In the previous section we studied Rabbah's mistake: out of his humility, he did not attribute to himself his true level. Now we will go deeper into what a tzaddik actually is, and into the distinction between a "tzaddik" in essence and as a description of who he really is, and a "tzaddik" as a borrowed name.
There is no question that Rabbah was a complete tzaddik. It was only his humility that kept him from assigning himself the correct level; he did not give himself the full grade that was actually his, but assumed he stood lower than that. And since the gap between his true grade and the grade he gave himself is not a large one, a person can indeed err out of humility and say: I am not on that level, I am on the level below it. From here we understand why he erred, for the beinoni is a person of an exceedingly high level. What exactly is a beinoni? That we have not yet learned. But at least we have advanced far enough to know what a beinoni is not.
The Gloss: The Story of Rav Hamnuna and Eliyahu HaNavi
In the margin of the page there is a hagahah (gloss), and to understand it we need to first tell a story brought in the Zohar (vol. 3, p. 231). Rav Hamnuna was traveling on the road and met Eliyahu HaNavi, and he asked him why there is in the world such a thing as צדיק ורע לו רשע וטוב לו (a righteous man who suffers and a wicked man who prospers). Before waiting for an answer, he offered a suggestion of his own: perhaps the tzaddik who has suffering in this world has a few sins on his record, and the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to cleanse him here, since suffering scours a person clean; and the wicked man who prospers has a few mitzvos on his record, and the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to settle the account with him here, and therefore things go well for him.
Eliyahu HaNavi answered him: that is not the reason. The tzaddik has no transgressions at all, and his suffering is not on account of sins of his own. Rather, he is rectifying the sins of the generation. Precisely because he is a tzaddik, he takes other people's problems upon himself, and that is the source of his suffering.
The Alter Rebbe brings this story and asks: the Zohar itself is the source that reveals to us what we learned on the previous page, that a tzaddik is something inward and complete, one who has no transgressions at all, and not merely someone whose merits are in the majority. How, then, can the Zohar record Rav Hamnuna's suggestion that the tzaddik suffers in this world because he has a few sins on his record? That would contradict everything we have built until now, that even a beinoni has no transgressions, and all the more so a tzaddik.
The Alter Rebbe answers: the phrase כל שכן שממועטים עוונותיו ("all the more so that his sins are few") is nothing other than Rav Hamnuna's question to Eliyahu, a suggestion he floated on his own; it is not the Zohar's conclusion. According to Eliyahu's answer there, the tzaddik has no transgressions at all, and his suffering comes from taking the sufferings of the generation upon himself.
According to Eliyahu, then, what does "a tzaddik who suffers" mean? Exactly as it is written in the Ra'aya Mehemna (Parshas Mishpatim, p. 114), which we cited on the previous page: it does not mean that he suffers because he has a few transgressions, but that on a certain level the matters of evil still exist within him, except that they are completely nullified to the good, inactive, and for that tzaddik they do not exist at all. "Ra lo," evil is his, means that the evil is in a state of bittul to the good.
And if you ask: how did Rav Hamnuna raise such a suggestion even as a possibility, if it is so thoroughly ruled out? To this the Alter Rebbe answers that there are seventy faces to Torah. But as for the Zohar's conclusion, there is no doubt that it lines up perfectly with his conclusion here, that even a beinoni does not have a single transgression, and all the more so that a tzaddik has none at all.
The Difficulty from the Rambam
Anyone who studies Tanya and comes with prior knowledge from other seforim will raise a large and forceful question, because these things do not sit well with what is written elsewhere. The Rambam writes in Hilchos Teshuvah: כל אחד ואחד מבני האדם יש לו זכויות ועוונות ("every single human being has merits and sins"), and he immediately gives a definition:
"מי שזכויותיו יתרות על עוונותיו" ("one whose merits exceed his sins") is a tzaddik.
"מי שעוונותיו יתרות על זכויותיו" ("one whose sins exceed his merits") is a rasha.
"מחצה למחצה" ("half and half") is a beinoni.
This definition is entirely different. According to the Rambam, a majority of merits is enough to be called a tzaddik, and a beinoni is fifty-fifty. And this is not merely a novel idea of the Alter Rebbe that one could set aside, for we brought proofs for his position from the Gemara. So how are we to reconcile all of this with the Rambam's definition?
The Rambam goes on at length in the next halachah, that this applies not only to an individual but even to an entire country: there is a country of which it is said that it is righteous, there is a middling country, and there is a wicked country. The Alter Rebbe does not ignore the Rambam. On the contrary, he comes to explain his words.
He opens and says: והא דאמרינן בעלמא, "and that which we say generally," meaning what is said out in the world; and "the world" here does not mean the marketplace but the world of Torah. That is, in every place where you find a discussion of tzaddik, beinoni and rasha, in the Rambam, in Rashi, in Tosafos and everywhere else, דמחצה על מחצה מקרי בינוני, ורוב זכויות מקרי צדיק ("that half and half is called a beinoni, and a majority of merits is called a tzaddik"). A majority suffices. But then how did we say that even a single transgression makes a person a rasha? On the face of it, the two do not fit together.
