Chapter 1 - Third Lesson

00:01 Yes, let’s continue in Tanya from where we left off. In the previous class we discussed the tzaddik and the rasha, and also... Now the Alter Rebbe asks the central question that concerns the entire book: What is a beinoni? One of the names the Alter Rebbe gives Tanya is “The Book of Beinonim.” That means the Alter Rebbe wrote this book especially for the beinoni: to teach us what a beinoni is, that everyone can be a beinoni, and how to reach that level. So here the Alter Rebbe asks the question we are now beginning to study: What is the level of the beinoni? What we need to understand above all is exactly what defines that level. Certainly, it is not someone with half merits and half sins. We certainly cannot say that the level of a beinoni is a person who has half merits and half sins. Even though the Gemara seems to imply that a beinoni has half merits and half sins—the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah that we mentioned in the previous class, which says that someone with a majority of merits is a tzaddik, sorry, someone with a majority of sins is a rasha, and someone else has an equal balance. The Alter Rebbe will return to that Gemara about Rosh Hashanah. Nevertheless, says the Alter Rebbe, we cannot say that this is the true definition, the real level of a beinoni. “For certainly it cannot mean half merits and half sins. If so, how could Rabbah have mistakenly said of himself that he was a beinoni? It is known that his mouth never ceased from study, to the point that even the Angel of Death could not gain power over him. How could he mistakenly think he had half sins, G-d forbid?” How could Rabbah—the Rabbah we learned about earlier, who said of himself, “Someone like me is a beinoni”—make such a gross mistake and think he was a beinoni, if beinoni means half merits and half sins? In other words, Rabbah certainly had the quality of

02:19 humility. Humility. Because of his humility, he thought he was a beinoni. But humility is not falsehood. Humility is not a mistake. Humility can involve a kind of mistake, but only in matters where a person could conceivably be mistaken. Out of humility, someone might think less of himself than he really is. But something completely untrue and incorrect does not fall under the definition of humility. Everyone knows this. It is written in many places in Chassidus, including in the Rebbe’s maamarim for Rosh Chodesh Marcheshvan. Many of the Rebbe’s maamarim for Rosh Chodesh Marcheshvan explain the idea of humility. [unclear]. There are also many maamarim for Chayei Sarah, both in the collected, edited maamarim and among the unedited ones, from 5712 and in several other places. Humility is not what people generally think—that a humble person simply sees himself as lowly. A humble person knows his own strengths, yet does not become proud of them, with all the explanations of this in Chassidus. So sometimes, out of humility, he may look at himself and think his level is lower than it really is. But it has to be something real, something he could plausibly be mistaken about. If a beinoni means half merits and half sins, it is impossible to say that Rabbah thought he had half merits and half sins. As the Alter Rebbe describes Rabbah’s level here: the Gemara in Bava Metzia tells the well-known story that the Angel of Death could not gain power over Rabbah because he was so engrossed in study. He did not stop for a moment. For Rabbah to die, the Angel of Death had to create a whole commotion, make a noise, and so on, as the Gemara in Bava Metzia relates in detail. So, the Alter Rebbe asks, how could we say that he thought he was a beinoni, if

04:20 a beinoni means half merits and half sins? This proves that a beinoni is something much greater. The Rebbe asks about this: Seemingly, what proof is there from that story? Perhaps what the Gemara relates in Bava Metzia happened only then, when Rabbah understood that he was about to die and was trying to evade the Angel of Death. Why assume he was always like that? The Rebbe asks this question; we really need to understand what the proof is. In any case, Rabbah was certainly not on a level of half merits and half sins. “Furthermore, at the time a person commits sins, he is called a complete rasha.” Now the Alter Rebbe raises a straightforward question based on halachah. According to the revealed dimension of Torah, we cannot say that someone with half merits and half sins is called a beinoni, because according to halachah, according to Torah, a person who commits a sin is immediately called a rasha. At the moment he commits a sin, he is called a complete rasha; if he subsequently does teshuvah, he is called a complete tzaddik. Either a complete rasha or a complete tzaddik. In other words, it seems the Alter Rebbe wants to rule out the thought that a baal teshuvah is a beinoni. A baal teshuvah is not a beinoni; he is already considered a complete tzaddik. Although, seemingly, by “complete tzaddik” he does not mean the complete tzaddik we will learn about later in Tanya, the tzaddik as defined in Tanya. He means a complete tzaddik in halachic terms. In any case, the Alter Rebbe’s question is: Where exactly does the beinoni fit? In halachah, a person who commits sins, no matter how many, is already called a rasha. “Even one who transgresses a minor prohibition of the Sages is called a rasha.” Even if he commits no Torah-level prohibitions, only a rabbinic transgression, and a minor one at that, he too is called a rasha, as stated in chapter 2 of Yevamos and the first chapter of Niddah. In other words, this is the Alter Rebbe’s whole point. That is,

