In the previous section we looked at the difference between an oved Elokim (one who serves G-d) and asher lo avado (one who has not served Him). Now let us go deeper into the foundation of the matter: the true preciousness in serving G-d is not found in whatever already comes easily and by habit, but precisely where effort and investment are demanded, in whatever goes with difficulty.
Sometimes the effort required is very small. Here is the classic example: a person is used to learning an hour every day, and he has been doing so for ten years already, sixty straight minutes of learning without a break. The moment you tell him to learn sixty-one minutes, that one extra minute, the minute that steps outside the boundary of his habit, will be harder for him than the entire hour, because the hour is already routine for him. And which is more precious? That single minute is worth more than the whole hour, because an hour done out of habit is not called avodah at all; it is simply a fixed, familiar thing. But the extra minute that he invests is worth more than everything.
With tzaddikim the avodah is of a different kind and on a different level altogether, and it does not consist of battle. Their avodah is within holiness itself, not against evil, against the yetzer, against impurity. Our Sages said that tzaddikim have no rest, not in this world and not in the World to Come: they have no rest within holiness, rising higher and higher. That is not the type of avodah we are dealing with here, which is a war against the yetzer, and we are trying to clarify what is being asked of us as beinonim (the intermediate people).
It is worth emphasizing that every person finds the point of effort in his own domain. Someone who does not yet keep mitzvos and is only now coming closer, his struggle is over the performance of the mitzvah itself. Someone who already keeps mitzvos, his struggle is whether to make the brachah with kavanah or without kavanah. In this way every single person can locate his own place of avodah.
[Some have noted that there is something of a covenant, a bris, in this avodah: a person's work, in order to reach the level of beinoni, is the removal of the "orlah" from himself, and he keeps advancing in this bris all the time.]
Let us turn to the language of the chapter: "ובזה יובן מה שכתוב 'ושבתם וראיתם בין צדיק לרשע בין עובד אלקים לאשר לא עבדו', שההפרש בין עובד אלקים לצדיק הוא שעובד הוא לשון הווה, שהוא באמצע העבודה" ("With this we can understand the verse, 'And you shall return and see the difference between a tzaddik and a rasha, between one who serves G-d and one who has not served Him.' The difference between an oved Elokim and a tzaddik is that oved is in the present tense: he is in the middle of the avodah"). And what is that avodah? "שהיא המלחמה עם היצר הרע, להתגבר עליו ולגרשו מהעיר קטנה, שלא יתלבש באברי הגוף" ("it is the war with the yetzer hara, to overpower it and drive it out of the 'small city,' so that it not clothe itself in the limbs of the body"). The "small city," as we learned, is the body. This is a war at every moment and every second: that there be no forbidden sight, no forbidden hearing, no forbidden speech. "שהוא באמת עבודה ועמל גדול להילחם בו תמיד" ("which is truly avodah and great toil, to fight it constantly"). Every person recognizes in himself how much toil and investment this takes; sometimes it seems that moving a mountain would be easier than holding oneself back in some small thing.
"והיינו הבינוני" ("and this is the beinoni"). The beinoni is in the middle of the avodah, he is an oved, one who is serving right now. "אבל הצדיק נקרא עבד ה' בשם התואר כמו שם חכם או מלך" ("but the tzaddik is called a servant of G-d as a title, like the title 'wise man' or 'king'"). When we say about a person that he is wise, we do not mean that at this very moment he is sitting and producing wisdom. He may be asleep, and nevertheless he is wise. So too a king: he does not have to be issuing decrees and orders at that moment, and he is a king as a title. This is his very identity, "שכבר נעשה חכם או מלך" ("for he has already become wise, or become a king").
"כך זה כבר עבד וגמר לגמרי עבודת המלחמה עם הרע עד כי ויגרשהו וילך לו, וליבו חלל בקרבו" ("so too this one has already served and completely finished the avodah of warring with evil, to the point that he drove it out and it left, and his heart is void within him"), as Dovid HaMelech said about himself, "my heart is void within me," that he has no yetzer hara at all. From the outset he had a different goal in life, and he is able to arrive there, for that is what he was created for.
It is well known that every word in Tanya is exceedingly precise. The Alter Rebbe wanted to give an example of a title, and he could have taken other examples: "mighty man," "wealthy man," and the like. One example would also have been enough. So why did he bring specifically these two?
Reb Levi Yitzchak, the Rebbe's father, wrote explanations on Tanya according to Kabbalah, and on this point he gives a lengthy explanation along Kabbalistic lines. At the end of it he adds that on a simple level one can say something interesting, based on the wording of the verse "better a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king," whose meaning refers to the superiority of the yetzer tov over the yetzer hara:
"A poor and wise child" is the yetzer tov.
