True Beauty | Rabbi Yoir Adler

Motzei Yom HaKippurim, Klal Yisroel, בכל מקומות מושבותיהם, go to look for an Esrog. And we don't just do with a simple Esrog. We look for the most beautiful Esrog that we can find. פרי עץ הדר. And we go and we decorate our Sukkahs with נוי סוכה, to make it the most beautiful possible. Why after Yom Kippur is this the Avoda? Why do we put such an emphasis on הידור Mitzvah after we leave Yom HaKippurim? I saw in a Sefer a very beautiful and powerful understanding to this. What's the essence of the conflict between the Yetzer Hara and the Yetzer Tov? The essence of that conflict is beauty. A person, naturally, is pulled and drawn towards something that is beautiful. The conflict between the Yetzer Tov and Yetzer Hara is what are we going to consider beautiful? The Yetzer Hara tells a person, Beautiful is תועבה. That's something that you want. And he tries to get us to think that that is something that our heart desires. The Yetzer Tov tries to tell us, time and time again, You know what true beauty is? True beauty is זה א-לי ואנוהו. True beauty is אהדר לפניו במצוות. A beautiful Esrog, a beautiful Lulav, a beautiful Sukkah, a beautiful dedication to Limud HaTorah, a beautiful act of Chesed. That is the ultimate beauty. Don't fall prey to the Yetzer Hara. Live in the real world and you’ll understand there's nothing more beautiful than Torah HaKedoshah. After Yom HaKippurim, when we eradicate sin, when we eradicate the Yetzer Hara, we get a new understanding what beauty is. And right away we go and we look for the פרי עץ הדר, we look to beautify our Sukkahs. And we have a Simchas Beis HaSho’eva, when Klal Yisroel declared and they said: יופי לך מזבח. Sacrifice is beautiful. Sacrifice is gorgeous. Our hearts are being pulled towards the true beauty. When a person is being faced with a challenge, to look where he shouldn't look, he has to understand if he will withhold himself from falling prey to this so-called beauty, then he will be exposed to the true beauty of Torah and Mitzvos, of Shechinah HaKedoshah, and to the ultimate ביאת המשיח.