the point numbers are given so you can check every unit against your own copy.

1 · Understand it

The rabbis taught that if the drive people blame for wrongdoing were destroyed, nobody would build a house, marry or start a business. One story has them capture it, discover that no egg is laid anywhere in the land, and let it go again. That is not a joke about appetite. It is a diagnosis.

What it means

The specification names the particular reference: yetzer hatov and yetzer hara, the inclination to good and the inclination to evil. Every person carries both, and neither is removed by faith or by effort. The second is not simply bad — it is appetite and drive, and it becomes evil when uncontrolled rather than being evil in itself.

Chet is the Hebrew word usually translated sin, and it means missing the mark, as an arrow does. The image is worth pressing: an arrow that misses was aimed, which implies the archer was trying rather than that they were incapable. Sin in Judaism is an act rather than a state.

There is no inherited sin. A person is born neither guilty nor corrupt, and each is answerable for their own choices. That is a doctrinal fact about Judaism and it is the point at which importing Christian categories does the most damage.

Teshuvah is repentance, and the word means turning or returning. It is always available, and it is demanding: admitting the wrong, making restitution, apologising to the person wronged, and acting differently when the same situation recurs. The commandments are the practical training by which the inclinations are directed, which is why the Jewish answer to wrongdoing is training rather than rescue.

Why believers hold it

The reasoning is that a drive strong enough to cause harm is the same drive that makes anything happen at all. Ambition, desire and acquisitiveness build families and businesses and also produce cruelty and greed; they are not two faculties but one. So Judaism refuses both easy answers — that people are naturally good, and that they are naturally corrupt — and describes a permanent internal contest instead.

That has a direct consequence for method. If the problem were a corrupted nature, the remedy would have to be rescue from outside; if the problem is direction, the remedy is practice. The commandments exist to direct the yetzer hara rather than to remove it, which is why Jewish moral life is organised around habits and obligations rather than around a change of heart.

The obvious abuse — my inclination made me do it — is closed off explicitly. Jewish teaching insists the person is answerable rather than the inclination, which is why teshuvah requires restitution to the actual victim and why wrongs against people must be settled with those people before the Day of Atonement addresses them at all.

The real vulnerability is the optimism. An account on which every wrong act is chosen has to face a historical record of atrocity committed by ordinary people, and 'they chose' does not obviously cover it. The honest reply is that Judaism never claims wrongdoing will end — only that each act is chosen and each person can turn — and the record does not refute that, though it does make it uncomfortable.

Where it comes from

• The Torah — Deuteronomy 30:19 (translated)

  I have set before you life and death ... therefore choose life.

  Free will stated as a command: the choice is genuinely the human being's, and it is a real choice with real consequences.

  What it is doing here: Makes the choice a command rather than a description, which is what rules out any account in which the wrongdoer was never in a position to do otherwise.

• The Torah — the Ten Commandments (Aseret ha-Dibrot) — Exodus 20:1–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21 (translated)

  Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

  The commandments given at Sinai, covering duty to God and duty to other people, and the basis of Shabbat observance.

  What it is doing here: Supplies the training the tradition uses on the inclinations, since a commandment about conduct works on habit rather than on feeling.

• The Tanakh — Nevi'im (Prophets) — Micah 6:8 (translated)

  To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

  The prophetic summary of what God requires: justice, mercy and humility, in place of sacrifice performed without them.

  What it is doing here: Names what the direction is aimed at — justice, kindness, humility — so that directing a drive has a target rather than merely a restraint.

Where it bites

It shapes the whole approach to moral failure. Teshuvah is a sequence rather than a feeling: name the wrong, put right what can be put right, apologise to the person themselves, and behave differently the next time the same situation arises. The Ten Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are set aside for exactly this work, and the rule that wrongs against people must be settled with the people before the Day of Atonement covers them puts the victim rather than the conscience at the centre.

It also shows in ordinary Jewish education, which treats appetite as something to be trained by practice rather than suppressed — the commandments regulate eating, work and sex rather than forbidding them, which is what a tradition does when it thinks the drive is worth keeping.

What people get wrong

People think: Judaism teaches that humans are born sinful and need saving.

Actually: Original sin is a Christian doctrine and Judaism rejects it explicitly. A person is born neither guilty nor corrupt; wrongdoing is a matter of what people do rather than of what they are, which is precisely what makes teshuvah possible at any point.

People think: The yetzer hara is the devil, or a tempter working on people from outside.

Actually: It is internal — a person's own drive and appetite — and rabbinic teaching credits it with building houses and starting families. Making it external turns a diagnosis about human energy into a story about temptation, and it also supplies the excuse the tradition works hard to close off.

People think: Buddhists believe sin is disobeying God.

Actually: Buddhism has no creator God to disobey; unskilful action harms the doer and others through kamma. The comparison matters here because Judaism's chet is also not what most learners assume: it means missing a mark rather than breaking a rule, and neither tradition's category is the one imported from elsewhere.

