In the previous section we studied the definition "tzaddik yesod olam," the righteous one who is the foundation of the world, and we saw how the Alter Rebbe hints at different levels among tzaddikim. Now we will look more closely at the difference between the various expressions, and then move from the introduction into the main subject of the Tanya itself: the inner science of the soul.
The difference between "yesod olam" and "vayoshes aleihem teivel":
"Yesod olam," foundation of the world, is like the foundation on which a house stands. The house and the foundation are joined to one another; you cannot say that the house stands here while the foundation sits somewhere hidden, a few streets away. A foundation of the world means that the world rests upon the foundation and the foundation is bound up with the world: one stands on the other, and the one connects the other. This is the fourth category: a tzaddik whose whole occupation is with the world, who acts within it and refines it.
These are the four categories the Alter Rebbe is hinting at, and this is why he writes "in the midrash" even though the source is in the Gemara. There are two kinds of sugyos in the Gemara:
Halachic sugyos: passages that come to teach what to do, how to fulfill a mitzvah, and so on.
Sugyos of essence: passages that speak about inner matters, not about the practical performance of things.
This particular passage in the Gemara belongs to the second kind, the side that deals with the inner dimension. That is why the Alter Rebbe says the matter is written "in the midrash": he means the part of the Gemara that speaks of inner matters, and it is there that these specific levels among tzaddikim are hinted at.
The Beinoni:
Our subject here in Tanya is the beinoni, the intermediate person. Everything up to these two points has really been introduction. After the general introduction to the Tanya, this is the introduction to the part that the sefer comes to give over and explain to every single person. We are not here to learn what a particular tzaddik is or how so and so became a tzaddik. We are not conducting research into tzaddikim, and not even into beinonim. We are here to learn about ourselves, about our own soul, and about how we are to meet the divine mission that the Creator has given us in this world.
Everything until now was only a preface, so that we should understand that this avodah is an inner work of the soul, and that it is not enough to have "a majority of good deeds." A person has to look deeply and precisely into the makeup of his own soul, so that he can be close to the divine will and know what is being asked of him. In Tanya the Alter Rebbe does not ask a person for a majority of good deeds; he asks for one hundred percent.
How does this square with what the Gemara brings, "אין צדיק בארץ אשר יעשה טוב ולא יחטא" ("there is no tzaddik on earth who does good and does not sin")?
A tzaddik in the borrowed sense: someone whose merits outweigh his sins. It is about him that it is said that he sins.
A tzaddik in the true sense: a tzaddik in essence, on the highest level. Sin has no relevance to him at all, and he is not included in that category.
All of these fine distinctions, drawn from the Gemara and from Torah shebaal peh, are for our own benefit, so that we will know how to enter the science of the soul with precision. This is not pilpul for its own sake. It is an ordered teaching and clear language that places everything within a defined framework.
Even going into the depth of the four types of tzaddikim is preparatory, so that the definitions a student meets in all sorts of places, in Gemara, in midrash, in Rambam, in Rashi and Tosafos, will not confuse him. When he sees the word "tzaddik" written, of one type or another, he will not say that in Tanya he learned something different; he will know how to define what he is reading. Until now we have only been laying groundwork, so that a person should know how to define his own soul: what he contains, what is asked of him, and where he stands. Not in order to become downcast that we are not tzaddikim, since nobody is asking us to be tzaddikim, but in order to receive the right direction in how to be a beinoni. That is what is asked of us.
"Ach biur ha'inyan" - the two souls:
After this introduction we arrive at the part of Tanya that comes to speak about the science of the soul from within. You could say that after the colon here, we have finally reached the point itself. "אך ביאור הענין" ("but the explanation of the matter"): in order to explain everything that is going on here, the Alter Rebbe speaks on the basis of what Rabbi Chaim Vital, of blessed memory, wrote in Shaar HaKedushah and in Etz Chaim, Shaar 50, chapter 2.
