In the previous section we learned the directive to do good specifically to the person who has wronged you. Now the Alter Rebbe adds a piece of advice: a line of thinking that explains what the real reason is that obligates a person to repay that individual with kindness. In the language of the Zohar, learn it from Yosef and his brothers.
Learning from Yosef and his brothers:
Why was this story chosen in particular? Because there it is visible on the surface, spelled out in the verses of the Torah: the brothers did Yosef evil, and Yosef repaid them with good.
True, until Yosef finally repaid them with good, it looked as though he had chosen to torment his brothers and put them through misery. There is a lengthy explanation of that as well, and this is not the place for it. In brief: Yosef the Tzaddik wanted to bring them to genuine teshuvah, and only he knew how to separate the emotions (which in his case did not exist at all) from the mission that had been placed upon him. More than that, even the pressure he applied was done in a wholly unique way: at the very moment that he pressed them, he planted seeds, so that when the day came and the truth was revealed, the brothers would understand that it had all been only for appearances' sake.
The Alter Rebbe brings from the Zohar what Yosef revealed to his brothers, and what the brothers merited to see with their own eyes: everything they had done, which had looked like sheer evil, turned out for the good, in three concentric circles:
For Yosef himself: the descent to Egypt is precisely what made him the leader of the world. Had he remained at home with the family, he would never have reached that.
For the brothers and his father's household: he was the one who sustained them through the years of famine.
For the entire world: which was fed through him.
From here we learn: a person who receives a slap is sure that this is bad, and so it appeared to Yosef too at first. Time passed (a fair amount of time, admittedly) and it turned out that this was the best thing that could possibly have happened.
"Kol de'avid Rachmana letav avid":
With this addition the Alter Rebbe hands a person the strength to repay good even to someone who has infuriated him. A person must believe that whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, does is nothing but for the good, and that this other person is nothing more than His messenger. For it had already been decreed upon the victim from Above: if this one had not done it, someone else would have; and if not that way, it would have come about through some other Divine route. And since it was decreed that he receive this now, it is a given that it is for the good. And if he does not see the good in it, let him pray to merit to see it.
What is this like? A man is walking down the street and feels a blow on his back. Instantly he fills with anger: who is the insolent fellow who just hit me in the middle of the street? Then he turns around and sees his good friend, whom he has not seen in a long time, greeting him warmly: "Shalom, my friend, how are you?" In that very same second the anger is replaced by great love. The blow itself has not changed at all; it has simply been revealed to be an expression of affection, and his whole attitude has flipped from one extreme to the other.
This is how a person must contemplate every blow he receives. It is not simple, and it is far easier said than done, but this is what is written, and learning these words in Tanya gives us the strength to train ourselves to see every blow as a gift. As has already been mentioned: a slap does hurt and a caress is pleasant, but what is a slap if not many caresses concentrated together.
Questions that came up in the class on this topic:
Question: Does this attitude, doing good even to one who does evil, apply only between one Jew and another?
Answer: The mitzvah itself is between one Jew and another, since its foundation is the mitzvah of "ve'ahavta lere'acha kamocha" (you shall love your fellow as yourself): "your fellow," who is with you, and "as yourself." There is certainly a value in making peace between a Jew and a non-Jew as well, as is told of one of the Tannaim who would be the first to greet every person in the marketplace, even a non-Jew, and every human being is to be treated as a human being. But the mitzvah of ahavas Yisrael at this level exists only between Jews.
Even so, it is worth knowing that whoever acts out of a bad character trait damages himself in the process. Not only is the other person harmed; he is cultivating an evil trait within himself, and cultivating an evil trait is bad for him. Therefore, if he lets it go, even when the other party is a non-Jew, nothing has been lost, because he is thereby quieting his own middos. As long as he is certain that he is doing it because the Torah demands it of him. And as long as he feels an urge for revenge, that urge must always be silenced and never, God forbid, nurtured.
Question: "Lo tikom velo titor" (do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge) is learned from Yosef, but Yosef only understood the good in it after he had risen to royalty. How can we learn from him?
Answer: Yosef understood it from the very first moment; he simply revealed it to the brothers when they came to him. There is not the slightest hint in the verses of resistance or of his crying out during the sale. He appears passive, and he did not pay his brothers back in kind, because he immediately understood that this was a Divine matter, and he did not see in it, God forbid, a quarrel between brothers. He was a tzaddik. This is an explanation on a lofty level, and living it in practice is harder still.
Question: How does one act in practical, sensitive situations, such as the relationship between an employee and an employer, where an employee causes his employer damages?
Answer: What we have learned does not erase the laws of Choshen Mishpat, which are part of the Shulchan Aruch and deal with the laws of disputes between neighbors and between people. Someone who has a dispute with another may come to a din Torah and ask the Creator of the world, through the judge sitting in judgment, what the ruling is in this case, provided it is not done out of revenge. The intent is not that a person should bow his head and turn the other cheek to everyone who tramples him. If they burned down his house, he has to know that since it happened, this was surely decreed from Above; and at the same time, it is within his rights to summon the other party to a din Torah and see what Torah law rules in this case. The two do not contradict each other; they go together.
