In the previous section we saw the absolute love for G-dliness that fills the tzaddik gamur, the complete tzaddik. From this a fundamental principle emerges: as long as something is still missing in a person's love for G-dliness, as long as it has not reached its maximum, that is a sign that some grip of the opposite side still remains in him. For these two things are "זה לעומת זה" ("this against that"): they stand face to face, and they rise and fall together.
"תכלית שנאה שנאתים" - "With a perfect hatred I hate them":
This principle is stated explicitly by Dovid HaMelech in Tehillim: "תכלית שנאה שנאתים לאויבים היו לי" ("With a perfect hatred I hate them; they have become enemies to me"). Dovid HaMelech hates all the kelipos and the sitra achra with an absolute hatred, and he relates to the forces of evil as literal enemies. And immediately afterward he says: "חקרני... ודע לבבי" ("Search me... and know my heart"). In other words: examine and see why I hate evil so utterly. Because my heart is filled with a perfect love for G-dliness.
The two are therefore bound up with one another: in the exact measure of the greatness of one's love for Hashem, so is the measure of the greatness of one's hatred for the sitra achra and one's utter revulsion from evil. For revulsion is the precise opposite of love, just as hatred is.
We recognize this from a physical parable, where the concepts are closer to our grasp. A person loves his body with a great love, and therefore anything that threatens his life arouses in him complete revulsion. He loves whatever benefits him and strengthens him, whether the pleasure is momentary or lasting, while something he is convinced is destroying him will not draw from him any mechanism of self destruction, since that is the way of a fool. It turns out that one who loves his body hates whatever harms it.
The tzaddik gamur:
In the tzaddik gamur, love of Hashem is absolute, and it is called "ahavah b'taanugim," love in delights. He also possesses the level of "ahavah k'mayim," love like water: a natural, simple love of Hashem, like an inborn instinct. And he loses nothing thereby of the higher merit of a G-dly love that comes from contemplating the greatness of the Creator. Both qualities exist in him together, in the sense of "אחריך נרוצה" ("after You we will run").
This level is exceedingly rare. Out of millions of Jews there are only a handful in a generation. Even so, we study it, for two reasons. First, the time will come when the Holy One, blessed be He, will burn evil out of the world, and all of the Jewish people will rise to this level, and "ועמך כולם צדיקים" ("and Your people are all righteous") will be fulfilled. Second, every single person is asked to develop, in the measure and manner suited to him, a certain revulsion from evil.
A parable: imagine a person standing in the middle of Kol Nidrei on Yom Kippur, at the very peak of his fervor, and someone sets a delicious dish before him. Not only does it not interest him, he is repelled by it entirely and does not even want to look at it, because at this moment he is immersed in the height of kedushah. For the tzaddik gamur, this state is constant: throughout all twenty four hours of the day and across all one hundred and twenty years of his life, anything not connected to kedushah arouses in him complete revulsion.
As we will see further on, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai testified about himself that he stood at this level of a tzaddik gamur. And it is told of the Rebbe Rashab, the fifth Rebbe in the Chabad line, that he said that from the day of his bar mitzvah he had trained his physical body such that anything not in accordance with Shulchan Aruch simply could not be done by him: something that contradicted a clause, or even a comma, in Shulchan Aruch he was utterly incapable of doing. These are souls born to be on this level.
It is worth noting, regarding the thirty six tzaddikim in whose merit the world endures, that further on we will discuss the various levels among tzaddikim and we will see that their number is in fact larger still, and that all of them are in the category of a tzaddik who is not complete. The verse, however, deliberately speaks in the singular: "וצדיק יסוד עולם" ("and a tzaddik is the foundation of the world"), and not "tzaddikim are the foundation of the world."
The tzaddik she'eino gamur, the tzaddik who is not complete:
Who is the tzaddik who is not complete, and at what stage is he standing? The Alter Rebbe defines him: "שאינו שונא הסטרא אחרא בתכלית השנאה, ולכן אינו מואס גם כן ברע בתכלית" ("he does not hate the sitra achra with an absolute hatred, and therefore he also does not utterly abhor evil"). This does not mean, G-d forbid, that he has a craving for evil. The evil that remains in him is so slight that it is hard even to detect, and he himself is entirely unaware that it exists. The examination is made from the other side: since his love of Hashem has not reached the level of ahavah b'taanugim, he understands that some grip still remains within him. It is like a drop of milk that fell into a meat pot: there is no way to identify it or see it, yet it is there.
And as long as the hatred and the revulsion are not absolute, you must conclude that a trace of love and pleasure for worldly things remains, "ולא הוסרו הבגדים הצואים לגמרי מכל וכל, ולכן לא נהפך לטוב ממש" ("and the soiled garments have not been entirely removed, and therefore he has not been transformed into actual good"). Had the evil been nullified completely, he would be a tzaddik gamur, and his love of Hashem would be at the highest level of ahavah b'taanugim. And since he knows that he has not reached that level, it follows on its own that his revulsion from evil is not absolute either, and that his yetzer hara still retains some hold in the "soiled garments."
