In the previous section we dealt with teshuvah me'ahavah, returning to G-d out of love. Here the Alter Rebbe is speaking of a love and a longing so complete that the whole of the person, his entire heart, all his running, all his thirst and all his yearning, are given over to cleaving to Him, in the words of the verse: "כארץ עייפה וציה", "like a parched and thirsty land."
"כארץ עייפה וציה", "like a parched and thirsty land":
"Tziyah" means a place of dryness. The letter kaf at the beginning of the word is the kaf of comparison, that is, this is a mashal: a person found in a dry desert where there is no water, his thirst is not a normal, reasonable thirst at all, and he can find no rest for himself. Compare him to someone carrying a water container on his back, who can walk for hours without feeling any need to drink, since "pas besalo", his bread is in his basket. Such is the intensity of the thirst of a person returning to his Creator.
It is worth being precise about this: two men left the same house at the same moment, drank the same amount of water, and set out on their way at one and the same time. One walked through the city and the other through the desert. For the one walking in the desert, thirst overtakes him quickly and in a way that is anything but ordinary, while the one walking through the city feels no thirst at all. What, then, produces the thirst? Not the physical lack, since both of them drank the same amount, but the surrounding conditions: the desert, the desolation and the dryness are what awaken the thirst.
And so it is in the nimshal, in the words of the Alter Rebbe: "להיות כי עד הנה הייתה נפשו בארץ ציה וצלמוות, היא הסטרא אחרא, ורחוקה מאור פני ה' בתכלית, ולזאת צמאה נפשו", "because until now his soul was in a parched land and in the shadow of death, which is the sitra achra, utterly far from the light of G-d's countenance, and therefore his soul thirsted." The person being spoken of here was sunk deep in the three impure kelipos, inside actual evil, to the point of zedonos, deliberate sins. When the right moment arrived and he awoke to a genuine teshuvah, and grasped how deep the desolation was in which he had been living, there awoke in him a thirst and a longing that are not ordinary at all: "ביתר עז מצמאון נפשות הצדיקים", "with greater intensity than the thirst of the souls of the tzaddikim." The tzaddik, who is always found in the place of good, simply never has the opportunity to feel a thirst like this.
It emerges that the zedonos themselves are what brought him to this thirst and to this great love. What is a zechus, a merit? A mitzvah. And the word mitzvah comes from "tzavta", togetherness, connection, because it is the mitzvah that connects a person to the Holy One, blessed be He. And here something remarkable happened: it was the deliberate sin that brought him to thirst and to connection, and it was that which brought him to a genuine teshuvah. For this reason the zedonos function as actual merits, and "his deliberate sins became for him like merits."
Does a sin then draw a mitzvah after it?
On the face of it there is something here that is not clear: does the sin itself give birth to a mitzvah? In Pirkei Avos it says explicitly, "one sin draws another sin after it," and it does not say that a sin draws a mitzvah after it. It would hardly be just that a person should commit a sin and out of it be awakened to fulfill a mitzvah.
But the intention is not that the sins are what moved him to return. The intention is the situation as it stands: the person committed many sins, and now his soul has awakened to return in teshuvah. The moment he grasped the depths of the pit in which he had been living, the force of his flight from there became incomparably greater.
By way of a mashal: someone is walking along innocently, and suddenly it becomes clear to him that the place is full of snakes and scorpions. He immediately breaks into a run, while his friend, who knows nothing about it, strolls on calmly. One who is unaware of the seriousness of his situation is not aroused at all, and he can go on sinning without ever awakening to teshuvah. It is not the sin that awakens him; it is the recognition of how deep his situation is that gives his flight its power.
A story from a yechidus with the Rebbe:
A Jew came in to the Rebbe with a question about mivtza tefillin, the tefillin campaign: how can you stand in the street and put tefillin on a Jew who has no idea where he is standing? First you have to teach him, guide him and bring him close, and only afterwards do mitzvos with him. On the face of it, this is like taking a naked man and tying a necktie on him... A naked man with a necktie looks utterly ridiculous, for he is naked of mitzvos and has nothing. First you have to clothe him and draw him close to these matters.