"An old and foolish king" is the yetzer hara. "Foolish," as our Sages said, "a person does not commit a sin unless a spirit of folly has entered him"; "old," since it is what entered Adam, the first man; "king," since it holds itself to be a king.
The person who succeeds reaches the level of tzaddik when he transforms the yetzer hara into good, "and my heart is void within me," and with that he has ruled over that "king."
There is the Baal Shem Tov's well-known precision in the Mishnah in Avos: "Who is mighty? One who conquers his yetzer," and it does not say "one who drives out his yetzer." What is the difference between driving out and conquering? One who drives it out takes the yetzer and throws it away. One who conquers it takes hold of it, extracts all the good powers within it, conquers them and makes them his own. The tzaddik does not banish the yetzer; he takes the powers that exist within it. For it is known that tremendous powers lie hidden in the yetzer hara, just as an ox has far more strength than a human being, as the verse says, "and much produce through the strength of the ox." Someone who needs to haul loads from place to place loads them onto the ox, not onto a man. So too the yetzer hara has enormous powers, the power of an ox, and a person can harness them and turn them toward the side of holiness.
So it emerges that the tzaddik first conquered the "old king," and by doing so he himself became a king. And who rules over him now? The "wise one," the "poor and wise child." That is why, when the Alter Rebbe wanted an example of a servant of G-d as a title, he took precisely "like the title 'wise man' or 'king'": two examples that characterize the tzaddik himself. He is wise, since the yetzer tov rules within him, and he is a king, since he conquered the yetzer hara which is called a king. So even examples that look incidental are exact, and they complete the picture.
The tzaddik, then, has driven out his yetzer, while the beinoni has not driven it out: either he is fighting, or he is not fighting. And this does not mean that he is not fighting because he has surrendered, G-d forbid, for then he would become a rasha. Rather, there are things that have already become easy and simple for him, and in whatever comes to him easily at that moment he is not called an oved.
We learn from this that there is no rest and no resting place for us, and there is no day on which everything will simply run by itself. One has to work all the time. If it is already easy for me to come to a Torah class every day, then I should come to two classes a day. If it is already easy to learn an hour a day, then I should learn an hour and two minutes. One must always look for the addition and treasure it, the "hundred and one," for the one beyond a hundred is worth more than the entire hundred.
The Alter Rebbe continues: "ובבינוני יש גם כן שתי מדרגות: עובד אלקים, ואשר לא עבדו. ואף על פי כן" ("and in the beinoni too there are two levels: one who serves G-d, and one who has not served Him; and nevertheless") that same beinoni who is called "has not served Him" "אינו רשע" ("is not a rasha"). With this the question we opened with is resolved: why does the verse in Malachi speak of "a tzaddik and a rasha" and only afterward of "one who serves G-d and one who has not served Him"? Because this is a third category, the beinoni, and it divides into two.
"כי לא עבר עבירה מימיו שום עבירה קלה" ("for he has never in his life transgressed, not even a light transgression"). The beinoni, as we summarized, is in a state of mind in which sins are utterly out of the question for him, "וגם קיים כל המצות שאפשר לו לקיימן, ותלמוד תורה כנגד כולם, ולא פסיק פומיה מגירסא" ("and he has also fulfilled all the mitzvos that were possible for him to fulfill, and Torah study which is equal to them all, and his mouth does not cease from learning"). Now, such a person, who never stops learning Torah and keeps all the mitzvos, is called by the prophet Malachi "one who has not served Him," who does not serve G-d at all. How can that be? Because he is not exerting himself. It is not that he is closer to a tzaddik; he is a beinoni who is not putting in effort.
"אלא שאינו עושה שום מלחמה עם היצר לנצחו על ידי אור ה' המאיר על נפש האלקית שבמוח השליט על הלב, כנזכר לעיל" ("only that he wages no war at all with the yetzer to defeat it by means of the light of G-d that shines upon the divine soul in the brain which rules over the heart, as mentioned above"). It is not that he succeeded because the Holy One shone upon him a divine illumination that gave him strength. So why does he succeed? "מפני שאין יצרו עומד לנגדו כלל לבטלו מתורתו ועבודתו, ואין צריך ללחום עמו כלל" ("because his yetzer does not stand against him at all to pull him away from his Torah and his avodah, and he has no need to fight it at all"). The yetzer hara simply does not bother him.
Think of a person who is used to keeping Shabbos. He does not have a battle every Shabbos over whether to smoke or not to smoke. The matter is settled in him and is no battle at all; he can see the cigarettes and the matches lying on the table and it says nothing to him whatsoever. Does he deserve credit for that? It is clear and obvious to him, and it does not even enter the yetzer hara's mind to try to talk him into it.