06:11 we might have thought: Fine, a beinoni is someone who does not commit a Torah-level prohibition. Perhaps he does commit rabbinic transgressions, minor transgressions. So the Alter Rebbe brings all the proofs, moving from one level to the next. Even for a minor prohibition of the Sages, a person is already called a rasha. The Alter Rebbe goes further: “Even someone who was able to protest and did not protest is called a rasha,” in chapter 6 of Shevuos. This is another level. We might have thought of someone who personally commits no transgression at all, not even inadvertently. Yet it could be that someone else committed a transgression and he did not protest. The commentators ask: If he did not protest, is that not itself a transgression? “You shall surely rebuke”—that is a Torah-level obligation. So there is a discussion about the precise status of someone who was able to protest and did not protest. Is it considered a Torah-level prohibition? Since he did not do the deed himself—someone else did, and he failed to protest—it seems the Alter Rebbe treats this as a lesser level, because he did not actually commit the act. Someone else actually committed the transgression. There is a beautiful sicha of the Rebbe, from the perspective of the revealed dimension of Torah, about the status of someone who was able to protest and did not protest. This is not the place to go into it at length. The Alter Rebbe continues: “How much more so, then, one who neglects any positive mitzvah that he is able to fulfill.” So if we are discussing prohibitions, even rabbinic ones, and even a case where the person did not commit the act himself, he is still called a rasha. How much more so someone who neglects a positive mitzvah that he is able to fulfill: certainly, when a person can fulfill a positive mitzvah

08:07 and does not fulfill it, he is called a rasha. There is also an explanation from the Rebbe of why the Alter Rebbe needs to derive this by an a fortiori argument, when there are statements of our Sages in the Gemara that explicitly say that people are called resha’im for neglecting a positive mitzvah. Yet for some reason the Alter Rebbe does not derive it from those passages in the Gemara; he derives it by an a fortiori argument. The Rebbe also explains this. But in any case, what is the point? The point is that the Alter Rebbe wants to prove here, based on the revealed dimension of Torah and on halachah, that a beinoni is someone who has no Torah-level prohibitions, no rabbinic prohibitions, no case where he saw someone else transgress and failed to protest, and certainly no positive mitzvah that he fails to fulfill. For example, “anyone who is able to engage in Torah study and does not engage in it.” The Alter Rebbe gives an example of a positive mitzvah: A person has time available now to study Torah, but does not study. Of such a person our Sages expounded: “For he has scorned the word of Hashem,” and so on; “that soul shall surely be cut off,” and so on. The Gemara, our Sages, speak very sharply about a person who has time available to study Torah and does not study. These words are written about him: “For he has scorned the word of Hashem.” He is showing disrespect, G-d forbid, to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This concerns the mitzvah of Torah study. We know that according to halachah, what is the mitzvah of Torah study? The mitzvah is, “You shall meditate on it day and night.” That is the mitzvah. A person needs to study Torah day and night. In practice, in halachah, there are rules about this. If a person runs a business and is very busy, then there is