The Rebbe answered him that sometimes it is precisely when you tie a necktie on a person that he suddenly grasps that he is naked. Until now he did not know, and now he wonders: what is going on here?... From this it emerges that it was the mitzvah that awakened him to recognize his nakedness, and one who grasps his situation flees from it with far greater force than anyone else. The mitzvah awakens him, and the recognition of how deep his situation is gives his flight from evil its strength.
"In the place where baalei teshuvah stand":
On this foundation the Alter Rebbe continues and cites the saying of our Sages: "במקום שבעלי תשובה עומדים אין צדיקים גמורים יכולים לעמוד", "in the place where baalei teshuvah stand, complete tzaddikim cannot stand." It is worth pointing out that the source of this statement is in Maseches Berachos, and there it is not brought as something straightforward but as a dispute: in the opinion of Rabbi Yochanan, no one comes close to the level of the complete tzaddikim, while Rabbi Abahu establishes that in the place where baalei teshuvah stand, complete tzaddikim cannot stand. Yet the Alter Rebbe brings it plainly, and not as the opinion of a single sage.
On this the Rebbe brings the words of the holy Shelah, that there is no dispute here at all; rather, each one is speaking about a different level, and everything depends on the level of the teshuvah: in teshuvah out of fear, the tzaddik is loftier than the one who returns. But in teshuvah out of love and out of thirst, which is what is being spoken of here, the one who returns is loftier than the tzaddik.
Since the Alter Rebbe in Tanya is dealing with teshuvah out of love, he can bring the language of the Gemara plainly, for on this level everyone agrees. More than that: the Rambam in Hilchos Teshuvah brings the halachah plainly, without distinctions and without conditions, and writes that everyone who returns in teshuvah stands on a higher level than the tzaddikim. And he gives the reason for this: the baal teshuvah labors and conquers his yetzer, whereas the tzaddik has no such struggles at all.
The conclusion of all this is that in any teshuvah whatsoever there is something of "his deliberate sins became for him like merits" and something of "in the place where baalei teshuvah stand." The Alter Rebbe here is speaking of the very highest level, of the perfection of teshuvah out of love, and that is why he added the precise word: his deliberate sins became for him like merits literally, even though there also exist levels lower than this.
In passing, a story told about the Rebbe Rashab:
The Rebbe Rashab, the fifth Rebbe in the Chabad line, was once traveling in a carriage with chassidim during a harsh winter, and they came to a river. In Russia there are places where the winter freezes the rivers completely, and then one travels with horses and wagons over the ice, and the wagon drivers know in which seasons of the year there is no need to check at all. But there are seasons when the ice floes begin to thaw, and then one must check. On that journey the Rebbe asked that they check the thickness of the ice and whether the wagon could cross. One of the chassidim went at once and ran quickly back and forth across the whole stretch, and when he returned he said: "Rebbe, this is no proof, for it is written that in the place where baalei teshuvah stand, complete tzaddikim cannot stand. Perhaps I stood and did not fall through, and that is no evidence for anyone else"...
Let us return to our subject: when a person returns in a teshuvah so great that of it is said, "in the place where baalei teshuvah stand, complete tzaddikim cannot stand," and he reaches teshuvah out of a great love, it is of this level that it is said that his deliberate sins became for him like merits. And as the Alter Rebbe sums up everything said here in a single phrase: "הואיל ועל ידי זה בא לאהבה רבה זו", "since through this he came to this great love": the zedonos, the transgressions, the thirst and the desolation are precisely what brought him to this great love.
In summary: in this section we learned the mashal of "a parched and thirsty land," from which it emerges that thirst comes from the surrounding conditions and not from the lack itself, and so too a person's earlier distance from the light of G-d's countenance is what gives birth in him to a thirst more intense than the thirst of the tzaddikim. We clarified that the sin does not draw a mitzvah after it, for "one sin draws another sin after it"; rather, the recognition of how deep the situation is gives the flight from evil its power, as in the mashal of the snakes and scorpions, and as in the Rebbe's answer about the necktie. We also examined the statement "in the place where baalei teshuvah stand," the explanation of the Shelah that there is no dispute but a distinction between teshuvah out of fear and teshuvah out of love, and the language of the Rambam; and we learned that the Alter Rebbe is speaking of the matter in its perfection, which is why he was precise and said "like merits literally."
In the next section we will continue learning the Alter Rebbe's words further on in chapter 7.