In the previous sections we learned two explanations of how to accept the bad. Both of them say to a person: yes, it hurts, and yes, this really is something bad - except that this bad comes from an abundance of love, or that it comes to test how much you truly care. The explanation we are about to learn is of an entirely different kind, and on an entirely different level: there is no bad here at all. The way we are looking at it is itself mistaken, a sort of optical illusion, and once a person looks at things as they really are, it turns out there was nothing to talk about in the first place.
An opening story - Reb Zusha of Anipoli:
A Jew once came to the Maggid of Mezritch and asked for advice and guidance on how to cope with suffering. The Maggid sent him to Reb Zusha of Anipoli (who wrote one of the approbations to the Tanya). When he arrived at Reb Zusha's home he found a man living in poverty, in utter simplicity and want, a life that looked unbearably hard. He said to himself: here I will surely find the explanation of how one lives with such a thing. He asked to stay as a guest and did not immediately reveal why he had come, and for a day or two he watched Reb Zusha: joyful and lively, serving Hashem with genuine simcha, davening for hours on end, as if there were no problem in the world - which only made him more curious.
After some time he turned to him and said: "Reb Zusha, I did not come merely as a guest. I came to ask how one copes with suffering." Reb Zusha answered him: "It seems to me you have come to the wrong address. I have no suffering, I have no idea what suffering even is, and I do not know what you are talking about. Go find someone who has suffering, and ask him how he copes." This is not coping with bad at all. It turns the whole thing on its head: a completely different way of looking at the matter itself.
Let us turn to the words of the Alter Rebbe:
"והנה עצה היעוצה לטהר לבו מכל עצב ונדנוד דאגה ממילי דעלמא" - "Here is the counsel to purify one's heart of all sadness and any trace of worry over worldly matters." As we have learned, worries can stem from spiritual problems or from physical ones, and here the Alter Rebbe is speaking of milei de'alma, worldly, physical problems. And not luxuries either, but things that are genuinely essential: bonei, chayei umzonei - children, health and livelihood, things a person needs and cannot manage without. When these are lacking, these would seem to be objective, real problems that disturb him to the point that he cannot learn or daven, and he lives in a constant state of sadness.
To this comes the answer: "מודעת זאת מאמר רז"ל כשם שמברך על הטובה כך מברך כו'" - "It is well known what our Sages said: just as one makes a blessing over the good, so does one make a blessing..." Just as when good comes to a person he recites, with Hashem's name and kingship, the blessing HaTov VehaMeitiv, so too must he bless over the bad. The intent is not that he recite the identical blessing, for over the bad one says Dayan HaEmes, but that the manner of the blessing be the same: just as he says the blessing over good with joy and does not need to go hunting for reasons to be happy, since the good is plainly visible to him, so too the blessing of Dayan HaEmes, which the Torah obligated him to say, must be said out of joy. That is what the Holy One asks of him.
"ופירשו בגמרא - לקבולי בשמחה, כשמחת הטובה הנגלית ונראית" - "And the Gemara explained: to receive it with joy, like the joy over the good that is revealed and visible." He must receive it with joy, just as he rejoices over the good that is open and visible to the eye, and so too he must rejoice over the hidden good. Before one understands what that hidden good is, this sounds like rejoicing over bad; but the Alter Rebbe immediately continues and makes clear that there is no bad here whatsoever, rather "כי גם זו לטובה", "for this too is for the good" - the bad itself is good.
"For this too is for the good" - Nachum Ish Gam Zu:
This expression has its source in the Gemara. It was the saying of Rabbi Nachum, who was called "Nachum Ish Gam Zu" because of his constant refrain, "gam zu letovah," this too is for the good. The Gemara relates: the Jews wished to send a gift to the emperor, and they chose Nachum Ish Gam Zu as their messenger. He set out with a chest of gold and silver, and along the way he lodged at an inn. The innkeepers identified the merchandise and swapped it for dirt and stones. When Nachum discovered the switch he immediately said: "Gam zu letovah." He came before the emperor and said: "This is the gift the Jews have sent you." The emperor opened the chest, saw stones, and ordered: "Take him out and execute him" - and Nachum's reaction was again: "Gam zu letovah."
Before the sentence was carried out, Eliyahu HaNavi came in the guise of one of the emperor's ministers and said to him: perhaps this is special sand from the sand of Avraham Avinu, which, when he would throw it at his enemies, would turn in midair into arrows and weapons of war. Said the emperor: let us test it. At that time he happened to be at war with one of the nations; they tested it and saw that this was indeed special sand. The emperor sent Nachum back with gold and silver. (The story has an interesting continuation, but this is the point relevant to our discussion.)
