A Jew does not want to sin! - Chapter 11 - Part Three

00:00 We’re here at the end of chapter 11 of Tanya, just after the period, at the words “And there is one in whom evil prevails more.” What is the Alter Rebbe discussing here? He’s discussing the different levels of a rasha who has some good in him. The Alter Rebbe says that just as with a tzaddik who has some evil in him, where we said there are myriads of levels depending on how completely the evil is nullified to the good, so too, “one opposite the other,” there are many levels of a rasha who has some good in him. It depends on how much the good submits to the evil—the reverse of a tzaddik who has some evil in him. The Alter Rebbe gives us the two extremes. Until now we’ve learned about one extreme: a person who generally doesn’t commit transgressions. Generally, everything he does is one hundred percent in accordance with halachah and common sense. But once in a great while he might stumble in some matter, even the smallest thing—a minor, not a serious, transgression. It could be in action, speech, or thought, and he might even repent afterward. That’s what we discussed in the previous class: the Alter Rebbe’s novel point is that sometimes, even when you repent, you still aren’t called a beinoni. You are still on the level of a rasha who has some good in him. Why? Because the repentance isn’t complete repentance. It is repentance; it is repentance according to halachah. That is what the Alter Rebbe says—proper repentance through which he is forgiven. But as far as the level of the soul is concerned, we have to remember a fundamental point: in Tanya, when the Alter Rebbe speaks of a tzaddik, a beinoni, and a rasha, he isn’t speaking only in terms of halachah or whether a person follows halachah. He is speaking about levels of the soul: what level is this person on inwardly? And the Alter Rebbe teaches us here that a person might commit no transgressions at all, and even if he did commit some minor transgression once in a blue moon, he repents for

01:56 it as well—and he repents properly. That’s what the Alter Rebbe specifies. He didn’t just repent; he repented properly. What does “properly” mean? It means following the three categories of atonement stated by Rabbi Yishmael. Just to understand what the Alter Rebbe is adding here with the three categories of atonement: anyone who studies Igeres Hateshuvah knows that this is what the Alter Rebbe means. As he writes elsewhere, he plainly means Igeres Hateshuvah. Although Igeres Hateshuvah was printed after Tanya, it was already circulating in manuscript among chassidim before Tanya. That first edition of Igeres Hateshuvah was circulating among chassidim, and that is plainly what the Alter Rebbe means. There the Alter Rebbe writes that there are two aspects: repentance itself and seeking forgiveness. In other words, repentance involves two things—teshuvah and atonement. That is why the Alter Rebbe says, “There are three categories of atonement, and repentance accompanies each one.” There is teshuvah, which accompanies each one. Teshuvah is accepting the sovereignty of Heaven upon oneself. The mitzvah of teshuvah consists solely of abandoning the sin. The decision not to do it again—that is teshuvah. And that applies in every case: whether an unintentional transgression, the violation of a positive commandment or a prohibition, or an offense punishable by kareis or by the court. The moment a person decides not to do it again, making a firm decision to accept the sovereignty of Heaven, that is teshuvah. But then there is the atonement that goes along with teshuvah, so that the teshuvah is complete. Regarding a positive commandment, the Alter Rebbe says atonement is immediate; for a prohibition, Yom Kippur is also needed; and for offenses punishable by kareis or by the court, suffering and afflictions are also needed. Those are the details. So the Alter Rebbe is saying that we’re talking about someone who has fulfilled those details too. He has done everything

03:38 as prescribed by our Sages. Yes, he has fulfilled the requirements of teshuvah, including seeking forgiveness and attaining atonement. According to halachah, it is complete, and nevertheless he still isn’t called a beinoni. Why isn’t he called a beinoni? As we explained, it’s because his teshuvah exists only on the practical level. In practice he repented; in practice he made a decision; in practice he carried out the steps needed to put things right. But the transgression hasn’t become unthinkable to him. He isn’t in the state we’ll learn about in the next chapter, chapter 12: someone who “does not transgress and will not transgress.” That passage, too, can be speaking about a baal teshuvah. When we study chapter 12, we’ll see that there can also be a beinoni who is a baal teshuvah. But his teshuvah—the teshuvah of a beinoni—is such that, in his present state, he does not transgress and will not transgress. That is, no, the Alter Rebbe doesn’t mean this simply as a statement about what the person does in practice. Otherwise, could someone who once committed a transgression never be a beinoni? G-d forbid. He means the person’s inner level, the state of his soul. The usual teshuvah that people do is that you regret what happened, ask forgiveness, say you won’t do it again, and carry out the steps needed to put it right. All well and good. But can you say that evil, that transgression, has become utterly out of the question for you? It hasn’t. And I’m not talking about it being out of the question as it is for a tzaddik, because he has a love of delights. I’m talking about how it is for a beinoni. For a beinoni it is out of the question because of his intellectual conviction. But the beinoni’s intellectual conviction is genuine: to him, a transgression is simply unthinkable. It’s like telling an ordinary Jew to eat chametz on Pesach. It’s out of the question, utterly unthinkable. Eating chametz is