09:58 A chapter in the morning and a chapter in the evening. If he devotes himself to Torah study, he needs to learn all the time. It depends on what Divine Providence—Hakadosh Boruch Hu—has arranged for each person in life. If Hakadosh Boruch Hu has arranged that a person must provide for his livelihood and therefore has to work many hours, then according to halachah he is required to learn less. But someone who, by Divine Providence, does not need to work must learn at every free moment. In other words, the rule is that we must learn at every free moment. Each person has the free time available to him according to halachah. So, of course, a young man who sits and learns in yeshivah, who has no business and no need to run one, must be engaged in Torah study all the time. Of course, of course, apart from the time he needs to rest and eat for the health of his body, and the time for davening. But in general, a person must learn at every free moment. About this, our Sages say that if a person does not learn when, according to Torah, he has time to learn, then it is said of him, “For he has scorned the word of Hashem,” and so on; “that soul shall surely be cut off,” and so on. Extremely severe words. So it follows that a person who neglects Torah study is no longer a beinoni. And it is obvious that he is considered a rasha even more than someone who transgresses a rabbinic prohibition. Certainly, then, a person who neglects Torah study is called a rasha even more than someone who transgresses rabbinic prohibitions, because our Sages tell us these things. So the Alter Rebbe says: If so, what follows from all this evidence? We must conclude that a beinoni does not have even the sin of neglecting Torah study. It is clear that since we say the beinoni is not a rasha—the categories are tzaddik, rasha, and beinoni—and since the Gemara says the beinoni is not a rasha, he must be a

11:57 person who is not classified as a rasha in any way. If he is not classified as a rasha in any way, that means he does not transgress any Torah or rabbinic prohibition, and he also does not transgress the prohibition against neglecting Torah study. If so, we must conclude that a beinoni does not have even the sin of neglecting Torah study. Notice how precise that is. What is the point? “Even the sin of neglecting Torah study.” Why does the Alter Rebbe say specifically “even the sin of neglecting Torah study”? What does he want to emphasize by that? He has no sins. He does not even transgress a rabbinic prohibition. Why, then, does the Alter Rebbe emphasize specifically “even the sin of neglecting Torah study”? The explanation is that neglecting Torah study is one of the things in which it is very difficult for a person to be completely careful according to halachah. In actual practice, it is very hard not to waste a single free moment. As the Gemara says in Berachos, if a person, G-d forbid, experiences suffering—distress and emotional pain and the like—he needs to take stock of himself and examine his deeds. What sin, he thinks, caused Hakadosh Boruch Hu to bring this upon him? And the Gemara continues: “If he examined and did not find one, he should attribute it to neglect of Torah study.” In other words, neglect of Torah study is always a possibility. As the commentaries there explain, why should he attribute it to neglect of Torah study? Because it is very difficult for a person to be perfectly careful about it. So when we say someone is a beinoni, we mean a person who toils so hard in his service of Hashem that he does not have even the sin of neglecting Torah study. He uses every free moment to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And from this it is clear that Rabbah himself was not a beinoni. Now we can understand. We still do not know what a beinoni is. We do know that a beinoni is someone who has committed no sin, not even

13:52 the sin of neglecting Torah study. So we would have to say that Rabbah was such a person, and nevertheless he said he was a beinoni. Now we understand how he could make that mistake: a beinoni can be someone who studies Torah day and night and yet is still not a tzaddik, but a beinoni. That is why Rabbah made the mistake. Yes, he was mistaken. That is the point: in truth, Rabbah was the leader of the generation, as Abaye told him, and he was a complete tzaddik. But at least we can understand how he made that mistake. The Alter Rebbe will explain in detail in chapter 13 exactly what Rabbah’s mistake was. In any case, what do we learn here? The Alter Rebbe has now reached the conclusion, according to halachah, that in actual practice there is no difference between a beinoni and a tzaddik. In practice, in actual deed, there is no difference between them. Just as a tzaddik is a person who has committed no sin, and whose every moment is filled with mitzvos and merits, all the time—there is no question that the whole character of a tzaddik is utterly removed from sin and transgression—the beinoni is the same in that respect. If so, the beinoni, the tzaddik who suffers, and the tzaddik who prospers all fulfill Torah and mitzvos with complete perfection. So the question is: what makes one a beinoni and another a tzaddik? What makes someone a tzaddik who suffers? He will explain all this in the following chapters. But of course, the Alter Rebbe’s main question concerns the beinoni, because the purpose of the Tanya here is to explain the service of the beinoni, the service that is relevant to every Jew. There is a story I heard from chassidim in this connection—I heard it long ago from the Razal[unclear], who said he had heard it from earlier chassidim—about this passage in Tanya, “For he has scorned the word of Hashem.” He told

