In the previous section we looked at the idea of bittush, the "pounding" of the animal soul, and at a person who feels that his heart simply will not open. In this section we will see that the demand for teshuvah is not fixed and uniform; it shifts along three dimensions: the soul, the time, and the place. From there we will come to the two ways of explaining why the light of the neshamah is not shining in a person's heart, and finally to the closing words of the chapter: to be one of the "מארי דחושבנא", the masters of accounting.
Everything depends on the person, on the time, and on the place:
From the standpoint of the soul: the person himself rises in level, and as we have said, what was sufficient for his previous level is no longer sufficient for his new one.
From the standpoint of time: a person did teshuvah last month for a particular sin, and now he enters a new period of time, the month of Elul, say, a time when a person is drawn closer. Relative to this new time he is asked to clean up again something that yesterday was perfectly in order. So a person who arrives at Elul and suddenly feels a dullness and a blockage of the heart that he did not feel before, and wonders: precisely now it should be easier, how did I pick up more dullness? The answer is that once he has entered a loftier time, he is being asked to clean out anew what last month was quite all right.
From the standpoint of place: when a person comes to a holier and loftier place, when he stands before a tzaddik or before a king, when he enters the Beis HaMikdash or a shul, a greater elevation is demanded of him.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "והכל לפי מה שהוא האדם ולפי הזמן והמקום, כידוע ליודעים", "and it all depends on who the person is, and on the time and the place, as is known to those who know."
"ולכן עכשיו בשעה זו שרואה בעצמו דלא סליק ביה נהורא דנשמתא", "and therefore now, at this moment, when he sees in himself that the light of his soul does not rise within him." When a person sees in himself that there is a block, that the light of the neshamah is not penetrating, that the heart will not open and there is no arousal in it, what is the conclusion? Not that he is hopeless and has no part in any of this, but rather "מכלל שהיום לא נתקבלה תשובתו, ועוונותיו מבדילים", "it follows that today his teshuvah has not been accepted, and his sins are separating." The teshuvah he did in the past was good and was accepted at that time; but relative to the new level he has now reached, he must do teshuvah over again.
For there is nothing that separates between Israel and their Father in Heaven except sin, as the verse says, "כי אם עוונותיכם היו מבדילים", "rather it is your sins that have been separating." Sin separates and forms a partition that cuts off. Consequently yesterday's sin awakens anew today and separates. That is the first way of explaining it.
Not only for the sin, but even for the good deed:
To round out the idea, let us add a second way, which is a deeper level still: it is not only a sin that a person committed and already repented for that needs to be put right again relative to his new level, but even a good deed that he did.
By way of introduction: it is well known that on Rosh Hashanah we go to Tashlich. In the Rebbe's siddur and machzor it is brought that one shakes out there, and people have the custom of shaking out their pockets, even though it is not written there to shake out the corners of the tallis katan. I heard a lovely saying about this: when a person shakes out his pockets, he is shaking out his sins, for sins collect in the pockets and need to be shaken out; and when he shakes out his tzitzis, he is shaking out his mitzvos, for the mitzvos too need to be shaken out.
What does it mean to "shake out the mitzvos"? Sometimes a person does a good deed, and relative to the level he is standing at, the deed itself is genuinely good and complete. But the person keeps moving forward and rising, precisely through the strength of all the good deeds he does, and good deeds are eternal, since the Holy One is above time. It emerges that the good deed he did yesterday is not good enough relative to the higher level on which he stands today, and he must do teshuvah even for the good deed itself.
There is a well known story told about Rav Saadiah Gaon, who had the practice of concealing himself and traveling through the towns so that he would not be recognized. Once he arrived in a certain town looking like an ordinary person, went into the first house, knocked on the door and asked for lodging. The owner of the house was a host beyond anything natural: every single person who came to him received the very best, the finest room and the finest food, all of it wholeheartedly and without limit. He treated this Jew, whose identity he did not know, exactly the same way.
After a day or two it became known in the town that this was no ordinary Jew but Rav Saadiah Gaon. Once the news spread, many Jews came in to see him, one for a blessing, one for advice, one with a halachic question, and a long line formed. Among those who came in was his host, and the moment he entered he burst into tears: "Rebbe, I need a tikkun, a rectification." Rav Saadiah asked him, "A rectification for what? What is the sin?" He answered, "I need a rectification for not being properly careful in the mitzvah of hachnosas orchim, welcoming guests." Rav Saadiah said to him, "You are not careful in hachnosas orchim? If only everyone would learn from you what hachnosas orchim is!" The host replied, "Had I known from the start that it was the honor of the Torah standing before me, I would have done many times more. Everything I did was done only because I did not know who you were." That Jew was asking for a rectification for a mitzvah he had performed, because he felt it was not enough.