[The Gemara brings another story about Nachum Ish Gam Zu and the suffering he took upon himself, in which he said "woe to these hands"; but the story relevant to us right now is the story of "gam zu letovah."]
Nachum Ish Gam Zu's student was Rabbi Akiva, and he too had a well known saying: "kol mah de'avid Rachmana letav avid" - whatever the Holy One does, He does for the good. About him too the Gemara relates: he set out on a journey with three things - a donkey, a rooster and a lamp. He sought lodging in one of the towns and they would not let him stay, for its people were not decent folk, and he was forced to spend the night in the forest. There a lion devoured his donkey, a cat devoured his rooster, and the wind blew out his lamp. Left with nothing, he climbed up into a tree. That night bandits came and killed all the inhabitants of the town, while he went undiscovered - precisely because he no longer had a donkey, a rooster and a lamp. And at every single stage, when he was turned away from the town, when the donkey was gone, and so on, he said: "kol mah de'avid Rachmana letav avid."
The difference between Rabbi Akiva and his teacher, Nachum Ish Gam Zu, is a fundamental one:
With Rabbi Akiva: what happened to him was genuinely bad. Being driven out of the town was not good, and losing the donkey, the rooster and the lamp was not good either. Only in the end did it emerge that it had been for the good, since thanks to it he was saved. The bad remained bad; it simply produced, indirectly, a good outcome.
With Nachum Ish Gam Zu: the dirt itself turned out to be better than the gold. Had he arrived before the emperor with a chest of gold, the emperor would not have been particularly impressed - he has plenty of that in his palace. It was specifically the sand that proved to be better than gold. In other words, the very thing that looked like the opposite of good turns out to be good in itself.
That is why the Alter Rebbe chooses specifically the wording of Nachum Ish Gam Zu - "כי גם זו לטובה": according to the hisbonenus being taught here in Tanya, every bad thing is, in its very essence, good. We are not speaking of a bad that one must find ways of coping with, but of there being no bad here at all.
"Except that it is not revealed and visible to eyes of flesh":
And how can one grasp that this is not bad, at a moment when a person feels bad? To this the Alter Rebbe says that the only problem is "שאינה נגלית ונראית לעיני בשר", "that it is not revealed and visible to eyes of flesh." This is a good whose intensity our fleshly eyes cannot register, a good on so high a level that we have no capacity to absorb it or contain it, and therefore it registers with us as the opposite of good. Not because it is not good, but because it is a good that is beyond and above.
An illustration from this world: a gifted child. When his intelligence and talents go beyond even the frameworks built for gifted children, this is not always a visible blessing - he has no study partner and no social circle, and he suffers from it. Why? Because an excess of good registers as bad. "Not normal" can mean below the norm, and it can mean above the norm, and in both cases it is not within the norm. So too here: a good that is above the norm, and therefore "it is not revealed and visible to eyes of flesh."
The source of the hidden good - 'alma de'iskasya':
Why is this good not revealed to eyes of flesh? Because "כי היא מעלמא דאתכסיא שלמעלה מעלמא דאתגליא", "for it is from the concealed world, which is above the revealed world." In the divine conduct of the worlds there are revealed worlds and there are covered, concealed worlds:
'Alma de'isgalya': the revealed worlds, ours among them, in which the divine flow arrives in a revealed way. A person can tell what is good and what is not good. Except that even the good that is received in a revealed way is a very constricted good.
'Alma de'iskasya': a good that is hidden from the eye, which a person is incapable of registering because of its sheer intensity.
As we learned in the previous section: when a student sits in class and the teacher gives him an explanation that he understands, that is a sign that the explanation was given on a level far below the teacher's own, constricted and tailored precisely to the student's level. But when the teacher delivers an explanation and the student cannot catch a single word of it, that is only because the explanation was given on a higher level than the student is able to contain.
In summary: in this section we learned an explanation of a new kind. It is not an explanation that teaches how to cope with the bad, but one that denies that it is bad at all, as emerges from Reb Zusha of Anipoli's answer. The Alter Rebbe offers counsel to purify the heart of all sadness and worry over worldly matters, even in matters of children, health and livelihood, on the strength of our Sages' statement, "just as one blesses over the good, so does one bless over the bad" - to receive it with joy, like the joy over revealed good. We examined the difference between Rabbi Akiva's "kol mah de'avid Rachmana letav avid," in which the bad gives rise to good indirectly, and Nachum Ish Gam Zu's "gam zu letovah," in which the thing itself turns out to be good, and we learned that the hidden good is not visible to eyes of flesh because its source is in 'alma de'iskasya,' which is above 'alma de'isgalya.'
In the next section we will go deeper into 'alma de'iskasya' and what it means practically for a person's avodah in receiving things with joy.