Search results ({{ res.total }}):

Yossi's Story (& His Party)

GYE Corp. Thursday, 15 December 2011
Part 2/3 (to see other parts of the article, click on the pages at the bottom)

Another step to reaching full purity is the cutting down of even the most seemingly innocent things, like movies and TV series, and even certain games. Although I, being more of the party animal type, never really had that problem, since I never had the time to watch a movie - I was always with friends partying and clubbing. I used to think that after seeing what I'd seen, doing what I'd done, and watching what I'd watched, nothing as miniscule as a film could really arouse me any more - but I realised that once you starve your Yetzer Horah, the smallest things like a brief movie scene, attractive women on the street, or even a street advertisement could be extremely arousing and lend themselves to severe temptation.

In order to maintain these boundaries, I always make sure to keep myself busy. Since, from experience, boredom is very dangerous. Too much chilling by myself behind a closed door, even with a Gemarah in my hand, and obviously in front of a screen, always leads to temptations, which usually stem from thoughts.

Too much chilling alone is never good, especially for the first couple of weeks. This isn't a haskama, but I personally felt that even spending the night partying in town was less likely to lead to me wasting zera than spending the night in my bedroom chilling alone. That doesn't make partying in town alright, I'm just using it to show how bad it is to stay alone with your Yetzer Hara.

After sticking to these boundaries, together with my steadfast will and determination, I realised that this was time I was actually going to reach 90 days, and it was actually possible! I started speaking about it with other bochurim and friends to encourage them, and at the same time, to reinforce my own faith. It became quite clear that this problem wasn't only limited to bums, former bums and people who don't wear white shirts. It was a problem that nearly everyone I spoke to had, and its seriousness and effect was deeply underrated. Most people's attitude was, "you know, it's very hard, especially in this day and age, and it's practically impossible, G-d doesn't expect us to do the impossible." ... "It's not half as bad as it used to be" ... "most of these curses are exaggerated just to scare us" ... "it's scientifically healthy and therefore it can't be that bad..." ... "it's dangerous not to"... and other rubbish.

There is also a severe lack of information among many bochurim, since the subject is so taboo and not spoken about by most Rebbeim, for whatever reasons they have. The fact is, there is a severe lack of awareness, and since the seriousness of the sin is never spoken about and definitely not shoved in people's faces like it should be, there is nothing pushing anyone to stop.

The extent of people's ignorance really hit me after a certain bochur, a good guy, who understandably had a severe lack of motivation in learning and Judaism in general, confided in me and told me that before I made such a ruckus about this whole topic, he had never even known that masturbating was a sin! And he's turning 20! Of course he is an exception, as nearly everyone is told at some point in their life that it's bad and a terrible sin, but that is definitely not enough to hit the conscience of an addict to make them stop.

Single page