15:44 of a chossid from the time of the Rebbe Maharash or the Rebbe Rashab named Shlomo Raskin. Apparently, he was the founder of the Raskin family. In Chabad there are many Raskins—a very large, very well-known family. So he was the father, grandfather, great-grandfather of the—at any rate, one of the earliest members of the family. According to the story, he worked in the fields. He was not a great scholar, not a Torah scholar, but he was a G-d-fearing chossid. He had fields in the colonies. This was in Russia; there were colonies, and some chassidim worked in the fields. He was certainly a simple man. Once he came into shul during a Tanya class, and they were learning chapter 1. The teacher, the mashpia who taught Tanya there, explained and translated what was written in Tanya. He learned what it says in Tanya and explained this passage: that a person who has time to learn and does not learn—“For he has scorned the word of Hashem,” and so on—as the Alter Rebbe writes here. This chossid took those ideas, those words, so much to heart that from then on he simply could not leave a free moment unused. He did not know how to learn very much, but he knew a little Tehillim, a little Chumash, a little Mishnah—whatever he knew by heart. So he would recite it constantly. He simply took it upon himself not to have a free moment in which he was not learning. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night, perhaps to go to the bathroom or for some other reason, and afterward he would sit down to learn. He would immediately start learning. In other words, it affected him so deeply that he could not stop for even a moment, because of what the Alter Rebbe says here in Tanya. About this, chassidim would

17:44 tell the story as an example of how one line of Tanya affected a chossid for his entire life. Well, we have such an abundance of Chassidus and Torah, maamarim and sichos. What should we look like? So many wellsprings flow from the books of our Rebbeim that have been revealed to us. This point is really the basis of the Alter Rebbe’s question, what he wants to understand. We understand that a beinoni is a person who is complete in thought, speech, and action. He has committed no sin—not rabbinic, not Torah, not even the lightest of the light, not even neglect of Torah study, as he says. And nevertheless, we say he is called a beinoni, not a tzaddik. What exactly is the nature of the level of beinoni? That is what the Alter Rebbe wants to understand. The Alter Rebbe continues here in a note and says: “As for what is written in the Zohar, volume 3, page 231, ‘Anyone whose sins are few,’ and so on...” The Alter Rebbe raises a question: there is a passage in the Zohar about the beinoni that says, “Anyone whose sins are few.” Or perhaps it says that about a tzaddik—I do not know exactly what it says there in the Zohar. How can that be? It does not fit with everything we said earlier, that even a beinoni has no sins. So the Alter Rebbe says: “That was Rav Hamnuna’s question to Eliyahu.” It was a question Rav Hamnuna asked Eliyahu Hanavi. Rav Hamnuna was one of the great figures of the Zohar, and he asked Eliyahu Hanavi what is meant by a tzaddik who prospers and a tzaddik who suffers. He thought—he asked whether “a tzaddik who suffers” means a person whose sins are few. That was the question he asked, but perhaps the conclusion is that it is not so. But in Eliyahu’s answer, again, the meaning of “a tzaddik who suffers” is as