What the examiner expects you to understand

• Give both inclinations by name and say that the second is drive rather than pure wickedness.
• Describe teshuvah as a sequence including restitution, not as an apology or a feeling.
• Say explicitly that Judaism has no inherited sin, since the examiners record the confusion.
• Use chet as missing the mark; the image does real work in an evaluation about human nature.
• On the twelve-mark question, note that Jewish and secular accounts converge more than either does with inherited corruption.

2 · Grade 9 Notes

Core belief / issue

The specification names the particular reference: yetzer hatov and yetzer hara, the inclination to good and the inclination to evil. Judaism does not teach that human nature is corrupt. It teaches that every person carries two drives, that the second is not simply bad — rabbinic teaching says without it no one would build a house or marry — and that the task of a life is to direct it rather than to destroy it.

Key terminology

Incandio's mark schemes credit the religion's own vocabulary; spelling variants are accepted, a vague paraphrase is not.

Yetzer hara (also yetzer ha-ra)

The inclination to evil; better understood as appetite and drive, which becomes evil when uncontrolled.

Yetzer hatov (also yetzer ha-tov)

The inclination to good; the conscience that pulls the other way.

Chet (also het)

Sin; the Hebrew word means missing the mark, as an arrow does.

Teshuvah (also teshuva)

Repentance; literally turning or returning, and always available.

Mitzvah (also mitzvot (plural))

A commandment; the 613 mitzvot are the practical training by which the inclinations are directed.

What Judaism teaches

• shared — Every person has both a yetzer hatov and a yetzer hara, and neither is removed by faith or by effort.
• shared — The yetzer hara is not purely destructive; rabbinic teaching holds that without it there would be no ambition, no building and no family.
• shared — There is no inherited sin: a person is born neither guilty nor corrupt, and each is answerable for their own choices.
• shared — Teshuvah is always available, and the Torah's own claim is that the commandment is not too hard and not far away.

Why it teaches this

The reasoning is that a drive strong enough to cause harm is the same drive that makes anything happen at all. Judaism therefore refuses both of the easy answers — that human beings are naturally good, and that they are naturally corrupt — and describes instead a permanent internal contest. That is why the Jewish answer to wrongdoing is training rather than rescue: the mitzvot exist to direct the yetzer hara, not to remove it.

Sources of authority

• The Torah — Deuteronomy 30:19 (translated)

  I have set before you life and death ... therefore choose life.

  Free will stated as a command: the choice is genuinely the human being's, and it is a real choice with real consequences.

  How to use it: It is the cleanest scriptural answer to determinism in any of the six religions — God's foreknowledge and human choice are held together rather than resolved.

  What it does not settle: The philosophical problem of how divine knowledge and human freedom coexist is not solved by it.

• The Torah — the Ten Commandments (Aseret ha-Dibrot) — Exodus 20:1–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21 (translated)

  Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

  The commandments given at Sinai, covering duty to God and duty to other people, and the basis of Shabbat observance.

  How to use it: The Sabbath commandment is grounded in creation itself, which is why Shabbat is described as sanctifying time rather than as a day off.

  What it does not settle: How strictly the commandments bind divides Orthodox from Reform Judaism, and that divergence is worth naming.

• The Tanakh — Nevi'im (Prophets) — Micah 6:8 (translated)

  To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

  The prophetic summary of what God requires: justice, mercy and humility, in place of sacrifice performed without them.

  How to use it: It answers the accusation that religion is ritual: the prophet himself says ritual without justice is worthless.

  What it does not settle: It states the standard, not the policy.

• Jewish thought — Tikkun olam; developed in rabbinic and later kabbalistic teaching (translated)

  Repairing the world.

  The duty to work at mending a broken world. Especially prominent in Reform Judaism's account of Jewish purpose.

  How to use it: It gives the meaning of life an outward direction: the purpose is not personal salvation but the world's repair, which is a distinctive answer on 2.2.

  What it does not settle: Its prominence differs by tradition. Presenting it as the whole of Jewish purpose flattens Orthodox emphasis on mitzvot.

Different interpretations

• The yetzer hara read as sexual and acquisitive appetite specifically, and read as self-interest in general; both readings appear in rabbinic literature.
• The contest read as lifelong, and read as winnable through study and practice; the traditional view is that it is lifelong and that the practice is what makes the outcome better.
• Sin read as an act rather than a state — the Hebrew chet means missing a target, which implies the archer was aiming rather than that they were incapable.

Differences within Judaism

Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism all reject inherited corruption and all hold the two-inclination model. Emphasis differs on how far the mitzvot are the training method, but that is a difference about law rather than about human nature.

The traditions broadly agree here. Saying so is a stronger answer than inventing a division.

Application to the issue

It shapes the whole approach to moral failure: teshuvah requires admitting the wrong, making restitution, apologising to the person wronged, and acting differently when the same situation recurs — a demanding and practical sequence rather than a feeling. The Ten Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are set aside for exactly this, and wrongs against people must be settled with the people before the Day of Atonement addresses them.

