Likkutei Amarim Chapter 11 · 5785

00:00 Speaker 1 Today we’re going to learn chapter 11.

00:02 Speaker 2 A short chapter. Yes, we learned—

00:06 Speaker 1 Yes, it’s a short chapter, and it’s also easy. We said it would help to remind ourselves where we are. Once a week, we need to go over the sequence. At the beginning of Tanya, the Alter Rebbe devoted six chapters, if I’m not mistaken—from chapter 1 to chapter 8, eight chapters—to explaining that there are two souls and what each one wants. Then, from chapter 9 to chapter 12, four chapters—the five chapters we’re learning now—he explains the battle between the two souls. First, he explained that there is a battle. Why is there a battle? After all, each has its own place: the G-dly soul is in the brain, and the animal soul is in the heart. Each has its own territory. So why would they fight? He explains that although each has its own place, each wants to rule the entire body. That is why they fight over who will rule the body: the brain or the heart, the G-dly soul or the animal soul. That’s what chapter 9 explains. Then chapter 10, which we learned last week—or two weeks ago? When was it? Last time.

01:24 Speaker 2 Last week.

01:25 Speaker 1 Last week. So in chapter 10, he explains what happens when the G-dly soul wins. He explained that when the G-dly soul wins, that person is called a tzaddik. That answers what we asked in chapter 1.

01:38 Speaker 2 That happened to me.

01:40 Speaker 5 Let this be in the merit of Miriam Hadassah, daughter of—

01:48 Speaker 2 Malka.

01:49 Speaker 5 Daughter of Shimon [unclear], Eisenberg, Rivka [unclear]. Because now—

01:51 Speaker 2 Eisenberg’s?

01:53 Speaker 5 Yes.

01:54 Speaker 2 So what happened with—?

01:55 Speaker 5 Not anymore; already from the body [unclear].

01:57 Speaker 2 [Unclear], [unclear].

02:03 Speaker 1 He explained that—

02:03 Speaker 2 [Unclear].

02:07 Speaker 1 He explained what we learned in—well, he explained it. In chapter 1, the Alter Rebbe asked how it is that we see five categories: a tzaddik who has good, a tzaddik who has bad, a rasha who has good, a rasha who has bad, and a beinoni. That was all in chapter 1, and he asked many questions about it. In the previous chapter, chapter 10, he finally explained it. Now we understand what a tzaddik is. After that long introduction of nine chapters, we can finally understand: a tzaddik is someone whose G-dly soul has defeated his animal soul. He said there are two levels within this. Because there are two general levels of tzaddik, they are called a tzaddik who has good and a tzaddik who has bad. What did he explain about the level of a tzaddik? A tzaddik is someone who has no yetzer hara. He doesn’t have one. The yetzer hara is our attraction to worldly matters. A tzaddik has no attraction to worldly matters; it doesn’t exist for him. It isn’t just that he doesn’t commit transgressions in practice, or even that he doesn’t want to commit them. Even something that isn’t a transgression, just an ordinary worldly matter, disgusts him. He loathes it. We can’t imagine such a thing. A tzaddik is someone who has driven out evil. What does it mean to drive out evil? It means that he loathes everything evil. What is evil? We already explained that in the earlier chapters. Evil is anything that comes from the kelipos. What comes from the kelipos? Not just forbidden things. Anything that isn’t Torah and mitzvos comes from the kelipos. Everything. And a tzaddik loathes evil. He simply loathes it. Think of the things that we ourselves loathe. For a

04:06 Speaker 1 tzaddik, even one who is not complete, anything that isn’t Torah, mitzvos, or learning disgusts him. He loathes it. What’s the difference between a tzaddik who has good and a tzaddik who has bad? If he’s such a tzaddik, what does it mean that he has bad? He explained that halachah, too, has the concept of being nullified in sixty. If a drop of milk falls into a pot of meat, and there is more than sixty times that amount in the pot, it’s kosher. In the same way, although that tzaddik still has one part in sixty of evil left in him, or even less, it isn’t perceptible. He explained the distinction, how it is nullified, and so on. So we learned about the tzaddik and his two levels: one who has good and one who has bad, a complete tzaddik and an incomplete tzaddik. That was the previous chapter. In chapter 11, the Alter Rebbe explains that corresponding to the two levels of tzaddik, there are two levels of rasha, exactly the reverse. In other words, corresponding to a tzaddik who has good, there is—

05:28 Speaker 6 A rasha who has bad.

