Back in the days when I was a pulpit rabbi in Baltimore, Maryland, I made it my business to meet with every bar mitzvah boy and girl several weeks before their big day.

It was my way of becoming familiar with these youngsters. We would discuss their interests, hobbies, favorite books, and what they were studying in school.

Over the years, I developed the practice which came to be known as “the rabbi’s gift, assignment, and blessing.” On the Shabbat of the bar or bat mitzvah ceremony, I presented each child with a gift from the synagogue. Usually it was a sacred book, most often a siddur with an English translation and commentary. I would also charge each child with an assignment to be completed within the coming year. And I would close with a personal blessing appropriate to each one’s background and interests.

It was during the pre-bar mitzvah interview that we would together begin to formulate what would ultimately become both the assignment and the blessing.

During those interview sessions, I would frequently share the teaching of our sages that all of us had two distinct sets of impulses, yetzer tov and yetzer hara, an evil inclination and an inclination to do good. Furthermore, the evil inclination, the yetzer hara, was with us from birth or perhaps even from conception. “It has been your old friend,” I would say. “Your companion for the past twelve or thirteen years.”

“But,” I would continue, “in several weeks, you will gain a new companion, a better self. At your bar or bat mitzvah, you will attain the yetzer tov, the so-called ‘good angel.’”.

Almost invariably, especially from the girls, I was greeted by the following response: “That’s not fair! For all these years, I’ve only had an evil spirit and no means to combat it. Now, finally, I have an ally! Where has he been when I’ve needed him the most? Shouldn’t I have been granted both angels at the same time to even the playing field? No fair!”

An excellent question with no easy answer! For years, I’ve searched for a convincing response to this question. Few commentaries even raise the question, despite it being one that weighed heavily upon my group of Baltimore pre-teens.

I have found a useful, albeit very subtle, approach in the writings of a representative of the Mussar Movement whom I’ve occasionally cited in these weekly columns. His name is Rabbi Chaim Zaitchik, of blessed memory, a student of the Nevardok school of Mussar, who spent the years of the Holocaust in a Soviet labor camp in Siberia, and who emerged from his torturous experiences to become an extremely creative and influential spiritual guide.

Included in his collection of essays known as Ohr Chadash is a most profound reflection on the power of verbal commitments. It can be found among his contributions to this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:23). It is entitled Amirah v’Kabbalah v’HaBriah Kayemet, translated to the best of my ability as, “Commitments and Resolutions Allow Creation to Endure.”

His opening paragraphs review the numerous passages in Talmud and Midrash that underscore the significance of the fact that the Jewish people accepted the Torah willingly, whereas the other nations of the world did not. WE expressed our willingness verbally, insufficiently aware of what our commitment entailed. Naaseh v’nishma! We will observe and perform all the Lord’s commandments even before we hear what they are!

We are told that had the Israelites not committed themselves to accept the Torah, the Lord would have destroyed heaven and earth and nullify His creation. Verbal commitment, resolute acceptance, was sufficient to allow the universe to endure.

He goes on to provide quite an array of less cosmic examples of the power of verbal commitments. One interesting example has to do with the restrictions which are demanded of a nazir, an individual who verbally commits to accept the role of the Nazirite. He must refrain from wine and from all fruits of the vine. He must let his hair and beard grow. And he (or she) must keep away from dead bodies and even avoid contact with the dead bodies of his own mother and father.

In this respect, he is like a kohen, who also must avoid contact with the dead. But the ordinary kohen, unless he is the High Priest or Kohen Gadol, need not refrain from contact with the dead bodies of his own parents.

Why? Ask Rabbi Zaitchik. Is the nazir somehow holier than a kohen? He answers in the affirmative. The kohen did not attain his sanctity by virtue of his personal commitment. He was born a kohen but never personally committed to that position. The nazir made a voluntary verbal commitment, a statement that he accepted upon himself the restrictions incumbent upon a nazir. That personal voluntary commitment is sufficient to bestow upon him, to some degree, a status of sanctity superior to that of the kohen. The nazir may not compromise his self-attained level of sanctity by coming near the dead bodies of his own parents. The power of commitment!

Let us return to the question that my synagogues’ teenagers (who are, at this point in time, parents of their own teenagers!) asked of me so forcefully.

Rabbi Zaitchik intensifies their question by stressing the imbalance caused to a growing child by being assigned an evil inclination without assistance from a benevolent force adequate to the challenge. Is the Creator not concerned that twelve or thirteen years of exposure to only evil powers might render the child incapable of ever incorporating the belated coaxing or coaching of the yetzer tov, of the good spirit?

Here, Rabbi Zeitchik reminds us of those passages in Talmud and Midrash which suggest that, as one source has it, the Almighty Himself is occupied with teaching Torah to yet unborn children and that, as another source suggests, an angel tutors us all, as embryos in our mother’s womb, in the ways and words of the Torah.

At that early stage in the celestial “classroom” we attended before our birth, we made a verbal commitment to adhere to the Torah. We have no recall whatsoever of that commitment, but our unborn souls made that commitment, and it is with that sincere resolution to do good and be good that we are equipped to do battle with the yetzer hara. That supernatural commitment is merely reinforced when we reach the age of religious maturity to take on the yetzer hara competently and indeed to overcome him entirely as we march forward into adulthood.

This week’s Torah portion is all about the verbal commitment made by our ancestors at Sinai. But the souls of all of us were present at Mount Sinai, and in a mysterious but real sense, we are still bound by the commitment we made so long ago.

Let’s keep our commitment and make good use of our trusted ally, the yetzer tov!