Arguments supporting

• The two-inclination model describes moral life more accurately than either optimism or the doctrine of corruption. — People experience genuine internal conflict rather than a settled nature. (judaism)
  Answered by: It describes the experience well and explains less: naming two drives does not say why one wins.
• Because there is no inherited sin, wrongdoing is tractable. — A problem of direction can be worked on; a problem of nature cannot. (shared)
  Answered by: The historical record of human cruelty is hard to square with the claim that the problem is merely one of direction.

Arguments challenging

• Human beings will always do wrong, so the optimistic account fails. — No society has eliminated cruelty, injustice or war. (catholic)
  Answered by: Judaism does not claim wrongdoing will end; it claims each act is chosen and each person can turn — which the record does not refute.
• Naming an evil inclination provides an excuse. — 'My yetzer hara made me do it' is available. (non-religious)
  Answered by: Jewish teaching explicitly closes that route by insisting the person, not the inclination, is answerable — which is why teshuvah requires restitution to the actual victim.

Secular / non-religious perspective

Non-religious accounts explain wrongdoing through evolution, upbringing, incentive and circumstance, and reject the category of sin as an offence against God while keeping the category of harm. Humanists tend to agree with Judaism that people are neither naturally good nor naturally corrupt, and to locate the remedy in education, institutions and social conditions.

Examinable throughout Paper 1. Nothing here earns a mark on Paper 2.

Evaluation

The hinge: Whether the source of wrongdoing is what people ARE or what they DO. Judaism answers the second, and that answer is what makes teshuvah possible.

Defensible conclusions

• The two-inclination model is the most psychologically realistic account on this specification, because it explains why the same drive produces both ambition and greed.
• Its optimism is a real vulnerability: an account on which wrongdoing is always chosen struggles with atrocities committed by ordinary people.
• The Jewish and secular accounts converge more than either converges with the doctrine of inherited corruption, which is the most interesting comparison available here.

Not defensible

• Attributing original sin to Judaism, which the tradition explicitly rejects.
• Describing the yetzer hara as simply evil, when rabbinic teaching credits it with building and marrying.

Exam use

• Identify · 3 marks — Three Jewish beliefs about sin, or three causes of human wrongdoing. Short phrases only.
• Outline · 4 marks — Two beliefs developed. 'Jews believe everyone has a yetzer hara (1) — an inclination that becomes wrong when uncontrolled but which also drives ambition and family life (1).'
• Explain · 6 marks — Explain Jewish beliefs about the causes of wrongdoing: the two inclinations, the absence of inherited sin, the mitzvot as training, and teshuvah.
• Evaluate · 12 marks — 'Humans will always sin.' The Jewish position is the strongest available against the statement, because it denies the premise about human nature.

Common mistakes

• Importing original sin into Judaism, which the examiners record as a recurring confusion between the two religions.
• Translating yetzer hara as 'the devil' or as an external tempter; it is internal.
• Describing teshuvah as saying sorry, when the tradition requires restitution and changed behaviour.

“Judaism is the Old Testament part of Christianity.” — Judaism is a living religion with its own scriptures, its own two-thousand-year tradition of rabbinic interpretation, and its own account of what God requires. The Tanakh is not the Christian Old Testament in either arrangement or authority.

Write instead: The Tanakh has three divisions — Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim — and is read alongside the Talmud and rabbinic tradition. Jewish teaching about the afterlife, salvation and law is developed on its own terms. The scriptures overlap substantially, and the differences in ordering, canon and interpretation are real. Naming the Tanakh's structure is directly examinable at Paper 2 1.2.

“Buddhists believe sin is disobeying God.” — Buddhism has no creator God to disobey. Unskilful action (akusala) harms the person who does it and others through kamma; it is a mistake rooted in greed, hatred and delusion, not an offence against a deity.

Write instead: Buddhists speak of unskilful action rooted in the three poisons — greed, hatred and delusion — and of akusala kamma, which brings unwelcome results. The specification's own Buddhist wording for 1.3 names avijja, kilesa and the three poisons. The specification titles 1.3 'Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin', which invites the error. A learner writing on Buddhism should use the tradition's own vocabulary and say why 'sin' does not fit.

Grade 9 insight

The rabbis taught that if the yetzer hara were destroyed, no one would build a house, marry or start a business — and one midrash has them capture it, discover that no egg is laid in the land, and release it. A Level 4 answer sees the argument inside the story: the drive that causes wrongdoing is not a separate faculty that could be removed, it is the same energy that produces everything worth having. That is why Judaism aims at direction rather than eradication, and it is a genuinely different diagnosis from either Christian or Buddhist accounts.

Carry on through Judaism

• Previous unit: 1.2 · Human nature and the human condition
• Next unit: 1.4 · Free will, determinism and predestination
• Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin in the other religions: Buddhism · Christianity · Hinduism · Islam · Sikhism
• All of Judaism · Incandio Religious Studies · The 4RS1 specification