In chapters 29 and 30 we studied forms of hisbonenus (contemplation) designed to break through timtum halev, the dullness and insensitivity of the heart. These contemplations deliberately bring a person to a sense of lowliness and a broken heart. About this the Alter Rebbe now says: "לא יחוש" ("he should not be concerned") - there is no reason to be alarmed by it.
At first glance this needs explaining. Why should one not be concerned? This seems to be the very opposite of everything chassidus stands for. Chassidus demands vitality, joy and uplift, and here we are leading a person with his eyes wide open straight into a world of sadness.
Sadness comes from kelipas nogah:
The Alter Rebbe first lays down a principle: "ותדע שהעצבות היא מצד קליפת נוגה ולא מצד הקדושה" ("know that atzvus, sadness, comes from the side of kelipas nogah and not from the side of holiness"). In kedushah there is no sadness at all; sadness comes from the world of kelipah. Not, however, from the three lower kelipos, which are absolute evil, but from kelipas nogah, the intermediate kelipah, which is a mixture of good and evil. It contains a "ra she'benogah" and a "tov she'benogah," but even the good within nogah is not holiness; it is still kelipah. So when a person examines his spiritual state and takes an honest accounting that leads him to conclusions of sadness, even though this is the "good of nogah," it is still not the side of holiness.
For on the side of holiness it is written "עוז וחדוה במקומו" ("strength and gladness are in His place") - in kedushah there is nothing but gladness and joy. And likewise, "אין השכינה שורה אלא מתוך שמחה" ("the Shechinah rests only out of joy"), "וכן לדבר הלכה" ("and so too for a matter of halachah"). Everything connected with holiness has to be done with joy: davening with joy, learning with joy, the resting of the Shechinah with joy.
And even when the sadness comes "ממילי דשמיא" ("from matters of Heaven"), from contemplating spiritual matters and one's own spiritual condition, and not from some practical problem, it is still only "good of nogah" and not kedushah.
The Alter Rebbe sharpens the question further: "ולכן כתב האר"י ז"ל שאפילו דאגת העוונות אינה ראויה כי אם בשעת הווידוי" ("therefore the Arizal wrote that even distress over one's sins is appropriate only at the time of confession"). There are set times for viduy: in Krias Shema at bedtime, at tikkun chatzos, during the Ten Days of Teshuvah and on Yom Kippur. Then it is fitting for a person to be pained by his sins. But not during davening and not during Torah study, which must be filled with joy, and specifically with the joy that comes from the side of holiness.
If so, we are left with a large question mark. How can the Alter Rebbe lead us, in chapters 29 and 30, to conclusions that would seem to bring a person straight into sadness?
The answer, in stages:
The first stage: For the first few minutes a person may indeed be in genuine atzvus, in a state of depression and collapse. That brief period is not a disaster, and it even serves a purpose.
The second stage: Afterwards he lifts himself out of the depression and moves from the level of atzvus to the level of merirus, bitterness.
In the lines ahead we will see what the first stage is and what its benefit is, how one passes over to the second stage, and what exactly distinguishes atzvus from merirus. From this it will become clear that it is not so terrible if at certain moments a person finds himself in this state.
And this does not contradict chapters 26 to 28:
What was explained in chapters 26, 27 and 28, that sadness is ruled out entirely, is not a real contradiction to what is said here. There the Alter Rebbe was stating a general headline: atzvus is disqualified, and one should not come near it, chas veshalom. Here we are speaking of a person who has run into an actual problem, timtum halev, and he has to solve it. If the only available solution runs through sadness, he has no choice.
It is like a person who, lo aleinu, falls ill and needs antibiotics. The antibiotic itself is a kind of small dose of illness; a healthy person who takes it is in effect putting himself into a sickbed. But someone who is in that situation has no choice, and for a limited time, ten days, a week, he takes it. It is a solution for a time of pressing need, when there is no other way.
As we mentioned, the two forms of contemplation differ from one another: the hisbonenus of chapter 29 operates in the world of hidden evil, while the hisbonenus of chapter 30 deals with revealed evil. Now let us see what the benefit of this approach is.
