In the previous section we learned about the oath that the neshama is made to swear before it descends into this world, and about the Gemara's call to a person to conduct himself in the manner of 'היה בעיניך כרשע' ('be a rasha in your own eyes'). In this section we will dig into what that directive actually means, and we will see how the Alter Rebbe opens the chapter with an illustration drawn from the Gemara.
Notice that the Gemara's instruction is addressed to every single person, regardless of whether he has actually done anything wrong. Taken at face value, it would seem to mean that every father is obligated to remind his son from childhood, every single morning: 'Remember, you are a rasha.' But what kind of child grows up hearing that all day long? Educators today speak of the 'self-fulfilling prophecy,' which only sharpens the question: what becomes of a person who is told his whole life, 'be a rasha in your own eyes'?
The Alter Rebbe's question runs like this:
It has to be one of two things: either a person will be depressed for the rest of his life, or he will become reckless and light-headed for the rest of his life. Either way, no healthy person grows up that way. So what, then, is the true meaning of the Gemara's words 'היה בעיניך כרשע'?
The Alter Rebbe continues with the words 'אך העניין' ('but the matter is as follows'). Note the style: he does not write 'and one may answer such and such.' He writes 'but the matter is.' In Tanya, and in chassidus generally, the goal is to clarify a matter and to reveal a subject, and the way the subject gets served to us is through a question: a quotation is brought, a source or a Gemara, a question is asked, and that question is the doorway into the topic the learner is being led toward.
"We find in the Gemara five categories":
The Alter Rebbe writes: 'אך העניין כי הנה מצינו בגמרא ה' חלוקות' ('but the matter is that we find in the Gemara five categories'), five distinct levels among people. Why does he say 'מצינו', 'we find,' rather than 'איתא בגמרא', 'it is stated in the Gemara'? Because there is no single place in the Gemara where all five levels appear together. The Alter Rebbe gathers them from two different places, and therefore the language is 'we find,' meaning: we located them.
Both sources are in the same tractate, Berachos, but they are far apart from each other:
Daf 7a: The Gemara brings Moshe Rabbeinu's question to the Holy One, Blessed be He: 'ריבונו של עולם, מפני מה יש צדיק וטוב לו, ויש צדיק ורע לו, יש רשע וטוב לו, ויש רשע ורע לו' ('Master of the world, why is there a tzaddik who has it good, and a tzaddik who has it bad, a rasha who has it good, and a rasha who has it bad?'). On its own, this passage yields only four categories; one is missing.
Daf 61b (the end of the ninth chapter): A beraisa in which Rabbi Yosi HaGelili states that there are tzaddikim, reshaim and beinonim, and says, as the Alter Rebbe will quote further on, 'צדיקים יצר טוב שופטן, רשעים יצר הרע שופטן, בינוניים זה וזה שופטן' ('the tzaddikim are judged by the good inclination, the reshaim are judged by the evil inclination, and the beinonim are judged by both').
So the concept of 'beinoni' does exist in the Gemara, only it does not appear at the beginning of Berachos but at its end. Join the two passages together and you have five categories:
A tzaddik who has it good.
A tzaddik who has it bad.
A rasha who has it good.
A rasha who has it bad.
A beinoni.
The simple reading is this: a tzaddik who has it good means life goes well for him; a tzaddik who has it bad means life goes badly for him; and the same for the rasha, life goes well or badly. But if we stop at that explanation, we do not really have five categories of substance. It is entirely possible that the tzaddik who has it good and the tzaddik who has it bad are two men on exactly the same spiritual level, and it just happens that one has an easy life and the other a hard one, which is no difference in level at all. The same applies to the rasha who has it good and the rasha who has it bad. By that reading we are left with three categories only: tzaddikim, reshaim and beinonim. So why does the Alter Rebbe say five?
To answer that, we have to continue with the Gemara at the beginning of Berachos. After Moshe Rabbeinu's question comes the answer, and the Gemara explains: 'צדיק וטוב לו - צדיק גמור; צדיק ורע לו - צדיק שאינו גמור' ('a tzaddik who has it good is a complete tzaddik; a tzaddik who has it bad is a tzaddik who is not complete'). This does not cancel the earlier understanding that 'good' and 'bad' refer to one's life circumstances. It explains why he has it good: because he is a complete tzaddik; and why the other has it bad: because he is a tzaddik who is not complete. If so, these are not two people on the same level of tzidkus at all, and this really is a separate category. The same goes for the rasha: a rasha who has it good is a rasha who is not complete, and that is precisely why he has it good.
Who is a 'complete' tzaddik? One who lives in the fullness of good. And a complete rasha? One who lives in the fullness of evil. The precise definitions will emerge later in Tanya, but the point of 'complete' and 'not complete' is the degree of completeness of the good or of the evil. So we do indeed have five levels here: 'a tzaddik who has it good' and 'a tzaddik who has it bad' are two separate categories, because the Gemara explained that one is complete and the other is not, and the same with the rasha. And the difference between 'has it good' and 'has it bad' at this stage is a matter of one's life going well or badly, with the Gemara supplying the reason: this one (the tzaddik) is complete in the fullness of good, while that one (the tzaddik) who is not complete does not live in the fullness of good.