The beinoni: a temporary bar:
The Alter Rebbe sets a goal and a standard, but this standard is a temporary one: there is reaching it and there is slipping back, and the stretch of time may be longer or shorter. For a few individuals it is a fixed state, but for most people it is a constant war. Any person, at any given moment, may enter the definition of beinoni, and the moment afterward may fall out of it. There is tremendous encouragement in this. With tzaddikus it is not so: a tzaddik is a tzaddik always, as was explained at the beginning of Tanya and as we will see further on. But our subject is the beinoni and his service.
Levels within the beinoni:
It is brought in general terms that the Alter Rebbe said there are five hundred levels within the beinoni. He does not bring all of them in Tanya, but several levels do appear there. Already in the next chapter, chapter 13, the Alter Rebbe distinguishes two types of beinonim: a beinoni who is a businessman, and a beinoni who is a yoshev ohalim, a Torah scholar. There are differences between the two, since each faces a different kind of war and struggle.
It is also brought that in the service of Hashem there is an 'eved kena'ani,' an 'eved ivri' and an 'amah ivriyah.' On the simple level, an eved kena'ani is a non-Jewish slave and an eved ivri is a Jewish servant; and as was mentioned earlier, even these concepts are studied in Gan Eden. Since all of these categories appear in the Torah, they are levels in the service of Hashem, and in our context, levels within the beinoni:
Eved kena'ani: a beinoni on a low level. Of him the Gemara says "avda behefkeira nicha lei," a slave is content in a state of abandon. As far as his own desire goes, he would be quite happy being unrestrained, but in practice he is not unrestrained at all: he is a servant, and he carries out his master's will out of discipline. He has kabbolas ol malchus shamayim, accepting the yoke of Heaven's sovereignty, and he fights over every single thought and will not let one of them fall. But he does not have a single moment in the day in which he is moved or stirred. In the image with which the class opened, the difference between one who sells his body for the fruit and one who sells only the fruit itself, this is a Jew who sells only the fruit already on the tree; he has no power to work on his emotions and he does not manage to pray properly.
Eved ivri: a beinoni on a higher level, the servant spoken of in chapter 12, who does succeed in working to some degree on his heart as well, whether during prayer or in the reshimu, the impression, that remains with him after prayer.
Amah ivriyah: a still loftier level.
It is all stages and levels, and one's contact with them is momentary. At every single moment a person has to determine what is happening with him right now; and immediately afterward, what will be in the next moment, and so on.
In summary: in this section we learned the advice the Alter Rebbe adds for repaying good in place of evil: learn from Yosef and his brothers, where he revealed to them how the seeming evil turned into good for him, for his father's household and for the entire world. The foundation of it all is the faith that "kol man de'avid Rachmana letav avid," whatever the Merciful One does is for the good, and that the one who causes harm is only a messenger, since it had already been decreed upon the victim from Above, as in the parable of the friend whose blow turns out to be affection. We also clarified the boundaries of the mitzvah, and the attitude toward a din Torah that is not revenge, and how the level of beinoni is a temporary bar containing levels within it: eved kena'ani, eved ivri and amah ivriyah. And the work is done anew at every given moment.
In the next section we will take up chapter 13 and the distinction the Alter Rebbe draws between the two types of beinonim: the businessman and the yoshev ohalim.
Let us go back and dig deeper into something we mentioned earlier. The Holy One, blessed be He, is turning all the wheels, and our minds are incapable of grasping the whole picture. The rule is that "merit is brought about through one who is worthy and liability through one who is liable." The victim received the damage because it was decreed upon him, and this particular person was sent to inflict it because, from his own side, he had become liable for a payment for an entirely different reason. Two separate accounts meet in one act: this one receives what is coming to him, and that one pays off his debt in court. Had the one who caused the damage been on a better level, his debt would have been collected in a simple way, through a straightforward financial loss; since he is not, the money is collected from him by way of an act that injures someone else. Everything is calculated, wheels interlocking with one another, and we have no ability to grasp the structure of the complete picture. But this very secret is what the Torah revealed to us.
From here comes the practical lesson: what happened to a person did not come from that other person. He received it directly from the Holy One, blessed be He, and the one who caused the damage is nothing but a messenger. If a person were injured by a piece of iron he tripped over, would he get angry at the iron, shout at it, hold a grudge against it? He would go on his way. That person is just like that piece of iron, and it makes no difference that he walks on two legs and has intellect and emotion. True, there are messengers who came in the first place with the intent to torment, and their evil choice is their own, given over to their free will. But the result that reached the victim is a directed Divine hand, for a reason known to Him, for "ein od milvado," there is nothing else besides Him.