In the previous installments we studied what a beinoni (the "intermediate" person) really is, and how the mind rules over the heart. In this installment we will take up the principle "the Torah speaks to the majority," and through it we will distinguish between the avodah of the great tzaddikim and the path of the beinoni. We will begin with an explanation of the first two categories that the Alter Rebbe lists in chapter 13.
There are great tzaddikim whose whole mode of avodah is of a different order. There is a principle stated many times in the Gemara: "the Torah speaks to the majority." The mitzvos, the prohibitions and the precautions written in the Torah were stated with the majority of people in mind. Tzaddikim do not have a different set of mitzvos, but they do have situations in which they are permitted to do things that are forbidden to a beinoni.
It is told of Reb Moshe Leib of Sassov, one of the great tzaddikim, who brought many Jews close and produced baalei teshuvah, that he had a unique method for keeping people from sinning. He would befriend the "dice players," men who frequented all sorts of disreputable places, and he would sit with them for entire nights just to keep them from sinning, and in that way, little by little, he would draw them close.
This is not a program of avodah for an ordinary person. If a beinoni were to go to such places, it is safe to assume he would not come out of them intact, for in his essence he is like a rasha. Therefore a person must not learn from what someone else does and say, "I will do the same." Someone whose very essence is that of a tzaddik has a different kind of avodah, and it is simply not applicable to everyone.
An ordinary person, whose entire self-image comes from what the world tells him about himself, should not believe them. Rather, "אלא יהיה בעיניו כאלו מהותו ועצמותו של הרע הוא בתקפו ובגבורתו בחלל השמאלי כתולדתו" - "it should be in his eyes as if the very essence and being of the evil is in its full strength and might in the left chamber of the heart, just as it was from birth." He must feel that the evil he was born with is sitting in the left chamber in all its force, even if at this moment it happens to be dormant.
In this chapter the Alter Rebbe enumerates levels within the beinoni. As we already mentioned in chapter 12, there is a level of beinoni who during davening is genuinely moved by the tefillah and by kedushah, and the evil in him is asleep. The same is true of one who has merited to remain in that enthusiasm all day long. When the Gemara says, "Would that a person would daven all day long," it does not mean that he should hold a siddur all day and keep saying "Ashrei yoshvei veisecha," but that he should remain all day in that same feeling of tefillah. If he has succeeded in this, his whole day is lived on an elevated plane, and yet the evil in him has not disappeared: it has fallen asleep. It may be sleeping like a polar bear that sleeps all winter, but that hardly means it does not exist.
Therefore, even if people tell a person he is a tzaddik, he should know that his essence sits in its full strength and might in the left chamber, just as it was from birth, and that nothing at all has left him, not even one percent. If he remembers that he once stumbled in this or that sin, he should know that today too he is liable to stumble in that same sin, and even in something worse. The yetzer hara and its desires exist in all their force, and the fact that he manages to overcome them does not exempt him from continuing to fight.
"ואדרבה נתחזק יותר בהמשך הזמן" - "and on the contrary, it has grown stronger over the course of time." Not only is the animal soul in him exactly as it was on the day he was born; on the contrary, it has actually grown stronger with the passage of time. A person who has lived in this world twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years has an animal in him that has grown, developed and become even more animal-like, "שנשתמש בו הרבה באכילה ושתייה ושאר ענייני עולם הזה" - "for he has made much use of it in eating and drinking and the other affairs of this world."
And you might object: did we not learn in the previous chapters that the beinoni eats for the sake of Heaven and has the right intention in everything? Perhaps in his case the eating had no such effect? The Alter Rebbe tells us that this is not so.
Let us bring a proof from the complete tzaddikim, in whom there is no evil at all and nothing that could develop, and whose very eating is holy, literally like a korban upon the altar. Even so, their eating is not the same as going without food. Moshe Rabbeinu ascended the mountain for forty days, and the Torah tells us what he did there: "He ate no bread and drank no water." Now, Moshe Rabbeinu's eating is not our eating and is not desire at all but pure kedushah. Seemingly, what would have been lacking in his holiness had he eaten and drunk, and which holiness would it have disturbed? And yet the Torah tells us that when Moshe Rabbeinu rose to the level of forty days on the mountain, that eating, with all its elevation and holiness, was an interference, and he had to be without food and without drink, because he had risen to an altogether different plane.
And if by a complete tzaddik there is a difference between eating and going without eating, even though both levels are within kedushah (there is kedushah on one level and kedushah on a higher level), how much more so by the beinoni, whose eating is not like a korban on the altar. For him the food is also tasty, he also feels the pleasure in it, and the animal in him enjoys it. It emerges that not only does the divine soul develop from his eating done in holiness; the nefesh habahamis too, over the years, has been enjoying what he ate and drank and the other affairs of this world. Therefore he cannot compare his situation today to his situation twenty years ago; on the contrary, it may well be that back then his nefesh habahamis was weaker. True, during those years he learned Torah, but the animal was developing right alongside.
