In the previous section we looked at the portrait of the beinoni and the tzaddik, and at the way the Tanya goes about defining the essential nature of the Jewish soul. Now we go deeper into the oath that the soul is made to swear before it comes down into the world, and into the great difficulty hidden in the continuation of that oath.
The wording of the oath:
The word "משביעים" ("they administer an oath") carries several meanings at once: it is related to shevuah (an oath), to sova (satiety) and to sheva (seven). There is a hint here that the special strengths the soul receives while it is clothed in a body, the strengths by which it manages to withstand every test of this world, come from the levels of chayah and yechidah, from the "seven," for these are the makkifim, the encompassing powers of the soul.
Now let us turn to understanding what this oath actually is:
"תהי צדיק ואל תהי רשע" ("Be a tzaddik and do not be a rasha"), that is the main body of the oath. As for the continuation, "ואפילו כל העולם כולו אומרים לך צדיק אתה, היה בעיניך כרשע" ("and even if the entire world tells you that you are a tzaddik, be in your own eyes like a rasha"), two explanations have been offered:
The sentence is part of the oath itself.
The oath itself is only "be a tzaddik and do not be a rasha," in the sense of "turn away from evil and do good," to do the positive things and to keep away from the negative ones. The additional sentence is given as a source of strength and as good advice, an addition that is not part of the oath proper.
The Alter Rebbe here addresses mainly the second half, "ואפילו כל העולם כולו אומרים לך צדיק אתה, היה בעיניך כרשע", because that is where the difficulty lies.
To appreciate this, we first have to stress that the Alter Rebbe's purpose in his sefer is not to gather midrashim and gemaras in order to raise questions and debate them, the way books do that collect difficulties and contradictions and then propose resolutions. The purpose of the Tanya is to explain and to illuminate the inner life of the soul, which is why it is called the book of beinonim: it comes to explain what a beinoni is and what the soul of a Jew is.
In order to lead the student toward an understanding of the soul, the Alter Rebbe opens with these sources, aiming at a single conclusion: the familiar categories of tzaddik, rasha and beinoni, as they appear in various places in the Gemara, present only an external, surface layer of understanding. The Alter Rebbe will prove that if we use these definitions in their external sense we will be left with contradictions and difficulties in making sense of the gemaras themselves. What is needed is a deeper, more inward view, and that will serve as the general introduction to understanding the soul.
The oath that is not forgotten:
The Alter Rebbe's first question: before the soul descends into the world, it is made to swear. But before that, it is taught the entire Torah. And the Gemara adds that the moment the child emerges into the air of the world, an angel comes and strikes him on his mouth and makes him forget everything he learned.
If we look carefully at the language of the Gemara, we see that the order is this: he is taught the whole Torah, then he is made to forget it, and only afterwards is he made to swear. In other words, the oath is not erased from the soul. And the reason is that an oath is something a person is meant to live with and to remember at every single moment.
If so, the oath and its continuation are something a person must keep before his eyes day after day: even if the entire world tells you that you are a tzaddik, be in your own eyes like a rasha. And on this the Alter Rebbe asks, "וצריך להבין" ("and this requires understanding"), for it is hard to live with such a sentence permanently before one's eyes. The difficulty is twofold: first, it contradicts another directive of our Sages in the Mishnah; second, it contradicts the healthy human feeling that a living, whole person needs. Let us see it in his own words.
The first difficulty: a contradiction from the Mishnah
After "וצריך להבין" the Alter Rebbe continues with the words "דהא תנן", for we have learned in the Mishnah (Avos, chapter 2): "ואל תהי רשע בפני עצמך" ("and do not be wicked in your own estimation").
The Rambam explains that a person should never look at himself as a rasha and should never think of himself as one. If so, the directive every person received as he came into the world, "be in your own eyes like a rasha," contradicts the words of the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos. How can the two directives be reconciled?
The Alter Rebbe is not satisfied with this question alone, because not everyone explains the Mishnah that way. Some explain that it means that when a person is by himself, alone and unseen, he should not behave like a rasha. According to this reading, the Mishnah is speaking about something else entirely, and there is no contradiction at all to "be in your own eyes like a rasha."
The second difficulty: a contradiction to healthy feeling
So the Alter Rebbe brings a further question: even if we explain the Mishnah in Avos in a way that does not contradict the beraisa in Maseches Niddah, a question of simple logic remains. How can a person live with the feeling that he is a rasha? A child and an adult alike need to train themselves always to be joyful, to feel good and to believe in their own abilities. A person has to recognize his own strengths and see himself as capable of meeting the tasks placed upon him, and not think, "I am worth nothing." How, then, can a person be told to feel all the time that he is a rasha?