05:30 Speaker 1 A rasha who has bad, yes. And corresponding to a tzaddik who has bad, there is a rasha who has good. He is going to explain these two levels. Chapter 11: “One opposite the other”—a rasha who has good corresponds to a tzaddik who has bad. What does “a rasha who has good” mean if he is a rasha? We said that... What does “rasha” mean? It means that the good in his G-dly soul, in his brain and in the right chamber of his heart, is subordinate and nullified to the evil from kelipah in the left chamber. Just as with a tzaddik who has good—sorry, a tzaddik who has bad. What does “bad” mean there? He’s a tzaddik, so why does he have bad? Where does it come from? What does it mean to say he has bad? The bad is nullified. It isn’t perceptible—so much so that he himself doesn’t know he has any bad. He loathes evil. Likewise, what is a rasha who has good? He’s a rasha. He loathes good. He has a little good in him, but he doesn’t know it. “This, too, is divided into myriads of different levels in the quantity and quality of the good’s nullification and subordination to the evil.” What is the quantity of evil, and what is its quality?

07:16 Speaker 6 How often? What kind of transgressions are we talking about?

07:21 Speaker 1 The quantity of evil is how forceful it is, how strong it is—how much of it there is. The quality of evil is what kind it is. For one person, the evil is of the fire type: desire. For another, it is of the air type: mockery and idle talk. For another, it is laziness and sadness—the earth type. And any of these can be more or less forceful. There is the quantity of evil, and there is its quality, the type of evil. So there is someone whose good is subordinate and nullified to the evil only to a small degree. When we discussed a tzaddik who has bad, we said there are many, many levels. Do you remember? A lot of you weren’t here last week, either. Let’s put it simply. In general, a tzaddik is someone who loathes evil. But how much does he loathe it? One person finds evil utterly repulsive; another, a little less so; and another, a little less. They all loathe it, but to what extent? And which type of evil does he loathe more or less? Why does he loathe it? There can be many levels. The same is true of a rasha who has good. A rasha is someone whom the good cannot influence. What drives him in his heart is the evil. What does “evil” mean? He is attracted to the things of this world. He has desires and wants; this world tempts him, and he gets excited about all its affairs. And when the G-dly soul comes and tells him, “Listen, my friend, restrain yourself. It’s time to daven,” he says, “Yes, but I’m tired. I don’t have the strength.” Or, “You need to learn.” “Well, fine, I need to learn, but there are more important things.” And so on. So with a rasha, there are many

10:10 Speaker 1 levels, depending on how much stronger the evil is than the good. What they all have in common is a stronger pull toward this world. That pull overcomes his desire to keep mitzvos. That is called a rasha. Again, this needs to be stressed. We already spoke about it at the very beginning of Tanya, in chapter 1. The Alter Rebbe demonstrated there at length that the difference between a tzaddik, a beinoni, and a rasha is not how many transgressions they commit. That isn’t the point. A beinoni may commit no transgressions, and a tzaddik commits none either. The difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni is not a difference in what they do. It is an inner difference in the soul, a spiritual difference. There is a spiritual level called tzaddik, a level called beinoni, and a level called rasha. What is the spiritual level of someone called a rasha? A rasha is not necessarily someone who commits transgressions. A rasha is someone who is capable of committing them. A tzaddik could never commit a transgression. He couldn’t. For a beinoni, committing a transgression is utterly out of the question. A rasha is someone who could commit one. It may be that, in practice, he overcomes himself now, and a minute later he overcomes himself again, and ten minutes later he does so again, and theoretically he goes through his whole life without committing a single transgression. He is still a rasha, because the very fact that he could commit transgressions means that they are not out of the question for him...

12:09 Speaker 7 Yes.