The Alter Rebbe brings two examples, one from the side of "do good" and one from the side of "turn away from evil":
"כגון שהוא מתמיד בלימודו בטבעו מתולדתו על ידי תגבורת המרה השחורה" ("for instance, that he is diligent in his learning by his nature from birth, through the dominance of the black bile"). There are people born with a melancholic temperament: they are not drawn to joking, to moving around, to enjoying themselves and going on trips, and their character is more closed in. For such a person it is easy to sit and learn with diligence, since that is his nature, and sitting all day over a sefer is no avodah for him at all.
"וכן אין לו מלחמה מתאוות נשים, מפני שהוא מצונן בטבעו" ("and likewise he has no battle from the desire for women, because he is cold by nature"). Not "cold" in the sense of a runny nose, but cool and indifferent in his temperament. Because he is cold, the yetzer does not burn in him, and he has no need to fight these desires.
Contrast him with a person whose temperament is the opposite, the cheerful sort: to be out and about all day, to joke, to be happy. For him, sitting down at a sefer for five minutes is a genuine inner exertion. His five minutes are "one who serves G-d," while the other man's ten hours are "one who has not served Him."
There is no advantage in this at all: he received a gift in being born with such a nature, and it is not credited to him. The Holy One wants avodah, He wants servants and He wants those who serve Him. He wants investment, and that is what He treasures. As we said, there is behaving like a Jew and there is being a Jew. One who does not fight behaves like a Jew, he is flawless, you will not find a single problem with him and we have no complaints against him, but he is not an oved.
So what should such a person do? He should exert himself in the points that are hard for him, and look for where he is not comfortable. On the side of "do good": to learn with more depth and intellectual investment rather than superficially, and to add beyond his usual measure. And endlessly there are points in which to beautify the mitzvos beyond his habit, to give tzedakah and pour out a little more than he feels like giving, and so on. Something that already comes easily, fine, it comes easily; the essential thing is the avodah.
[And if it seems to a person that there are situations in which he simply cannot overcome, there is no such thing. The Holy One does not bring a person a test he cannot withstand; it only seems to him that he cannot. There are situations in which it is hard to overcome, and "hard" is not the same as "cannot." So what should he do? Overcome. If he failed, he should do teshuvah and overcome again, and learn a few more chapters of Tanya, and that will help him.]
One of the Alter Rebbe's chassidim, Reb Shmuel Munkes, was of the cheerful temperament, a lively and very joyous chassid, and everyone took him for the court jester, since he would pull off all sorts of pranks that shook people up. Nobody knew what avodah of G-d he was engaged in. For example: on Tisha B'Av he would test whether the mourning of those reciting the Kinos with tears was coming from a place of truth, for what is written in the Shulchan Aruch has to come from truth, and he would toss little slivers of wood at them and watch their reaction.
It is told that once a certain tzaddik came to visit the Alter Rebbe in the beis midrash, and he saw that chassid throwing. He remarked, "May chassidim like that not multiply." The Alter Rebbe was silent and said nothing to him. Afterward the Alter Rebbe said to him: come, let us ride out beyond the town. They got into the wagon and rode out, and suddenly the guest saw a man sitting beside a tree, with many stinging ants coming out of the holes and climbing onto him and biting him, truly severe suffering, and he sits there weeping and praying and saying Tehillim. The guest saw in him a Jew standing in the service of G-d, and he remarked, "May chassidim like that multiply." Said the Alter Rebbe to him: "That is the same man."
Outwardly that chassid looked like a jolly fellow, but he knew exactly where the points were in which he had to invest, and there he squeezed the maximum out of himself. Every person knows where his own point of avodah lies, and that is where he should do his work. This is what the Holy One demands of the beinoni.
Therefore a person should not despair and say, "I wish it would already be easy for me." On the contrary, he should treasure the time in which it is hard for him. There is the well-known saying that when Moshiach comes we will get up in the morning and run to put on tefillin and to daven, and everything will be with joy and with pleasantness, and then "we will long for the days of exile." And what will we long for? For those precious days, when it was hard to put on tefillin and hard to learn, and we exerted ourselves. Then we will no longer be able to find that, because everything will go easily.
In summary: in this section we learned that the preciousness of avodah lies precisely in the effort that goes beyond habit; the extra minute is more precious than the entire hour. We examined the wording of the chapter: oved is in the present tense, for he is in the midst of the war with the yetzer hara to drive it out of the "small city," whereas the tzaddik is called a servant of G-d as a title, "like the title 'wise man' or 'king'"; and we noted the precision that these two examples point to the tzaddik himself, who conquered the "old and foolish king" and is ruled by the "poor and wise child." We also learned that within the beinoni there are two levels, "one who serves G-d" and "one who has not served Him," and that when a person's yetzer does not stand against him because of his nature, whether in "do good" or in "turn away from evil," this is no advantage but a gift, and he must seek out his own point of exertion, as in the story of Reb Shmuel Munkes.
In the next section we will continue, with G-d's help, in the study of the chapter and in understanding the levels of the beinoni in the service of G-d.