It must be stressed again that "soiled garments" are not meant in any coarse sense. Rather, the evil is nullified by its minuteness, as something of no consequence, so slight and so small that it is considered as though it were not there. Hence his name: "צדיק ורע לו" ("a tzaddik with evil in him"). The evil exists within him, but it is subdued and nullified before the good in him. The two titles correspond to the two sides: since his nefesh haElokis has not reached its peak, he is called a tzaddik who is not complete; and since his nefesh habahamis, his animal soul, has not been fully transformed, he is called a tzaddik with evil in him. "ועל כן גם אהבתו לה' אינה בתכלית" ("and therefore his love of Hashem, too, is not absolute").
Up to here the Alter Rebbe has explained the fundamental difference between the two levels of tzaddikim: the tzaddik gamur and the tzaddik who is not complete. We need to know that such levels exist, and that even to be a tzaddik who is not complete is an exceedingly rare attainment. It is told of one of the Alter Rebbe's great chassidim that after studying Tanya he said: before I learned Tanya I was certain I was a tzaddik; now I say, if only I were a beinoni. Even to be a beinoni, an intermediate person, is no simple matter; it is a level in its own right.
Myriads of levels within the tzaddik who is not complete:
"והנה מדרגה זו מתחלקת לרבבות מדרגות" ("now, this level subdivides into myriads of levels"). The multiplicity of levels stems from two factors, and in both of them everything is measured by the intensity of the revulsion from evil and the intensity of the love for kedushah, since the two are bound to each other:
"בחינת מיעוט הרע הנשאר מאחת מארבע יסודות הרעים" ("the nature of the small measure of evil remaining from one of the four evil elements"): As we learned in the first chapter, there are four elements in the soul: fire, air, water and earth, and each of them gives birth in the nefesh habahamis to negative tendencies:
Fire - anger.
Water - cravings.
Air - frivolity and mockery.
Earth - sadness, like earth that falls downward.
In the tzaddik who is not complete a small measure of evil remains, and there are myriads of variations in this: for one, a residue remains from only a single element; for another, from two or three; and for another, from all four elements, which is a less favorable state. In one there is little and in another there is more, and so on.
The degree to which it is nullified by its minuteness: Even if only a single trait remains in him, say the trait of anger that stems from the element of fire, while all his other traits have been refined, one must still ask in what measure it remains. Active anger certainly does not exist in him, for the expressions said about a person who becomes angry do not befit a tzaddik at all; the evil is present in him only in a trace. The Alter Rebbe brings three variations by way of parable: nullification in sixty, nullification in a thousand, and nullification in ten thousand, measures familiar from halachah in certain matters, "וכיוצא בזה" ("and the like").
So the levels stretch from nullification in ten thousand down to nullification in sixty. Less than sixty and the taste of the evil is already perceptible, as in the parable of the drop of milk that fell into the pot of soup: if there are only fifty nine parts against it, the taste is already felt. At nullification in sixty the taste is no longer felt, and at nullification in a thousand it is certainly not felt at all, yet the evil is there.
Accordingly, there can be great tzaddikim who lead courts with many chassidim, and those around them call them tzaddikim, and indeed they may truly be tzaddikim, on the level of a tzaddik who is not complete, and within that very level there are myriads of gradations.
It bears emphasizing that this entire examination is inner, personal work, and no person can pass judgment on another. A tzaddik is not measured by the eyes of those around him but by the avodah of his own soul. Sometimes we see a person careful in his deeds and in his speech who never stumbles in anything, and we call him a tzaddik, while his thoughts are hidden from the eye; and if willful evil thoughts pass through them, he is in fact a rasha, for a person's eyes are sealed and he does not know what is going on in another's mind. And even if his thoughts are clean, that would still be only a beinoni, since cravings arise in his heart and he pushes them away, whereas the tzaddik is one who has already done the work on the inner layer. It is not for us to hand out grades and certificates, for this is self work, inner and of the soul.
And the Alter Rebbe concludes: "והן הן בחינת צדיקים הרבים שבכל הדורות" ("and these are the category of the many tzaddikim of every generation"). All those tzaddikim and great ones of Israel in every generation are various levels within the tzaddik who is not complete. And as the Gemara says in Maseches Sukkah: "דתמניסר אלפי צדיקי קיימי קמיה הקב"ה" ("that eighteen thousand tzaddikim stand before the Holy One, blessed be He"). These are not tzaddikim gemurim but tzaddikim who are not complete. "אך על מעלת צדיק גמור הוא שאמר רבי שמעון בר יוחאי: ראיתי בני עלייה והם מועטים" ("but about the level of the complete tzaddik, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said: I have seen the men of exalted stature, and they are few").
In summary: In this section we learned that love for G-dliness and hatred of evil are "this against that," as Dovid HaMelech said, "With a perfect hatred I hate them... search me and know my heart," and that in the measure of the greatness of the love, so is the measure of the greatness of the hatred and the revulsion. We examined the tzaddik gamur, whose love is both ahavah b'taanugim and a natural love at once, and how rare this level is; and against him, the tzaddik who is not complete, in whom a trace of love and pleasure for evil remains and whose soiled garments have not been entirely removed, which is why he is called "a tzaddik with evil in him," the evil within him being subdued and nullified. We also saw that this level subdivides into myriads of levels, both in terms of which element the residue of evil comes from and in terms of the degree to which it is nullified by its minuteness, and that these are the many tzaddikim of every generation.
In the next section we will take up Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai's words, "I have seen the men of exalted stature, and they are few," and expand on the greatness of the tzaddik gamur.