12:11 Speaker 1 That is called a rasha, a wicked person. Right? And the different levels of a rasha depend on how far wrongdoing is from being unthinkable for him. So to explain how there can be so many levels of a rasha, the Alter Rebbe brings the two extremes here: who is the worst rasha, and who is the best? Obviously, we’ll see that there are many levels in between. He starts with the better rasha, a rasha who has good in him. He is a rasha, but the good in him is barely subordinate and nullified to the evil; only a tiny bit of his good is subject to it. And even that isn’t constant. The good is not always subordinate to the evil—sometimes it is, but usually not. Nor does it happen frequently, at short intervals; only rarely does the evil overcome the good. And even when the evil does take hold of this person, this rasha who has good in him, it’s not all the time and not with such force, only occasionally. Even when it happens that the evil conquers the “small city”—what is the small city? The person’s body. What does it mean for the evil to conquer the city?

13:48 Speaker 7 It’s thought, speech, and action.

13:49 Speaker 1 That he commits a transgression. The evil won. What does “conquered the city” mean? Conquered means won. What is the city? The city is the body. What does it mean for the evil to conquer the small city, to conquer the body? The evil won and managed to cause the person to commit an actual transgression. He did something forbidden.

14:07 Speaker 7 Thought isn’t an actual transgression.

14:09 Speaker 1 We’ll get to that in a moment. There are many things that are... Why not?

14:14 Speaker 7 Mm.

14:14 Speaker 1 Why? There are many things one is forbidden to think about.

14:15 Speaker 7 There are some things, but not every thought is.

14:18 Speaker 1 Not every thought. The evil caused him to stumble in a forbidden thought.

14:23 Speaker 7 So he sinned. He sinned, but he didn’t commit a transgression.

14:26 Speaker 1 It is a transgression, a transgression in every sense. Why not? It’s a prohibition.

14:32 Speaker 7 It’s forbidden to eat on Yom Kippur, but if a thought of eating on Yom Kippur crosses my mind, I haven’t committed a transgression.

14:36 Speaker 1 No, but if a person thinks about idol worship—

14:41 Speaker 7 Idol worship is something else. I’m saying not every thought is.

14:44 Speaker 1 If a person thinks about adultery, and there are other things the Torah forbids us to think about, then if he thinks about them, he commits a transgression just as surely as he does when he commits one through an action. A transgression in every sense. We don’t give him lashes; we don’t punish him, because we can’t know what he actually thought. But as far as the transgression is concerned, he committed a transgression all the same.

15:09 Speaker 7 I agree.

15:12 Speaker 1 So there is someone whose evil conquers the body, the small city, only at rare intervals, and even then not the entire body, but just one part of it. That is, the person’s body submits to the evil and becomes a vehicle for it, a garment in which it can clothe itself, in only one of the three garments of the animal soul. In other words, perhaps only in action: the evil causes the person to sin only in action. Not in speech, not in thought, only in action, in something small. And what kind of action? Minor transgressions, not severe ones. There are transgressions punishable by kares, or death at the hands of Heaven—severe transgressions. There are transgressions that involve only violating a prohibition or failing to fulfill a positive mitzvah. Those are called minor transgressions. So the evil won’t come to a person and say, “Go ahead and commit a transgression”—I don’t know, as we said earlier, “Eat on Yom Kippur.” G-d forbid! What are you talking about? That’s out of the question. But it can persuade him to commit minor transgressions. Or the evil manages to conquer the body only in speech. In action, the evil can’t cause the person to stumble, nor in thought, but in speech it can. And what kind of speech?

16:44 Speaker 8 Lashon hara.