What the Raya Mehemna adds:
Here a further explanation enters: 'וברעיא מהימנא פרשת משפטים פירש' ('and in the Raya Mehemna, parshas Mishpatim, it is explained'). The Raya Mehemna, 'the faithful shepherd,' is a commentary found within the Zohar and attributed to Moshe Rabbeinu. There, in parshas Mishpatim, we find: 'צדיק ורע לו - שהרע שבו כפוף לטוב' ('a tzaddik who has it bad is one whose evil is subordinate to his good'). With this the Raya Mehemna reveals a fascinating point about the inner dimension of the matter. Do not imagine that 'has it good' and 'has it bad' is merely a physical description, a financial or bodily situation, while 'complete' and 'not complete' describe the spiritual state. Rather, 'has it good' and 'has it bad' are themselves descriptions of a spiritual state.
What, then, is the difference between the two sets of terms? It is known that every person has a good side and an evil side within him. 'Has it good' and 'has it bad' describe what is happening with the yetzarim, the inclinations, while 'complete' and 'not complete' describe the G-dly side of him:
'A tzaddik who has it good' has no yetzer hara at all. The good in him has taken over everything, and consequently his G-dly side is complete.
'A tzaddik who has it bad,' who is not complete, involves two statements. 'Has it bad' means that a small amount of yetzer hara still remains in him, because the G-dly side of him is not complete. But that yetzer hara is not active; were it active, as we will see further on, he would be considered a rasha. Then why is he called a tzaddik at all? Because the evil in him is subordinate to the good, in the words of the Raya Mehemna: 'צדיק ורע לו - שהרע שבו כפוף לטוב' ('a tzaddik who has it bad, whose evil is subordinate to his good'). There is a bit of evil inside, but it has no capacity to express itself in any form or in any direction.
Let us sum up what we have so far. The Alter Rebbe has taught us that there are five levels, and with the addition of the Raya Mehemna it became clear that these five categories are five entirely distinct spiritual levels found among the Jewish people: two levels of tzidkus, two levels of rishus, and the middle station of the beinoni. But until now we have heard only the words; the definitions themselves are still not understood.
And what proves that the definitions are still not understood? Although the matter looks simple enough, good, evil, a little, a lot, as though we could already draw up a neat chart with everything in its place, the Alter Rebbe immediately brings a further piece from the very same passage in the Gemara he quoted before, as if to say: here are two more lines from which it will become clear that the definitions have not really been grasped. In the Gemara at the end of chapter nine of Berachos, right after the terms tzaddikim, reshaim and beinonim, it says: 'צדיקים יצר טוב שופטן, רשעים יצר הרע שופטן, בינוניים זה וזה שופטן' ('the tzaddikim are judged by the good inclination, the reshaim are judged by the evil inclination, and the beinonim are judged by both'). What does 'judged by' mean? The question will be raised at once, and we will come to it, with G-d's help, in the coming chapters.
"Someone like me is a beinoni":
What jumps off the page here is the next line: 'אמר רבה' ('Rabbah said'). Although the common editions of the Gemara read 'Rava' with an alef, it is well known that Rava and Rabbah were two different people. Rabbah, whose full name was Rabbah bar Nachmani, was the teacher of Abaye and Rava, and they were his students. The Alter Rebbe brings the correct version: 'Rabbah said.' Rabbah turned to the students sitting in the beis midrash and explained to them the concepts of tzaddikim, beinonim and reshaim. The original statement was said by Rabbi Yosi HaGelili, and immediately afterward Rabbah says to his students: 'כגון אנא בינוני' ('someone like me is a beinoni').
Here too something interesting: the common editions of the Gemara read 'כגון אנן בינונים' ('people like us are beinonim'), while the Alter Rebbe writes 'כגון אנא בינוני' in the singular, which is how Rashi understands it there. Rabbah is telling his students: we are learning right now about the categories of tzaddikim, reshaim and beinonim; take me, for instance, I am a beinoni. Here is a good teacher who wants to make the concepts real for his students. An illustration is one of the best tools there is for conveying a subject, and so he illustrates it with himself.
In the next lesson we will learn about the question that arises out of this very sentence.
In summary: in this section we learned how the Alter Rebbe opens the chapter with an illustration from the Gemara. By combining two places in Berachos we arrive at five categories of people: a tzaddik who has it good, a tzaddik who has it bad, a rasha who has it good, a rasha who has it bad, and the beinoni. With the Gemara's own answer ('complete' and 'not complete') and the addition of the Raya Mehemna, it emerged that these are five genuinely distinct spiritual levels, and that 'has it good' and 'has it bad' refer to the yetzarim while 'complete' and 'not complete' refer to the G-dly side of the person. And we saw how Rabbah brings the concept to life by pointing at himself: 'someone like me is a beinoni.'
In the next section we will turn to the definition of the beinoni. We will go deeper into the term 'beinoni' as Tanya defines it, and see how radically that definition differs from the simple meaning we are all used to.