Three Kinds of Names
The Alter Rebbe's answer is simple. One must know a general rule: when it comes to titles and names, there are broadly three kinds:
Shem ha'etzem, the essential name: a stone is called "stone." That is its own intrinsic name.
Shem hato'ar, a descriptive name: a person of whom we say that he is wise. This is a description expressing his level and his quality.
Shem mush'al, a borrowed name: as in the verse "והסירותי את לב האבן" ("and I will remove the heart of stone"). The heart is not made of stone, nor is this even a description of it; the concept "stone" was borrowed from the world of stones and attached to the heart for the sake of the metaphor.
Consequently, one cannot raise a difficulty on the strength of a mere label. Someone hunting for stones will not find any in a "heart of stone." In every place one must clarify which definition is at work: the essential name, the descriptive name, or the borrowed name. The same holds for our terms: the meaning of the labels "tzaddik," "beinoni" and "rasha" depends on the context. There are places where the definition is stated as a borrowed name, there are places where it is a descriptive name, and higher than that, as an essential name.
When we ask who is a tzaddik and who is a beinoni, what we are after is a definition of the person's very makeup, such that one can say of him that in his essence he is a tzaddik or in his essence he is a beinoni. That is shem hato'ar. But the Rambam, in that passage, calls a person "tzaddik" not as a description but as a borrowed name. Why? Because there he is speaking in Hilchos Teshuvah, according to the criteria by which the Holy One, blessed be He, determines a person's future on Rosh Hashanah, on Yom Kippur and during the Ten Days of Teshuvah. By those criteria, one who has a majority of merits is sealed in the book of the righteous, and one who has a majority of sins in the book of the wicked. Whoever meets the criterion is called a tzaddik for the purposes of that discussion, even though it is entirely possible that in his essence he is a rasha. In Tanya, by contrast, what is being sought is the descriptive name: a person for whom the title "tzaddik" or "beinoni" is something true and essential. The definitions are therefore different, and there is no contradiction between the Rambam and what we have learned.
The Alter Rebbe's Words in the Text
והא דאמרינן בעלמא, as is said everywhere, the Rambam included, דמחצה על מחצה מקרי בינוני, ורוב זכויות מקרי צדיק ("that half and half is called a beinoni, and a majority of merits is called a tzaddik"), and the Alter Rebbe rules: this is a borrowed name, used with regard to reward and punishment. And why were the terms tzaddik and beinoni pressed into service on that occasion? לפי שנידון אחר רובו, "because he is judged according to his majority." For the Holy One, blessed be He, when He judges a person on Rosh Hashanah, on Yom Kippur and during the Ten Days of Teshuvah, looks at the majority of his deeds, at the overall picture. It is possible for a person to have committed a transgression, and yet by the sum of his deeds it will be determined that in general he is fine, and that transgression will not change the picture; and it is possible for a person to have done something good, and yet by the sum of his deeds it will be determined that he is a rasha, and that good deed will not be taken into account. The discussion there is not about the individual detail in its own right, but about the detail as part of a whole, and it is from the whole that the conclusion is reached.
ומקרי צדיק בדינו, "and he is called righteous in his judgment." The Holy One, blessed be He, calls him a tzaddik in his judgment, since he has won his case. To what may this be compared? To a courtroom in which the judge rules: Reuven is in the right and Shimon is in the wrong. It is entirely possible that Reuven is known to everyone, the judge included, as the most corrupt man in town, and nevertheless, in this particular case, he is the righteous party. This does not mean he is a tzaddik in his essence, only that he has received a present ruling, along the lines of "acquitted" and "liable" in a court case. The Aramaic word zakkai is precisely equivalent to tzaddik here: since he won the case, at this moment he enters the book of the righteous. But not everyone who falls under the heading of "the book of the righteous" is a tzaddik as a genuine description. And when it comes to essence, to the descriptive name and to actual spiritual stature, that is an entirely different matter.
To summarize: in this section we learned two central principles. First, we saw from the Zohar, according to Eliyahu's answer to Rav Hamnuna, that a tzaddik has no transgressions whatsoever, and that "ra lo" means that the evil in him is entirely nullified to the good, in keeping with the Alter Rebbe's conclusion that even a beinoni does not have a single transgression. Second, we resolved the contradiction from the Rambam, who defined a tzaddik as one whose merits are in the majority, by means of the distinction between three kinds of names: the essential name, the descriptive name and the borrowed name. The Rambam is using a borrowed name, with regard to judgment and to reward and punishment, where one looks at the overall picture, whereas in Tanya what is sought is the descriptive name: the true essence of the person.
In the next section we will take up the greatness of the tzaddik: "tzaddik yesod olam," the righteous one is the foundation of the world.