"לאכפיא לסטרא אחרא במינה ובדוגמתה":
Despite everything we know about sadness being disqualified, "כך היא המידה" ("such is the way it works") - this is the order of things and there is no alternative. In order to break the yetzer hara and subdue the sitra achra, it must be done "במינה ובדוגמתה" ("with its own kind and with something of its own sort"). In the language we used: antibiotics, taking a small amount of the illness and attacking the illness with that very thing. The problem of timtum halev is heaviness, numbness and a closed heart, all of which come from the side of evil. Therefore one must take something from that very same world, and with the right dosage and the right guidance one can use it to attack and break through that very numbness.
But why does the Alter Rebbe use two expressions, "bemineh" and also "ubedugmoso"?
"במינה" - literally the same kind, like with like.
"בדוגמתה" - something resembling it, but not precisely the same thing.
The two expressions correspond to the two chapters and the two forms of contemplation we mentioned, "nemichas ruach" (lowliness of spirit) and "lev nishbar" (a broken heart):
Chapter 30 - "bemineh": There a person is told explicitly that he is in a lowly state and that he is not standing up to the tests he faces. That is contemplation of revealed evil, where a person looks directly at the very thing that is causing his fall and his brokenness.
Chapter 29 - "bedugmoso": There we do not tell a person to look in the mirror and see how bad and how low he is. We speak with him about hidden evil: that his soul, if it is capable of sinning at all, is already in a certain condition. This is a level at which the sadness is not nearly as tangible, because we are not dealing with revealed evil but with concealed evil.
Two illustrations from Chazal:
The first: "מיניה וביה אבא ניזיל ביה נרגא" ("from the forest itself comes the handle for the axe"). The Gemara in Sanhedrin asks why specifically the prophet Ovadiah was chosen to prophesy about Edom ("the vision of Ovadiah... so says Hashem Elokim to Edom"), and gives two answers. In the second, Efrayim Miksha'ah, the disciple of Rabbi Meir, says in his teacher's name that Ovadiah was a convert who came from Edom, and about this the popular saying goes: "mineh u'veh abba neizil beh nargah." A man who wants to chop down the trees of the forest takes an iron axe, but he must fit it with a wooden handle, so the tree itself is what helps him fell the tree. So too, to cut down Edom, they are cut down through a convert who came from Edom.
And so it is in our case. One who wants to break the numbness of the yetzer hara and crush it should take something from the yetzer hara itself. The feeling of sadness ordinarily comes from the yetzer hara, and it is a symbol of lowliness, but there is no choice: with that very same thing one chops down the tree.
The second illustration: "פגע בו כיוצא בו" ("one like him struck him"). The Gemara in Shabbos discusses whether one may kill dangerous creatures such as snakes and scorpions on Shabbos, and relates that once a snake fell into the beis midrash and one of those present stood up and killed it. Rebbi, who was there, commented: "paga bo kayotzei bo." The Gemara debates whether Rebbi meant this as criticism of the one who killed it, that he is like the snake, or as praise, that the snake came to kill and the man did to the snake exactly what the snake intended to do. In any case, this is the meaning of the phrase: the snake was a pursuer, and the one who came to kill it also became a pursuer. The pursuer struck the pursuer, "paga bo kayotzei bo."
To summarize: In this section we learned that one need not be concerned about the sadness that may follow the contemplation of chapters 29 and 30. True, sadness comes from kelipas nogah and not from the side of holiness, where "oz vechedvah bimkomo" and "the Shechinah rests only out of joy," and the Arizal wrote that distress over one's sins is appropriate only at the time of viduy and not during davening or Torah study. But when a person is confronted with an actual problem of timtum halev, there is no alternative but to take a small dose of the illness itself in order to cure it: "to subdue the sitra achra bemineh u'vedugmoso," chapter 30 through revealed evil ("bemineh") and chapter 29 through hidden evil ("bedugmoso"), as in the two teachings of Chazal, "mineh u'veh abba leizil beh nargah" and "paga bo kayotzei bo."
In the next section we will take up the benefit of the first stage, the transition to the second stage, and the precise difference between atzvus and merirus.