There are two sides to this coin. The first: if he genuinely feels this way, he will feel bad all the time and his spirits will be low, and that will bring about a decline in his avodas Hashem.
And this is the Alter Rebbe's question: "וגם" ("and furthermore"), it is not understood how one can say to a Jew who is now descending into the world that his provision for the journey is to remember always "be in your own eyes like a rasha," for if he actually carries out this directive, "יירע לבבו" ("his heart will be pained"), and he will be sad.
The problem with sadness is that a person whose spirits are low cannot serve Hashem with joy and with a good heart. Joy is a cornerstone of avodas Hashem, and there is no avodas Hashem without it.
[And in our generation in particular, the yetzer hara seeks to bring us down precisely in the matter of joy. In chapter 26 the Alter Rebbe brings the example of two people wrestling with each other: the winner is not the one with the stronger weapon, nor the one with more soldiers, but the one whose morale is higher. The one who holds on to his goal, even if he is weak and small, if he is not shaken by falls and losses and keeps holding on to his goal, in the end he is the one who wins.]
So too in avodas Hashem: a person who wants to serve Hashem and not to fall in the daily tests and enticements of the yetzer must be in a state of joy, and without it he will stumble and fall again and again. It is therefore impossible that a Jew should be told that his provision for the journey through this world is to feel like a rasha. "Be a tzaddik" and "be sad" do not go together, and this contradicts the first half of the oath, "be a tzaddik."
Now for the other side of the coin. Suppose a person says he has a solution that will let him fulfill both directives, to feel himself a rasha and at the same time to train himself to be joyful, so that the feeling will not affect his mood. That is extremely dangerous. For a person who says to himself, "I am a rasha, but it does not bother me and I can live with it," will truly become a rasha, and when he actually stumbles and falls he will tell himself: "After all, I am a rasha and I live with that all the time, so what of it?"
And this is the continuation of the Alter Rebbe's words: "ואם לא יהיה רע לבבו כלל מזה" ("and if his heart will not be pained by this at all"), then "יכול לבוא לידי קלות חס ושלום" ("he may come to levity, God forbid"), meaning that he will become light-headed and frivolous.
So it is one of the two: if he has a conscience and it matters to him, he will be sad; and if he trains himself not to care, he will genuinely become that way.
The broken heart of a baal teshuvah:
A comment is in order here. On the face of it, instead of raising the difficulty on the Gemara in Maseches Niddah, the Alter Rebbe could have raised it on every baal teshuvah. A person who has sinned and one fine day decides to return, because he suddenly realizes that his deeds are not what they should be and tells himself, "I have to change my ways," what does he feel while making this accounting of his soul? Naturally his heart is pained and his spirits are low. If so, every baal teshuvah is in low spirits, and by the above this is not a good situation: either he is broken and unhappy, or he does not care, and these two feelings cannot be held together in one heart. So the Alter Rebbe could have raised his question from any baal teshuvah?
But the explanation is simple: the broken heart of a person who has sinned and now wishes to return is a good thing. On the contrary, "לב נשבר ונדכה אלוקים לא תבזה" ("a broken and crushed heart, God, You will not despise"), this is a brokenness out of which he will rise to greater heights, to regret and to a greater wholeness. In Maseches Niddah, however, the directive is not being given to a person who has sinned and needs to feel broken over his sins, where the brokenness would be in place. And so the Alter Rebbe's question from Maseches Niddah is well taken.
In summary: in this section we learned about the oath administered to the soul before it goes out into the world, "be a tzaddik and do not be a rasha," and mainly about the difficulty in the continuation, "be in your own eyes like a rasha." We saw that the Alter Rebbe rejects the simple reading for two reasons: it contradicts the Mishnah "and do not be wicked in your own estimation," and it contradicts healthy human feeling, since feeling oneself a rasha leads either to sadness, which cancels the joy that is indispensable to avodas Hashem, or, God forbid, to frivolousness. We also learned the distinction between the broken heart of a baal teshuvah, which is a good and uplifting thing, and the directive in Maseches Niddah, which is not speaking about a person who has sinned.
In the next section we will deal with the teaching of the Gemara as an illustration: how the words of Chazal serve as a means to illustrate and to lead us toward the inner understanding of what the soul truly is.