In the previous section we sketched the portrait of the rasha v'tov lo ("a wicked man to whom it goes well"), the person in whom the evil does not dominate all the faculties of his soul. Now we will see how the Alter Rebbe describes the way in which the evil manages to take over and clothe itself in only one of the three garments of the soul.
The three garments, thought, speech and action, are the soul's means of expression and execution, as was explained at length in chapter four. In the person before us, the evil manages to clothe itself in only one of them: either in action alone, or in speech alone, or in thought alone. And in each of the garments the Alter Rebbe deliberately brings the smallest possible failing, a lapse that happens only on rare occasions.
In which of the garments is the blemish more serious?
Think of a device that has been damaged. If the damage is only to the outer casing, it is not so terrible; the closer it comes to the interior, the more it interferes; and once it reaches the "brain" of the device, the thing no longer works properly. From this, two opposite ways of looking at the question emerge:
The first view: Thought is closer to the soul itself, so a blemish there is a blemish in the most refined thing of all; speech is more external than thought, and action is the most technical of the three. Accordingly, a failing in action is the lightest of all, and a failing in thought is the most severe.
The second view: Action is the main thing and the ultimate purpose, so a failing there is the blemish that really counts; whereas in thought, where the blemish does not show itself in actual fact, the severity is less.
Because there is room for both views, the Alter Rebbe lists the three garments together as one: whatever the order of severity may be, this person stumbles in only one of these three points.
"Either in action alone":
It is possible that a person stumbles purely in something practical. And even within action itself we look for the smallest possible failing, and therefore the Alter Rebbe specifies: "aveiros kalos v'lo chamuros chas v'shalom" - light transgressions and not, G-d forbid, severe ones.
In truth, as we will learn with G-d's help further on in Tanya, every transgression is a transgression and is against the will of the Creator, and the division between light and severe is not a true division from the standpoint of the essence of the matter. Nevertheless, in the positive commandments the Torah does not spell out the reward (apart from a few isolated cases): it does not say what the reward is for one who puts on tefillin or affixes a mezuzah. In the prohibitions, however, the punishment is spelled out: lashes, death by the court, kares, and so on. Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura writes that from the type of punishment one can learn the severity of the transgression, and accordingly a transgression whose punishment is lighter is called a "light transgression." It is in transgressions of this kind alone that this person stumbles, and not, G-d forbid, in the severe ones.
"Either in speech alone":
It is possible that he does not stumble in action at all, but only in speech; and here too the Alter Rebbe brings the most minimal example: "avak lashon hara v'leitzanus v'kayotzei bazeh" - the "dust" of slander, and mockery, and the like.
"Avak lashon hara" - this is not actual slander. For example: someone praises another person in a setting where merely bringing his name up is liable to lead to others, who are not fond of him, speaking badly about him afterwards. The words themselves were good, but slander is liable to come out of them.
"V'leitzanus" - a failing in speech in matters of mockery.
Here something needs clarifying: the Alter Rebbe is looking for examples of small, minimal sins, so how does he bring in mockery, which is one of the most severe transgressions of all?
For the Gemara in Sotah records Rabbi Yirmiyah bar Abba saying that there are four groups who do not receive the countenance of the Shechinah, and the first of them, even before those who speak slander, is the group of scoffers. And in Avodah Zarah the Amoraim say of one who engages in mockery: some say that suffering comes upon him, some say that his livelihood is diminished, some say that he falls into Gehinnom, and some say that he brings destruction upon the world. We also learned in chapter one that mockery comes from the element of "air" in the soul.
The Rebbe explains in one place that the word "avak" serves as a heading for both examples together: the dust of slander and the dust of mockery. The "dust of mockery" means speech that lowers the level of seriousness and is liable to lead to actual mockery, and not mockery itself. With that, the difficulty is resolved.
From here we also have the answer to the question of whether one may tell jokes: as we learned in chapter seven, a milsa d'bedichusa, a light remark, that is for the sake of Heaven is holy; but speech that is not that way belongs to the kelipah, and there is no doubt about it.
"Either in thought alone":
It is possible that a person stumbles neither in action nor in speech, but only in thought, and about this it is said: "hirhurei aveirah shekashim me'aveirah" - sinful thoughts, which are worse than the sin itself. This does not refer to any and every thought: a person who muses about desecrating Shabbos or about forbidden foods is not doing as he should, but he does not become a rasha because of it. There are, however, certain categories of transgression, chiefly in matters of modesty, in which the very musing alone already counts as a failing that makes a person a rasha.
And why are sinful thoughts worse than the sin itself? First, because a person takes them lightly and says, "After all, I didn't do anything." The Rambam in the Laws of Repentance lists things that a person imagines have no substance to them, without realizing that they are in fact severe. And second, as was explained, a blemish in the mind and in thought produces coarseness in the person's inner self, and the damage done there is far deeper and harder to repair.
The Alter Rebbe goes even further: "v'gam im eino meharher ba'aveirah la'asosah" - even if he is not entertaining the thought of the transgression in order to carry it out, but is simply dwelling on the subject of the union of male and female in the world as such, the severity of it is so great that he transgresses the Torah's warning in the book of Devarim: "v'nishmarta mikol davar ra" - "and you shall guard yourself from every evil thing." The Gemara in Avodah Zarah expounds this verse: "that a person should not entertain such thoughts by day and thereby come to impurity at night." So it turns out that even a passing thought alone, once in a long stretch of time, places a person within the definition of a rasha v'tov lo.
It is worth noting that the work of refining one's thought is not accomplished all at once; it is the work of years, and it embraces all the garments together.
"Or he has a fitting moment to occupy himself with Torah and he turns his heart to idleness":
Another example: a person has a sha'as hakosher, a fitting moment - he has the free time, the opportunity and the mental capacity, and there are no pressing concerns preventing him from learning Torah - and nevertheless he turns his heart to idleness. Even this kind of waste, where a person could have used the moment for good and did not use it, places him in the category of a rasha.
The source of this is a mishnah, "kidtnan b'Avos": a person who is awake at night and cannot fall asleep, and instead of sitting and learning Torah at that hour he turns his heart to idleness. The mishnah uses extremely sharp language about him, to teach us how careful one must be about such a situation.
In summary: in this section we learned that in the rasha v'tov lo the evil clothes itself in only one of the three garments. We looked at the two ways of approaching the question of which blemish is more severe: the blemish in thought, which is closer to the soul, or the blemish in action, which is the main thing. In each garment the most minimal example was brought: in action, light transgressions and not severe ones, as we learn from the type of punishment set for them; in speech, the dust of slander and the dust of mockery, with the Rebbe's explanation that the word "avak" applies to both; and in thought, sinful thoughts that are worse than the sin, and even a thought that is not for the purpose of carrying out the transgression, which falls under "and you shall guard yourself from every evil thing." And finally, one who wastes a fitting moment he has in hand to occupy himself with Torah and turns his heart to idleness.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter eleven and with the definition of the level of the rasha v'tov lo.