16:44 Speaker 1 A trace of lashon hara. Not outright lashon hara; that’s already a serious transgression. A trace of lashon hara, or mockery. There are several kinds of mockery. There is mockery that is outright forbidden: making fun of a Jew, ridiculing another person, another Jew. That’s already an outright prohibition, no longer a minor transgression. But when people are just fooling around, having a good time, making a commotion, creating a bit of a stir, as they say—that’s also a kind of mockery. It’s neglect of Torah study and it’s not a good thing, and so on, but it isn’t such a severe transgression. And the like. Or the evil causes the person to stumble only in thought. So what are we talking about when we say “a rasha who has good in him”? The evil manages to defeat him only rarely, only in minor matters, and only either in thought, in speech, or in action—not all of them together. He adds that if the evil causes the person to stumble only in thought, only in thoughts of transgression, still, there is... Our Sages said that thoughts of transgression are, in a certain respect, worse than a transgression itself. Why? We’re used to thinking the opposite, right? What are we used to thinking? As was said earlier, if a person commits a transgression through an action, that’s very serious. But if I only thought about it, well, a person forgives himself very easily, right? Why?

18:29 Speaker 8 Because it stays with me.

18:31 Speaker 1 It’s only a thought. It’s something that comes and goes. It’s insubstantial. It seems minor. It doesn’t seem so serious to me, right? So our Sages said that while that’s true to a certain extent, on the other hand, what defiles the soul more: when a person commits a transgression with his body, or when he commits one in thought?

18:52 Speaker 8 You’re telling us: in thought, because that’s the soul.

18:54 Speaker 1 So clearly, a transgression in thought dulls the soul much more.

18:58 Speaker 8 But what if a person overcomes the thought? You think about something, but you don’t do it.

19:03 Speaker 1 Here we’re talking about a rasha. Right now we’re talking about a rasha. We’re not talking about someone who overcomes it; we’re talking about someone who doesn’t overcome it.

19:10 Speaker 8 Someone who overcomes it is the same thing.

19:12 Speaker 1 Someone who overcomes the...

19:13 Speaker 8 He thinks about something forbidden, but he didn’t do it.

19:16 Speaker 1 We’ll get to the person who overcomes it shortly. We’ll get to that shortly.

19:19 Speaker 8 And thinks about it.

19:21 Speaker 1 No, no, no. That’s something we’ll discuss in a moment. Here we’re talking about a rasha, a rasha, someone whose evil overcomes his good. What does it mean that it overcomes his good? That he can reach a point where he actually commits a transgression. So even if it happens only rarely, only in minor matters, and only in thought or speech, ultimately he is the kind of person who, even when he isn’t committing a transgression, could do so at any moment. It isn’t unthinkable for him. He could fall into it; he could fall the very next moment. The Alter Rebbe says that even if he isn’t thinking about committing a transgression, but is only thinking about intimacy between a man and a woman, that too is forbidden, because he then violates the Torah’s warning, “You shall guard yourself from every evil thing.” The Torah warned a person not to entertain such thoughts during the day, because afterward he will dream about them at night, and that will lead him to a transgression.

20:17 Speaker 8 Are there more transgressions at night?

20:20 Speaker 1 We’re talking about transgressions that apply to men. Or there’s an opportunity to study Torah. Now we’re no longer talking about an outright prohibition. He isn’t doing anything; he’s simply refraining from doing something. He has time to study Torah, but he turns his mind to idle things. He has time, and he uses it for all kinds of things other than Torah. As we learned in Pirkei Avos, “One who stays awake at night, etc., and turns his mind to idleness.” Yes. For any one of these things, or things like them, he is called a rasha. Even if he does only one of them, only in thought, only in speech, only in action, only once in a while, and so on and so forth, he’s already a rasha; he’s a rasha his whole life. The Alter Rebbe says, “He is called a rasha at that time.” Why only at that time? If he’s capable of committing a transgression, then he’s a rasha all the time. Why only at that time? Is he called a rasha only when he actually stumbles?

21:31 Speaker 8 Because he can change, change the person’s character altogether, yes. May I ask a question?

21:38 Speaker 1 We keep saying that “rasha” is a spiritual level. Yes. So let me explain it this way: a spiritual level isn’t tied to what he does or doesn’t do. It’s his level, his spiritual state. Why does the Alter Rebbe add “at that time” here? Is he a rasha only when he actually stumbles in a transgression? No, he’s a rasha all the time. What does “at that time” mean?

22:05 Speaker 8 That... the strength of the Satan isn’t reduced?