05:32 unthinkable. That isn’t because he’s a tzaddik, with a love of delights. Rather, everyone has certain things about which he feels so strongly that doing them is out of the question, completely unthinkable. For a beinoni, it is that way with everything. Again, we’ll learn about the beinoni in chapter 12. I just want to explain what chapter 11 means. Here we’re speaking about someone whose teshuvah is only on the practical level. He still has a tendency toward evil, an attraction to evil. And the proof is that in another six months, or another year, he may commit a minor transgression again. That means that throwing off the yoke is not entirely unthinkable to him, and that is why he can fall again. As the Rebbe says along these lines in Basi Legani 5712—there is something very powerful the Rebbe writes there. A person takes stock of himself and remembers transgressions he committed many years ago, even as a child. But he has already rectified them. Why does he need to remember those things he did? “My sin is before me always”—why remember sins from the past when he has already done teshuvah? Among other things, the Rebbe says there that it is because, apparently, he is still in a state where that transgression, or a thought of that transgression, is possible for him. In other words, the fact that he is still drawn to commit more transgressions of that kind shows that the earlier transgression has not yet become unthinkable to him. That evil draws him to continue. This means that he is still on the same inner level. That is why, as the Rebbe says, he is still considered to be on the level of a rasha who has some good in him. This is a rasha who has some good in him at the very highest level. Yes? A completely upright Jew. But because of this one detail—that he

07:24 might fall again—that itself shows that the evil is not unthinkable to him. For that reason, he is called a rasha who has some good in him: the good is still subject to the evil, because the evil is present in his soul and affects him, leading him to commit sins. Now, though, look at how the Alter Rebbe describes a rasha who has some good in him at the other extreme, the lower extreme: “And there is one in whom evil prevails more, and all three garments of evil clothe him, causing him to commit more serious transgressions and at more frequent intervals.” Yes? So this is also a rasha who has some good in him, but at the other extreme. In what sense? He says all the garments—not just thought, or speech, or action, but all of them: thought, speech, and action. Not just minor transgressions, but serious ones too. And not just once in a long while, but more frequently. In all these respects, he is at the other extreme. So why is he a rasha who has some good in him? A person who commits every sort of transgression, and does so all the time—why is he called a rasha who has some good in him, rather than a rasha who has only evil in him? The Alter Rebbe explains: “But in between, he regrets it.” Between one transgression and the next, he feels regret and has thoughts of teshuvah, “arising from the good in his soul.” Where do those thoughts of teshuvah come from? From the good within him. That is what it means to be a rasha who has some good in him. True, in him the good is subordinate and nullified. But he has good, and because he has good, he regrets what he did after committing a transgression. It comes “from the good in his soul, which gains a little strength in between,” and that brings about thoughts of regret. The Rebbe once said that a Jew regrets a transgression the moment he commits it. The regret is immediate; it is as though it is in a Jew’s nature to immediately regret something wrong he has done. So we see that he has regret. Where were we? “But he does not have sufficient strength to overcome his evil inclination.”

09:30 It isn’t strong enough for him to overcome the yetzer hara completely, to defeat it altogether: “to separate himself from his sins completely, to acknowledge them and abandon them.” He can’t stop completely, so even after feeling remorse, the next day or a few days later he falls again. “And of this our Sages said: ‘The wicked are full of remorse’”—meaning most wicked people, who still have an aspect of good in their souls. So the Alter Rebbe says that this is the meaning of “the wicked are full of remorse.” We’re talking here about a rasha v’tov lo, a wicked person who has good within him. Why is it said of him that he is full of remorse? Because he has good within him. That is why he feels remorse; he isn’t comfortable with his sins. In other words, what is the Alter Rebbe teaching us? “The wicked are full of remorse.” How do you look at someone who commits a sin and regrets it? You could say it’s all a sham: he regrets it, but the regret means nothing, and the proof is that tomorrow he’ll fall again. Today, in the modern world, people talk about this, right? People with addictions. You know what addictions are? People who have, uh, yes, how do you say it? An addiction. He says he’ll stop smoking and then smokes again, or he’ll stop drinking alcohol and then drinks again. He’ll stop looking at things he shouldn’t look at, and then he looks again, falls again. That’s called an addiction. He keeps falling into the same place. So you could look at this and say it means he never truly regretted it; he’s just lying to himself. He has tears in his eyes as if he’s sorry and won’t do it again, but no, it’s all for show. He doesn’t mean it seriously, and that’s why he keeps going back—because that’s where he really is. What the Alter Rebbe comes to tell us here is the opposite, and this is the positive point the Alter Rebbe wants to make.