From here we learn that a person must always think of himself as a rasha: at any given moment, if he is not standing guard, he is liable to fall, God forbid, since his essence has not changed. And nevertheless he is a beinoni, for under no circumstances does he let the animality in him out, and he never acts on it at all. This is the first category of beinoni.
Let us review a point we mentioned earlier: "the mind rules over the heart" in its natural form holds true only in a situation where the person does not feel and is not even aware of the desire that has just arisen in him. The rule of the mind expresses itself in the fact that the desire never manages to get out of the heart and into the awareness of the mind.
For example: a person is presently immersed in learning Torah, and someone comes and sets before him something he generally loves, a food or some other matter that in an ordinary situation he would drop everything for, and he simply does not see it. [If he did see it, weighed it, and decided "not now," that means that in that second he lifted his head out of the sefer and the thing did rise to his mind; and if he decided against it, it is a sign that the desire did not rise with enough force to bring him to act. Or if he had been immersed in reading about mundane matters and a desire came to him, he could have exchanged one desire for another.]
And as we learned in the previous chapter, the mind's rule over the heart operates also when only a residue of the tefillah or of the learning remains in the person and he is not truly immersed in it. The reshimu that remains in the mind is strong enough to rule over the heart and to toss the desire away. But if two, three or four hours pass and he is no longer immersed in it, and then that same desire is presented to him, he will not so easily say, "I am not interested." Now there will be a battle, and special assistance will be required to overcome it; it will not happen with the naturalness of "the mind rules over the heart."
These are two distinct and separate situations:
"The mind rules over the heart": this is something natural, and its condition is that the mind be free of the desire and unaffected by it, or that some residue of something holy still remain in it. Then it has the power to rule.
Special assistance: if, God forbid, the mind is already emptied of kedushah and immersed in worldly matters, and the desire then arises, one cannot make use of this natural rule of mind over heart, and here assistance from Above is required.
And who merits that special assistance? One who has an inner resolve that he wants, come what may, to overcome and to push away the temptation. If his will is to push it away, special assistance will come to him, and he will see that he succeeds.
[There is the verse "the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth." This expression appears twice in Sefer Bereishis, and both times it is brought as the opposite argument. Once it is said that the Holy One brings a flood upon the world because "the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth," and once that very same expression is given as the reason not to bring another flood. How can two opposite conclusions be derived from one and the same phrase, once as a reason for the flood and once as a reason against it?
The explanation: the fact that the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth is not in itself a reason to destroy. The Holy One is not disappointed that the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth, for that is how He created him and that is his avodah. What brought the flood was that man did not master his yetzer, did foolish things, and fell from his station. And afterwards it is said that no further flood will come: "the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth" is a fact, a given condition, and from here on let him stand up and contend with it. And it is possible to succeed: the very study of Tanya gives a person the strength to succeed, and even when he is not always immersed in it, a reshimu remains in him. That is why one must come and learn a great deal, so that a great deal of reshimu will remain.]
Until now we have been dealing with the first level: a beinoni who is immersed in worldly matters, a businessman, in whom "the mind rules over the heart" does not operate, but rather the desire does rise to his mind. His mind is occupied all day with the affairs of the world and all he does is decide to overcome, and then assistance comes to him from Heaven. Here the Alter Rebbe goes on to raise a higher level: "ואף מי שבתורת ה' חפצו ויגע בה יומם ולילה לשמה" - "and even one whose desire is in the Torah of Hashem, and who toils in it day and night lishmah."
We are speaking of a beinoni who is not a businessman immersed in the affairs of the world, but one who sits and learns Torah all day, a talmid chacham. And he does not merely learn; he toils in it day and night lishmah: not in order to earn a living, not so that people will say he is brilliant, not for a salary and not for honor, for all of these are not learning lishmah but learning for the sake of something else. Rather he learns Torah because one must learn Torah and because he wants to connect with the Holy One, with all the levels contained in "lishmah." This person has a feeling for kedushah and invests all his days in kedushah, and this is a beinoni in a higher league, one who seemingly is a tzaddik.
So what, after all, is lacking in him? He does not stand in the battle the way the previous beinoni does, who has a desire rise up in him and fights it. He has no time for desires, since he is immersed all day in learning, and he does not know the desires and never encounters them. Precisely because of this he is all the more liable to make a mistake and think that he has already become a tzaddik and is complete. Therefore the Alter Rebbe says, "אין זו הוכחה כלל שנדחה הרע ממקומו" - "this is no proof at all that the evil has been driven from its place." The evil is there; it is only that he does not recognize it, and if he were to go outside he would recognize it immediately. And the main point is that even before he goes outside he should not think for a moment that the evil is absent, for if he is not aware of it, it can get to him even on the inside.