22:09 Speaker 1 At that time he is a complete rasha. A rasha is a rasha.

22:15 Speaker 8 A rasha. There’s a rasha and there’s a complete rasha?

22:18 Speaker 1 A complete rasha means... now, that’s it, he’s already fallen.

22:23 Speaker 8 All right.

22:24 Speaker 1 He fell. That’s a rasha in the plain sense. Not “rasha” as a descriptive term, but “rasha” in the borrowed sense—what people call a rasha. An actual rasha. We’re not talking about someone who harms others, but someone who has committed a sin against Hakadosh Boruch Hu. If he does any one of these things, and so on, he is called a rasha at that moment. Why? Because the evil in his soul overpowers him, clothes itself in his body, causes him to sin and defiles him. Why is he called a rasha who has good in him? Because afterward, the good in his G-dly soul gains the upper hand. He sinned for just one moment, and immediately afterward he regrets it and asks forgiveness. It pains him that he sinned. It can go even further: a person can be tempted to sin, and even while he’s doing it, it already pains him. He’s angry with himself for not managing to overcome it. That happens too. This is called a rasha who has good in him. Where does the regret come from? You long so much for these worldly things. They feel so good to you, so right for you. You can’t stop yourself. So why do you regret it? Because he also has a G-dly soul inside. It can’t overcome the evil, but it cries out. He regrets it. And Hashem will forgive him if he does proper teshuvah, following the guidance of our Sages, of blessed memory, concerning the three categories of atonement that Rabbi Yishmael expounded, and so on, as explained elsewhere. Later, when we reach Igeres Hateshuvah, we’ll look at it at length: what the three categories of atonement are, the three categories of teshuvah, and so on. We won’t go into it now. So all that is a rasha who has good in him, at the more refined end. Right? Now there is also a rasha who has good in him at the lower end, closer to a rasha who has evil in him. Between the two are endless levels. What is

24:21 Speaker 1 a rasha who has good in him at the lower end? There is someone in whom evil gains the upper hand to a greater degree. What does that mean? It is more forceful. And not only is it more forceful, but all three garments of evil are clothed in him at the same time. Not one at one time, another at another time—both in speech, in thought and in action. And the evil causes him to sin not only through minor transgressions but also through more serious ones, and more often. Why is he called a rasha who has good in him?

25:00 Speaker 9 Simply—

25:00 Speaker 1 He still regrets it. The G-dly soul still cries out, and it still pains and bothers him that he sins. He can’t stop himself; he doesn’t manage to, and it pains him that he doesn’t manage to. As long as it pains a person that he cannot overcome himself, he is still a rasha who has good in him. Now, obviously, between those two ends—between someone who almost never sins, and then only in thought, only in small things, and someone whose whole mind is occupied with how to commit sins—there’s a difference—

25:37 Speaker 9 Every situation in between.

25:38 Speaker 1 There’s a huge difference, with endless levels in between. Right? But all of them, all these levels, are called a rasha who has good in him. He still has good. A rasha, yes, but he has good in him. He regrets it, and thoughts of teshuvah come to him from the good in his soul, which gains a little strength in the meantime. But even though the good gains strength, it cannot prevail enough to defeat the evil, to abandon his sins completely, to acknowledge them and leave them behind. He regrets it; it pains him. He promises himself he’ll change, he tries, and he fails again. He can’t reach a state where he doesn’t sin. He can’t manage it. That’s a difficult situation.

26:31 Speaker 9 Your heart.

26:31 Speaker 1 Huh?

26:34 Speaker 9 Your heart.

26:34 Speaker 1 And about this our Sages, of blessed memory, said: “The wicked are full of regrets.” That describes most resha’im.

26:44 Speaker 9 They’re divided into categories.

26:46 Speaker 1 Most resha’im in the world still have an element of good in their souls. So what is a rasha who has evil in him? He is the counterpart of a tzaddik who has good in him.

27:00 Speaker 9 In the plain sense.

27:01 Speaker 1 But someone who never regrets it—who has no such thing as thoughts of regret—commits sins wholeheartedly. It suits him. He isn’t sorry; he has no pangs of conscience. Nothing. No thoughts of teshuvah come to him at all. That is called a rasha who has evil in him. Now... this raises a big question.