"דלכל איש ישראל, אחד צדיק ואחד רשע, יש שתי נשמות" ("that every Jew, whether righteous or wicked, has two souls"). The Alter Rebbe doubles his language so that no one should think that there is anyone left outside the definition. Every single person has two souls.
Where do we find that each person has two souls? The verse says "ונשמות אני עשיתי" ("and the souls I have made"). The Holy One, blessed be He, reveals to us that He made souls. One could argue that this refers to the Jewish people as a whole, within which many souls were made, so from where do we know that each individual has two? For that we have to look at the first half of the verse: "כי רוח מלפני יעטוף ונשמות אני עשיתי" ("for the spirit that enwraps itself is from Me, and the souls I have made"). "Ruach," spirit, is singular; "neshamos," souls, is plural. If the whole verse were speaking about the nation, it should have said "ruchos," spirits, in the plural. Rather, it is speaking about the single individual who has a ruach, and to him the Holy One, blessed be He, says: for him I made souls. From here it is proven that each and every person individually has two souls.
And what is meant by the word "neshamos"? "שהן שתי נפשות" ("which are two nefashos"). Among the detailed names of the soul we find nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah, and one should not think that the verse "and the souls I have made" is referring to the level actually called neshamah. It is referring to the basic, minimal level called nefesh, because the level of nefesh is present in everyone, while the level of neshamah is not necessarily revealed in everyone. That is why he says "which are two nefashos."
"Nefesh achas mitzad haklipah v'sitra achara":
In this chapter we are dealing with the first soul, "נפש אחת מצד הקליפה וסטרא אחרא" ("one soul from the side of the klipah and sitra achara"), and in the heading of chapter two we will deal with the second soul. Why begin specifically with this one? Because it enters first. The moment a person is born, this is the first soul to enter him. Rashi says the same thing on the Torah: as long as the fetus is in its mother's womb it has a divine revelation, but the instant it "stirs to leave its mother's womb," the yetzer hara is the first to enter it.
This soul, which the Alter Rebbe calls a negative soul, has its source in the klipah and the sitra achara. "Klipah" is a name for the side of impurity, and the image is taken from a fruit: there is the main thing, the fruit itself, and there is the peel. A peel has two definitions:
On the one hand: it conceals the fruit.
On the other hand: it protects the fruit and guards it.
In the soul of a person too, the part called klipah can carry both of these meanings, and which one it is depends on his avodah. It is possible that its role will be nothing more than a peel that conceals the truth; and if a person is wise, he will turn it into a peel that guards the truth and serves it. But if he does not work on himself and instead gives his yetzer free rein, the klipah will conceal the truth and will not protect it.
"One soul from the side of the klipah" is therefore said in the sense of the peel that conceals the fruit, and this is the meaning of klipah wherever it appears. Later in the chapter we will see that there are different levels within the klipos, but in general a klipah is that which conceals the truth. And what is "sitra achara"? Translated into lashon hakodesh: "sitra" means side, "achara" means other. The other side. There is the original side, the straight side, and there is the other side. First one has to know its source and its identity card: klipah and sitra achara.
"V'hi hamislabeshes b'dam ha'adam l'hachayos haguf":
This soul does not sit quietly. The very name "klipah" tells us that it conceals, but it is active, not passive, and the Alter Rebbe lists its activity on three levels. The first level: "והיא המתלבשת בדם האדם להחיות הגוף" ("and it is the soul that clothes itself in a person's blood to give life to the body"). Where do we encounter it? It is found in the blood, and its function is to give life to the body.
This line cannot be understood literally. If it simply meant that a person should be alive, well, a tzaddik is alive too, and from what does he live, from klipah and sitra achara? Heaven forbid; he lives entirely from kedushah. Rather, the intent can be summed up in one word: ego. "To give life to the body" means that the body feels itself: "I am alive, I am here, I exist."