There is the well-known story of Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, who came forward to serve as chazan on Yom Kippur. He stepped up to the amud, covered his head with his tallis, and the whole congregation waited for him to begin the Yom Kippur tefillah, and there was silence. A few minutes passed and he did not begin, and no one wanted to disturb him. He removed the tallis from his head, laid it on the amud, returned to his place, and left the amud orphaned and empty. The congregation had no idea what had happened there. After some time he came back, davened, and everything went as it should.
When he was asked afterwards what had happened on Yom Kippur, he related: When I stood at the amud and wanted to begin davening, I suddenly saw that someone else was standing next to me. I asked him, "Who are you?" He said, "It's me, the yetzer hara; I also want to daven." I said to him, "What are you doing here? Get out of here, let me daven and leave me in peace." He said, "And why should I leave you? I am together with you, we are friends." I said to him, "What business do you have with me? I am Levi Yitzchak, a talmid of the Maggid of Mezritch, I sat and learned by my Rebbe, and who are you altogether?" He said to me, "Let me tell you a secret: when you sat by your Rebbe and learned, I sat together with you and was right there with you." I said to him, "If you are so wise, and you have learned too and you know, then you daven," and I left and walked away, and let him daven.
Reb Levi Yitzchak himself was a complete tzaddik and had no yetzer hara; he did this in order to illustrate and to teach that everyone should know his place. Even one whose desire is in the Torah of Hashem, who toils in it day and night and learns Torah lishmah, is not freed of the yetzer hara, and it is right there together with him on the inside.
"אין זו הוכחה כלל שנדחה הרע ממקומו, אלא יכול להיות שמהותו ועצמותו הוא בתקפו ובגבורתו במקומו בחלל השמאלי רק שלבושיו שהם מחשבה דבור ומעשה של נפש הבהמית אינן מתלבשים במוח והפה והידים ושאר אברי הגוף" - "this is no proof at all that the evil has been driven from its place; rather it may well be that its essence and being is in its full strength and might in its place in the left chamber, only that its garments, which are the thought, speech and action of the nefesh habahamis, are not clothing themselves in the mind, the mouth, the hands and the other limbs of the body." They simply do not manage to take control, "מפני ה' שנתן שליטה וממשלה למוח על הלב" - "because of Hashem, who gave the mind rule and dominion over the heart."
It is worth noting that here the Alter Rebbe does say explicitly that this comes from the mind's rule over the heart, for we are speaking of a person who is learning and whose mind is occupied with Torah. In his case Hashem gave the mind natural rule over the heart, and therefore his heart is not active and does not send desires up to him; on the contrary, he is genuinely immersed in his learning. But let him not imagine for a moment that the evil does not exist.
The Alter Rebbe goes on at length here for a full page, and apparently it is not easy to convince this learner, even one whose Torah fills his entire day and who is engaged in it with his whole heart, to be aware that the evil is present. Let us point already now to one of the interesting proofs he brings further on: of Rivka Imeinu it says "the children struggled within her," and she was in a quandary, this one running here and that one running there. When she was told "two nations are in your womb," she was set at ease, for this was not a split personality but two separate beings, each one pulling in his own direction. And the verse continues, "and one nation shall overpower the other," upon which Chazal comment: when this one rises, that one falls, and when this one rises, that one falls.
It is worth being precise in the very wording: when the yetzer tov rises, the yetzer hara falls, but the statement does not end there. It continues "and when this one rises," meaning that the yetzer hara too can rise. Had it simply fallen and that were the end of the matter, there would have been no need to add "and when this one rises." The mere fact that it retains the capacity to rise is enough to teach us that it exists.
Consequently, each person must know that he is like a rasha, that his essence has not changed, and that the overwhelming majority of people were created by the Holy One with precisely such an essence, of a yetzer hara and of bad middos, and that is their essence. And if from time to time that essence begins to run wild, one should not panic, but should resolve to throw it out. And when one so resolves, there is a promise in Tanya that there is siyata dishmaya, and the Holy One helps; and then there is the advantage of light over darkness, and the darkness disappears of itself and has no existence at all.
In summary: in this installment we studied the principle "the Torah speaks to the majority," that the modes of avodah of the great tzaddikim, such as Reb Moshe Leib of Sassov, are not a model for imitation by the beinoni, who in his essence is like a rasha. We saw that the evil in the beinoni may be dormant but never disappears; on the contrary, it grows stronger over the years through the use he makes of eating, drinking and the other affairs of this world, as we proved from Moshe Rabbeinu's eating, which was withheld from him during the forty days on the mountain. We distinguished between "the mind rules over the heart," which is natural and whose condition is that the mind be free or that a residue remain in it, and a situation that requires special assistance for one who has resolved to overcome. We explained the two occurrences of "the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth," and we began the second category of beinoni: one whose desire is in the Torah of Hashem and who toils in it day and night lishmah, in whom too there is no proof that the evil has been driven from its place, as illustrated by the story of Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev.
In the next installment we will continue, with God's help, in the words of the Alter Rebbe, and delve into the proofs he brings that the evil remains in its place in its full strength and might even in one who is engaged in Torah day and night lishmah.