27:34 Speaker 9 There’s no such thing, that’s—

27:36 Speaker 1 How can such a thing be possible? What did we say a tzaddik who has good in him is? A tzaddik who has good in him is someone in whom, as we put it, the good in the right chamber of the heart has spilled over into the left chamber and completely dissolved the evil. He no longer has a yetzer hara. If a rasha who has evil in him is the counterpart of a tzaddik who has good in him, what would we think? That this rasha’s evil in the left chamber spilled over to the right and drove out the G-dly soul, so he no longer has a G-dly soul. Just as a tzaddik who has good in him no longer has a yetzer hara, based on everything we’ve explained so far, we might say that a rasha who has evil in him no longer has a yetzer tov. What does it mean not to have a yetzer tov? He has no yetzer tov, no G-dly soul. It’s gone. How can that be? Huh?

28:31 Speaker 10 He must have one.

28:32 Speaker 1 So that’s what he answers in the last few lines: it really isn’t the same. With a rasha who has evil in him, it isn’t that the evil in his soul is left alone within him because it has overpowered the good so thoroughly that—what? Not that the good has been nullified, and not that the good has turned into evil. That cannot happen. Rather, the good has withdrawn from within him and remains above him, in an encompassing state. The G-dly soul cannot turn into evil. We explained in chapter 9—two chapters ago—that the animal soul itself is not evil. It has been given the form of evil. It was shaped; it was put into... Remember we talked about this? Huh?

29:21 Speaker 10 Yes, yes. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

29:29 Speaker 1 When you take a lump of modeling clay and give it a shape, it has a shape, right? You can give it one shape, or you can make a different shape from the same lump. The lump itself has no shape. The animal soul is a power of desire. Desire for what? The animal soul was placed inside a body, and it feels good here, so it took on the form of evil: the form of this world, of longing for physical things. Why? Because this is where it was placed; this is what it sees and feels. But it isn’t evil in itself. It has a form in which evil is imprinted. In itself, it isn’t evil; in itself, it simply desires. So when a person removes all the garments of this world from the animal soul, what remains? A power that desires. What will it desire? It will desire good. He has taken the animal soul and transformed it into something that wants G-dliness instead of kelipos. So because of its nature, because of what it is, the animal soul is something that can be transformed from evil to good. Why? Because it isn’t evil in itself. Can you transform the G-dly soul into evil?

30:52 Speaker 10 No.

30:53 Speaker 1 How could that be? And the fact that the G-dly soul wants G-dliness isn’t because someone gave it that form. Nothing was imprinted on it; that’s what it is in itself. You can’t transform the G-dly soul into evil. It cannot want the things of this world. It can’t. It’s like fire can’t... I don’t know... extinguish water. I don’t know. It just can’t; that’s not what it is. A G-dly soul wants G-dliness. So when we say that evil overpowers a person until he is a rasha who has evil in him, it isn’t like the tzaddik who has good in him. The good has not turned into evil; that cannot happen. Rather, the good withdraws. Where does it go? It remains with the person, but it doesn’t act within him. It is there, but it doesn’t act in him and isn’t felt in him. That is what “a rasha who has evil in him” means. And that is why he quotes what our Sages said: “Wherever ten are gathered, the Shechinah rests.” Wherever there are ten Jews—that’s a very well-known saying—there the Shechinah rests. People don’t understand this. Ten offenders are standing at a bus stop. They don’t know each other, and not one of them observes the mitzvos. The Shechinah rests there? What’s the connection? Yes, he says. Why? Each one of them has a G-dly soul. True, each is a rasha who has evil in him, so his G-dly soul isn’t felt within him at all, but it rests above him. If ten G-dly souls are resting together in the same place, the Shechinah is there. It isn’t felt. Of course it isn’t felt, because it isn’t internal, but it is there.

32:49 Speaker 11 At plenty of bus stops.

