In the previous sections we looked at the levels of the rasha that the Alter Rebbe lists, and at the place of regret as a sign that the good in the soul is showing itself. Now the Alter Rebbe arrives at the last and most severe level of them all, and from it we will learn a great principle about the power of the Jewish point that is never lost.
"אך מי שאינו מתחרט לעולם" - "But one who never regrets":
The Alter Rebbe writes: "אך מי שאינו מתחרט לעולם" - "but one who never regrets": a person to whom no thoughts of teshuvah come at all, who regrets nothing. Such a person is rare to find, and if he exists, he is called a rasha v'ra lo, "a wicked man for whom it is bad."
What does rasha v'ra lo mean?
One might have thought that just as by the tzaddik v'tov lo the evil does not exist at all, so too by the rasha v'ra lo the good has been utterly nullified and lost. But that is not the case. He is a Jew, and a Jewish soul is within him, so the good necessarily exists in him. Indeed, had he any regret at all, that would be a sign that the good in him finds some expression. Rasha v'ra lo means that the good in him has no expression whatsoever, not that the good has vanished and is gone.
And we must be precise in his wording: "שהרע שבנפשו הוא לבדו נשאר בקרבו, כי גבר כל כך על הטוב עד שנסתלק מקרבו" - "that the evil in his soul alone remains within him, for it has so overpowered the good that the good has departed from within him." He does not stop at these words, but adds that the good "עומד עליו מלמעלה בבחינת מקיף" - "stands over him from above in the manner of a makif," an encompassing light. The good has withdrawn from his inner self and from his feeling, but it exists with him in an external, encompassing way only: not felt and not active, but present.
And what is the proof that the good really does exist?
Our Sages said: "אכל בי עשרה שכינתא שריא" - wherever ten Jews are found, the Shechinah rests, with no conditions attached. Even if they are complete resha'im, and even if they have gathered as a "session of scoffers" and not for prayer. True, it is a great galus for the Shechinah to rest in such a setting, but the Shechinah rests there.
At first glance this is puzzling. It is simple arithmetic: zero plus zero is still zero, and even zero times ten remains zero. If there is nothing in this rasha, what is there in ten like him to add up to? From here we have clear proof that he is not a zero; rather, there is a portion of holiness in every single one. When he is alone, the quantity is so small that it is not felt and accomplishes nothing at all. But when ten such people join together, a quantity accumulates in which the Shechinah already rests. This is not a count of zeros, but a count of Jews who have holiness in them, and this resting of the Shechinah is not a technicality, it has real effect.
But a question arises, one the Rebbe himself raised: even the sinners of Israel are "full of mitzvos like a pomegranate." How does that fit with the statement that the good has departed from within him and does not exist in him?
The answer lies in a concept the Gemara brings in Sotah: "עבירה מכבה מצווה" - "a sin extinguishes a mitzvah." This does not mean that the mitzvah is erased; a mitzvah a person did exists, and it cannot be erased. Rather, every mitzvah has a spiritual power that helps a person and draws him close to the Creator, and its holiness envelops him. But the mitzvah is not always active. Sometimes the mitzvah is extinguished: like a coal in which no fire is visible, which, if you fan it, reveals its fire, yet as long as it lies there it appears dormant and dead. The rasha too is full of mitzvos like a pomegranate, but sadly his mitzvos are extinguished, because the sins in him have put them out. This is why we say that the good does not exist in him, meaning it is not felt and not active, but not that it is absent altogether. And when ten such people join together, it becomes clear that it has existence and power.
More than that: sometimes a person is not even aware of a mitzvah that was done through him. For example: a coin fell out of his pocket and he never knew it fell, and the Holy One arranged that a poor man in need should find it, and with that coin he revived himself and ate and was satisfied. It is counted for him as the mitzvah of tzedakah, even though he knows nothing of it. The evil in him cannot take this good away from him; it is only that other things in him extinguish its power.
A story for Purim - the two yuds in the Megillah:
By hashgachah peratis, this idea connects to Purim as well. The Rebbe told that a certain maskil once came to the Tzemach Tzedek and asked him a question in grammar: why is the word "Yehudim" in Megillas Esther written sometimes with one yud and sometimes with two?
"המן בן המדתא האגגי צורר היהודים" - "Haman son of Hamdasa the Agagi, the enemy of the Jews": before the decree, with one yud.
"אשר אמר המן לשקול על גנזי המלך ביהודיים לאבדם" - "that Haman said he would pay into the king's treasuries for the Jews, to destroy them": in the decree itself, the written text has two yuds, even though we read it "ba'Yehudim."
The Tzemach Tzedek answered him: yud in gematria is ten. There are ten powers of the soul on the side of holiness, and there are ten powers of the soul on the side of kelipah. Haman, in seeking to destroy the Jews, drew no distinction at all between complete resha'im, a rasha v'tov lo, a rasha v'ra lo, the intermediate people and complete tzaddikim. All of them were included in his decree as one (just as, in later times, in Hitler's thinking as well). Therefore, in the place where the destruction of the Jews is spoken of, it is written "ba'Yehudiyim" with two yuds: both those whose ten soul powers are on the side of holiness, and those whose ten soul powers are on the side of the animal soul.
That maskil pressed further and asked: but even after the miracle, in the verse "ואותו תלו על העץ על אשר שלח ידו ביהודיים" - "and him they hanged on the gallows, because he had stretched out his hand against the Jews" - the word is written with two yuds?
He answered him: after the miracle, the miracle affected the Jews to such a degree that they all joined together, and even those whose soul powers had been on the negative side turned them to good, the maskilim among them, until everything became part of the side of good. That is why there too the word is written with two yuds.
And from here back to the point we learned: even the rasha v'ra lo is not lost. Sometimes it is precisely Haman who reveals to him that he is a Jew. It is a fact that Haman says to him: you think there is nothing in you, but in my eyes you are a Jew, a kosher Jew. That is why Haman went looking for him, and in the end the decree brought it about that in this Jew too his true Jewish point should be revealed, and that he should become a whole and complete Jew.
This does not mean that an entire generation turned its evil into good, but many of that generation did teshuvah, and many gentiles joined them as well, as it is written: "ורבים מעמי הארץ מתייהדים כי נפל פחד היהודים עליהם" - "and many of the peoples of the land became Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them."
The Rema, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, in his work Mechir Yayin on Megillas Esther, explains this phrase in a fascinating way. On the simple level it means they were afraid of the Jews: once Haman was hanged on the gallows and Mordechai rose to greatness, who knows what would be done to them. But the Rema asks: what is "the fear of the Jews"? What is a Jew's fear? Fear of the Holy One. And that is the meaning of "the fear of the Jews fell upon them": they too began to fear the Holy One.
To summarize: in this section we learned the level of "one who never regrets," who is called a rasha v'ra lo, and we noted the precision of the Alter Rebbe's wording: the good has not vanished from him, but has withdrawn from his inner self and stands over him in the manner of a makif, present but unfelt and inactive. We proved this from "wherever ten Jews are found the Shechinah rests," for if each one were a zero, joining them together would amount to nothing. We explained "a sin extinguishes a mitzvah": the mitzvos exist but are extinguished, like a coal in which no fire is visible, and even mitzvos a person is unaware of exist within him. Finally we learned from the story of the Tzemach Tzedek about the two yuds in the Megillah, that Haman's decree drew no distinction between the levels, and that it was precisely that decree which revealed in every Jew his innermost point.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words and move on to discuss the level of the beinoni, the intermediate person.