19:46 As it says in Raaya Mehemna, Parshas Mishpatim, “It is not among the seventy faces of the Torah.” The Alter Rebbe says that according to the... what Rav Hamnuna thought was an initial assumption, not the conclusion. In the conclusion, “a tzaddik who suffers” means a tzaddik who still has some evil in his soul, concealed and in a very subtle form, as the Alter Rebbe will explain in the coming chapters, and as he quoted earlier from the wording of Raaya Mehemna. What does “the seventy faces of the Torah” mean? The Rebbe explains it simply, the way people have always understood it: there are many interpretations, seventy faces. So Rav Hamnuna thought this might be one of the interpretations of “a tzaddik who suffers.” There could be many interpretations of that phrase. The Rebbe explains that Rav Hamnuna thought it was one of the seventy faces of the Torah. Rav Hamnuna, who was among the great sages of the Zohar, knew that “a tzaddik who suffers” refers to a level that Rashbi speaks of in the Torah. But he wanted to ask Eliyahu whether it also included this idea, at least as one of the seventy faces. And Eliyahu answered that it did not. He answered him that... this is how the Rebbe explains the plain meaning, right? It is not even one of the seventy faces of the Torah. There are many levels of “a tzaddik who suffers,” but this has nothing to do with it. It means just what the Alter Rebbe will explain later in the chapter. Now, since we are already talking about the seventy faces of the Torah, by Divine Providence we are now at 20 Cheshvan, the birthday of the Rebbe Rashab, the founder of Tomchei Temimim. In general it is a special day, especially for anyone who has ever been a student of Tomchei Temimim, who has a particular connection to it. Every year on 20 Cheshvan, the Rebbe would make a special point of the occasion and always connect it with Tomchei Temimim. There was also a year when the Rebbe

21:45 said that all the chassidim, all the members of Anash, everyone living in a city that has a Tomchei Temimim, should go into the yeshiva, into Tomchei Temimim. At least for a few minutes—to learn something, hear something, just go in. That was the Rebbe’s practice. The Rebbe spoke about it at a farbrengen. But the Rebbe also made a point in one of his sichos on 20 Cheshvan. Exactly 140 years ago, in 5665, there was a farbrengen on 20 Cheshvan, and the Rebbe devoted an entire sicha to the sicha “Whoever Goes Out to the War of the House of David Writes a Bill of Divorce for His Wife.” This was a sicha in which the Rebbe Rashab spoke about the Temimim. There he explains the role of Tomchei Temimim. It is one of the sichos that every student should learn several times. It is a very, very foundational and important sicha, explaining the role of the Temimim, especially in our generation, before the coming of Moshiach, with all the challenges, the coldness, the concealments and obstacles, and all the battles. We are soldiers of the House of David, and we have a special role. The Rebbe explained this at length. At the farbrengen he reviewed the sicha, and the Rebbe said that in Lubavitch it applied to only a small group, but today it applies to every single person. It was a wonderful sicha: the Rebbe took “Whoever Goes Out to the War of the House of David” and made it everyone’s inheritance. That is the Rebbe’s way—everything becomes relevant to every chossid, to every Jew. But this sicha is something we need to learn. It is a foundational sicha, an essential sicha. Among other things, he speaks there about learning Torah: how Torah should be learned, how to learn Torah, how to listen. When you learn Chassidus, your study of nigleh is also as it should be. And there he tells a story about the seventy faces of the Torah. In the Alter Rebbe’s time there was a Jew who was a very great Torah scholar, but he had a sense of self-importance. He lacked

23:52 the Chassidic approach. He learned a lot of Torah, but did not think much of himself. So he said—there was once some disagreement about a point of learning, and he proposed a line of reasoning that disagreed with Rashi. Rashi said one thing, and he said that he disagreed with Rashi: no, it was otherwise. Of course, they did not accept his view, and he was very hurt by it. Afterward he complained to the Alter Rebbe, or to Ben Laradok [?]—I don’t remember the details. His complaint was: after all, there are seventy faces to the Torah. What is wrong with his saying something? Rashi, a tanna, gives his interpretation; Tosafos gives its interpretation. But he is also a Torah scholar, so why can’t he offer his own interpretation? Why do they disparage it? Why do they dismiss his interpretation? On the contrary, there are seventy faces to the Torah. So the Alter Rebbe told him that just as there are seventy faces, there are also seventy backs. Every face has a back. So yes, there are interpretations that belong to the seventy faces of the Torah, but your interpretation belongs to the seventy backs of the Torah. This is brought in the sicha “Whoever Goes Out,” where the Frierdiker Rebbe quotes the Rebbe Rashab. It is a sicha the Rebbe Rashab gave to the Temimim on Simchas Torah. How should Torah be learned? And of course, when you want to offer a thought, an explanation, a novel insight, how careful you must be to make sure it fits the intent and the proper approach. I just want to say one word.