32:51 Speaker 1 And since it is there—since, ultimately, the G-dly soul remains and is not nullified. Not only does it not turn into evil; it isn’t nullified either, and it doesn’t change. That is why, ultimately, every single person can do teshuvah: the G-dly soul always remains whole.

33:08 Speaker 11 Everyone has a G-dly soul.

33:10 Speaker 1 Not within everyone—above everyone.

33:13 Speaker 11 Above everyone.

33:14 Speaker 1 If it were inside, the situation would be good.

33:16 Speaker 11 But that’s what I’m saying. If he doesn’t have it here, if the G-dly soul isn’t inside him, inside a Jew—

33:24 Speaker 1 Yes.

33:24 Speaker 11 It’s just that its revelation is above him.

33:26 Speaker 1 That—this is taught in chapter 48, this whole question of what it means. It’s not relevant right now, but okay. “Above”—for now, let’s think of “above” as something like a halo over him. Okay, what you’re saying is right, but I don’t want to explain it now.

33:45 Speaker 11 So it would be more accurate to say that the rasha who suffers is like the tzaddik who prospers.

33:51 Speaker 1 Now, what are we missing—

33:52 Speaker 11 No, like the tzaddik who suffers. Sorry. Because the tzaddik who suffers doesn’t feel the evil at all, but the evil does exist.

34:02 Speaker 1 Yes, but with the tzaddik who suffers, the evil exists within him; it’s just hidden, so he doesn’t feel it. There’s so little of it that he doesn’t feel it. With the rasha who prospers, the evil isn’t—good isn’t inside him. It doesn’t affect him; it remains external. That’s the difference between something internal and something external. All right, not now. What we’re missing to complete this puzzle: we spoke about... What is a beinoni? What was the whole point? Tanya is the Book of Beinonim. Why is Tanya called the Book of Beinonim? Why did the Alter Rebbe call the book Tanya, the Book of Beinonim?

34:41 Speaker 11 Who was this book written for?

34:42 Speaker 1 Huh? Another point is also—

34:44 Speaker 11 The beinoni is a level attainable by every person, and every person should strive for it.

34:46 Speaker 12 Every person, right?

34:50 Speaker 1 The Alter Rebbe wants to explain to us what serving Hashem means. Who is “us”?

34:57 Speaker 11 Hashem.

34:58 Speaker 1 Who are we? Now, after everything we’ve learned up to this point, what are we? Tzaddikim, reshaim, or beinonim?

35:05 Speaker 11 Reshaim.

35:06 Speaker 12 In the Torah.

35:09 Speaker 1 Based on everything explained here so far, it would seem—

35:13 Speaker 11 Even a rasha who suffers.

35:14 Speaker 1 It looks like we’re closer to the lower end. Let’s put it gently, right? The Alter Rebbe didn’t write Tanya for reshaim. The Alter Rebbe wrote Tanya for beinonim. That means we have to say—and in fact, the Rebbe says this—that from chapter 1, the Alter Rebbe has been hinting at it again and again, several times. We pointed it out a little, too: we are not reshaim.

35:49 Speaker 11 We’re not beinonim either.

35:50 Speaker 1 We are beinonim.

35:52 Speaker 11 Right.

35:53 Speaker 1 To understand how, despite everything we’ve seen in this chapter, which makes it seem clear that we’re certainly not tzaddikim, we’re nevertheless not reshaim either—that explanation, which is the heart of... the foundation of Tanya, is in the next chapter, chapter 12. It’s not the punchline; it’s the foundation. Once a person understands who he is, he can understand what is being asked of him. If I’m a rasha, what are you asking of me? Love and fear of Hashem? A person who is a rasha, who has active evil within him, cannot have love of Hashem. See there in chapter 7. If I’m someone who can never become a tzaddik, why are you telling me what a tzaddik is? It must be that none of us are—neither tzaddikim nor reshaim. Chapter 12 will explain how that can be. Once we understand in chapters 12 and 13 what a beinoni is, we’ll be able to begin explaining what serving Hashem means.

37:13 Speaker 3 Ah.

37:16 Speaker 4 You haven’t served...?

37:17 Speaker 3 Ah.

37:19 Speaker 4 Where?