Picture two Jews. Both keep Torah and mitzvos, both are careful with the light mitzvos as with the weighty ones. From the outside they both look perfectly fine, but if you penetrate into their souls, into what they feel and into the way they look at a life of Torah and mitzvos, you discover two completely different people:
The first: his feeling is, I am alive and breathing, I exist, I have a home, a family and a body, 248 limbs and 365 sinews, everything is in order. And now, since I am alive and I have hands and feet and a body, there is also Torah and mitzvos: let us take the tefillin and put them on, let us take these legs and run with them to shul, let us take the house and put up a mezuzah. He will do everything, and on the face of it nothing is missing.
The second: his feeling is exactly the reverse. There is Torah and mitzvos. There is a mitzvah of tefillin in the Torah, and the Holy One, blessed be He, gave me a left arm so that I could fulfill it. There is a mitzvah of mezuzah, and He gave me a house so that I could fulfill it. There are the mitzvos of leket, shich'chah and pe'ah, maaser rishon, maaser sheni and maaser ani, and He gave me a field so that I could fulfill them. There is a mitzvah to give maaser, and He gave me a job in which to earn, so that I would be able to give maaser.
The difference between them is from one extreme to the other. For the first, the sense of his own existence is the starting point, and Torah and mitzvos come afterward. For the second, there is Torah and mitzvos, and his body is a vessel that serves them. It is like what the sefarim say about Simchas Torah: the Torah wants to dance around the bimah and it has no legs, so the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us legs. We become the legs of the Torah, and with them the Torah dances around the bimah. The whole way of looking at everything is different.
When Tanya says that there is a soul whose source is the klipah and the sitra achara, and that its first active function is "והיא המתלבשת בדם האדם להחיות הגוף" ("and it clothes itself in a person's blood to give life to the body"), it is not yet speaking about evil deeds that this soul does. It damages nothing and harms no one; on the contrary, it may well be keeping Torah and mitzvos in full. Its first foothold is simply that it gives a person the feeling of "I am alive, my body exists," with Torah and mitzvos arriving only afterward. "וכדכתיב כי נפש הבשר בדם היא" ("as it is written, for the soul of the flesh is in the blood"). This is the first negative act of the soul that comes from klipah.
And why is it negative? Because when a person has an ego and a sense that he is alive and comfortable, and a conflict arises between the desire to live well and the divine will, and such conflicts arise in his life every single day, then if his starting point is Torah and mitzvos he will handle it far more easily. But if his own comfort is the main thing, the conclusion will come out differently. Everything depends on the starting point.
Picture two people walking together along the same path, and suddenly one of them finds himself deep in the middle of a forest while his friend is still in the city. How did one end up in the depths of the forest while the other stayed in the city? Not in one leap. If we trace it backward, we will see that at a certain point he veered one centimeter to the right while the other stayed on the path, and from that one centimeter he eventually arrived deep in the forest. That is the point where the paths split and where the navigation is set: the feeling and the ego with which a person sets out. From there it is a sure road to falling into the hands of the soul that comes from the side of klipah and sitra achara.
With this first identification the Alter Rebbe hands us the tool to look at ourselves correctly, and through that to reach the right destination: to be the beinonim that he is asking us to be.
To summarize: In this section we learned the difference between "yesod olam" and "vayoshes aleihem teivel," and we completed the introduction, whose purpose is to teach that all these definitions in the matter of tzaddikim are there so that we should know how to define our own soul, not so that we should investigate tzaddikim or beinonim. We then moved into the main subject of Tanya, the inner science of the soul, and saw, based on the words of Rabbi Chaim Vital, that every Jew has two souls, as is proven from the verse "ki ruach milfanai yaatof uneshamos ani asisi." We began with the first soul, whose source is the klipah and sitra achara, we learned the meaning of the terms "klipah" and "sitra achara," and we saw that its first activity, "clothing itself in a person's blood to give life to the body," means the sense of ego and self existence as one's starting point, as opposed to the person for whom Torah and mitzvos are the starting point.
In the next section we will take up the foundations of evil in the soul: the further activities of the soul that comes from klipah, and the roots of evil as they reveal themselves in a person's soul.