An analogy from halachah: the korban oleh v'yored:
The korban oleh v'yored is not brought only for a sin (a woman after childbirth and a metzora bring it as well), and it is called "rising and falling" because it rises and falls according to the person's financial situation. The lowest level is a tenth of an eifah of fine flour, which costs a few shekels; the highest level is a female lamb or goat, which costs incomparably more. A destitute pauper who set aside coins in order to buy a tenth of an eifah, and before he managed to buy his offering became wealthy, must now bring according to his new situation. At the moment he set the money aside it was perfectly complete for him, and at that moment he could have brought it and finished the matter; but then he was poor, and now he is rich, and he must bring his offering in keeping with his new situation.
This too is an illustration of how a person is required to upgrade his giving in accordance with his situation, to the point of doing teshuvah over his good deeds. All of this, of course, is being said with regard to beinonim, and within that category itself there are different levels: from the level at which a person must do teshuvah again for a sin he committed, up to the higher level at which he must go further and rectify even the good deed he did. This is a certain form of bittush that a person administers to himself when he comes to ask: why have I not arrived at the state in which the heart opens? Because I need to do teshuvah anew.
The second explanation: "they want to raise him to a higher teshuvah":
According to the first explanation, we are speaking of someone who committed a sin and must rectify it, only that the rectification is now demanded at a higher level. But there can be a person whose problem is not sin at all, with no transgressions separating, but rather "שרוצים להעלותו לתשובה עילאה יותר, מעומקא דליבא יותר", "they want to raise him to a higher teshuvah, from a deeper place in the heart." The dullness is not caused by an actual sin that is cutting him off; rather, the Holy One has many ways of drawing out of a Jew greater depth in his avodah.
One of those ways is like a dam in the physical world. When you want the flow of water to come with force, for instance to generate electrical power, you build a dam. The first reaction is that the water stops; for the first while there is no water at all and the place is dry. But in the next stage the flow returns with far greater force. The same holds in the work of the soul: sometimes the Holy One wants to arouse in a person a teshuvah from a greater depth, and so He sets up a dam for him and gives him dullness of heart. And when a person finds that he cannot budge anything, that is a sign that he is meant to arouse deeper powers of the soul.
It is well known that a person under pressure does things that in a calm moment he cannot understand how he was capable of. There is a story of a man who during the Holocaust had to escape from a certain place, and got out through the bars of a window. Some time later he returned to that place to bentch gomel over the miracle and to see where he had gotten out, and he tried with all his strength to pass through that same opening, and could not manage it at all. How, then, did he get out back then? The pressure he was under contracted even his body; his muscles compressed without his knowing how, because he simply had to get out and save his life. The same is true in the life of the soul: the dam that is set up for a person arouses in him powers that are not revealed in times of calm.
This is what King David meant by "וחטאתי נגדי תמיד", "and my sin is before me always." Obviously he did not mean that he had an actual sin concealing the light, for about King David we learned at the very beginning of Tanya, in chapter one, that he said of himself "ולבי חלל בקרבי", "my heart is void within me," that he had no yetzer hara because he had slain it, and there was no evil in him. Rather, his meaning is that he always had something of a dam and a stoppage, because he was always demanding of himself more depth and more again; and every such stoppage he calls "וחטאתי נגדי תמיד", I always feel that there is something holding me back, and I must always rise higher and higher.
The Alter Rebbe goes further still: "ומי שהוא נקי מחטאות נעורים החמורים", "and one who is clean of the grave sins of his youth." Even someone who cannot call to mind sins from his past and say that he must rectify them anew; a beinoni who was born in holiness and purity, whose upbringing was wondrous and who had no such stumblings in his youth, and nevertheless he finds his heart constricted. What will arouse his soul?
"ישים אל לבו לקיים מה שאמר הזוהר הקדוש, להיות ממארי דחושבנא", "let him take to heart to fulfill what the holy Zohar said, to be one of the mari d'chushbana," that is, one of the masters of accounting. Meaning, "לעשות חשבון עם נפשו מכל המחשבות והדיבורים והמעשים שחלפו ועברו מיום היותו עד היום הזה", "to make an accounting with his soul of all the thoughts, words and deeds that have passed and gone by from the day he came into being until this very day."
In summary: in this section we learned that the demand for teshuvah is not uniform, but rather "it all depends on who the person is, and on the time and the place": on the level of a person's soul, on the time (such as the month of Elul) and on the place (the Beis HaMikdash, a shul, standing before a tzaddik or before a king). We saw two ways of explaining the dullness of heart. The first: that the sins of the past separate anew relative to his new level, to the point that he must do teshuvah even for his good deeds, as in the saying about shaking out the pockets and the tzitzis at Tashlich, as in the story of Rav Saadiah Gaon, and as in the law of the korban oleh v'yored. The second: that they want to raise him to a higher teshuvah, from the depths of the heart, like a dam that intensifies the flow of water, and as David said, "my sin is before me always." And finally, even one who is clean of the sins of his youth is called upon to be one of the mari d'chushbana and to make an accounting with his soul of all his thoughts, words and deeds from the day he came into being until this very day.
In the next section we will continue with the theme of mari d'chushbana: how a person conducts this accounting of his soul, and how that accounting brings him to the bittush of the nefesh habahamis.