11:21 A Jew, by nature, does not want to commit sins. For a Jew, sin is something fundamentally alien. As we all know from the Rambam’s words, because a Jew has a soul that is “a part of G-d above,” he wants to fulfill the Creator’s will and does not want to be separated from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is a Jew’s essential nature, as we’ll learn later in Tanya in the discussion of the spirit of folly. So a Jew is not comfortable with sin, and that is the reason for his remorse. In other words, the remorse reflects who he truly is—the very opposite of what people think. People think remorse is just a lie: you don’t really regret it; you’re drawn to the sin, and with your remorse you’re just fooling yourself. The Alter Rebbe holds the opposite. Your remorse comes from the fact that you have a soul. It comes from the good within your soul, and that good keeps drawing you back toward what is good. So what’s missing? He doesn’t have enough strength and resolve. He doesn’t follow through with full force; he lacks the quality of netzach, of perseverance. Right. That is why he falls again. So I call him a rasha v’tov lo. The good is there, but it is subjugated, so it doesn’t emerge fully. But knowing that you do have genuine good within you, and that you truly don’t want to sin—that knowledge itself gives a Jew the strength to bring it from potential into action, to make a firm decision and reveal the quality of netzach within his soul. For that, all the treasures are spent, as explained in Basi Legani: to give a Jew the strength to make his decision a real one and change his life from one extreme to the other. Now the Alter Rebbe concludes this subject, and we’ll touch on rasha v’ra lo in a few lines. The Alter Rebbe wants to explain every side of it, because

13:10 we said there are five levels: two levels of the wicked, two levels of the righteous, and the beinoni in the middle. So the Alter Rebbe also explains the last extreme. The Alter Rebbe says: “But one who never feels remorse.” A person can reach a state where he becomes indifferent. Indifferent. How do you say it? Indifferent. It’s as though he has lost his feelings, lost all— So a person who reaches a state where he no longer feels remorse, where there isn’t the slightest movement of remorse in his heart, “and thoughts of teshuvah never come to him, is called a rasha v’ra lo.” That is what is called a rasha v’ra lo. And here, too, the Alter Rebbe says something remarkable. Here you see what kind of book Tanya is. The Alter Rebbe is speaking about a rasha v’ra lo, a person who feels no remorse at all. That means the evil has become the master of his whole being. He doesn’t even feel pain over it, not even remorse. And the Alter Rebbe comes and says something wonderful: “The evil in his soul alone remains within him”—that is what remains in his inner self—“because it has overpowered the good to such an extent that the good has departed from within him and stands over him as a makif, from above.” So here, too, the Alter Rebbe, in his characteristic way, brings good news. The Alter Rebbe says that even a rasha v’ra lo must not—no, no—lose hope. He is not a lost cause; he is not lost. The Alter Rebbe says that the reason a rasha v’ra lo feels no remorse and has no thoughts of teshuvah is that, within himself, he has become completely disconnected from the good. But the makif remains with him, too. A Jew has both a makif, a transcendent dimension, and a p’nimi, an inner dimension. The G-dly soul can be felt within a Jew, and there are many degrees of that: how strongly it is felt. That is the difference between a tzaddik v’tov lo, a tzaddik

15:29 v’ra lo, a beinoni, and a rasha v’tov lo—all the levels. But there is also the makif. Even if, inwardly, he feels no movement of Yiddishkeit, no movement toward G-dliness, no G-dly feeling, not even remorse over letting evil take control, that is because he has become so coarse, gone so far away, become so distant from G-dliness, that the G-dly light is not felt in his inner connection. But a Jew’s makif always remains whole. A Jew is a Jew. He has the makif; he has a connection to G-dliness; he has his soul, a part of G-d above. It simply remains in the form of a makif. The makif is the level of chayah, because the soul has the levels of chayah and yechidah, its transcendent dimensions, and those dimensions always remain intact in a Jew. So it follows that there is a very big difference between a rasha v’ra lo and a tzaddik v’tov lo, the two extremes. A tzaddik v’tov lo—what did the Alter Rebbe say? He has completely transformed the evil into good. Not only does he have no evil; he has transformed it entirely into good. So there is no evil anywhere in him. With a rasha v’ra lo, it is the opposite. Although the good is not present in a revealed way, it remains as a makif. In other words, when it comes to a rasha v’ra lo, you do not say that because he has become so wicked, the good has also been completely transformed. No. The good always remains and is never nullified. It remains within him as a makif. And therefore—therefore what? Therefore we know that “no one will be cast away from Him.” Every Jew will ultimately do teshuvah, even if he is a rasha v’ra lo. You look at him now and see a rasha v’ra lo, but you know that, in the end, because he has a makif,

17:32 because there is something essential in his soul that has never gone away, eventually it will have its effect. At some point, that quality will awaken and prevail. It will pull him out of the mud and make him a baal teshuvah, as we sometimes see in the world. And that is how the Alter Rebbe concludes the chapter: “And therefore our Sages said: ‘Wherever ten are gathered, the Shechinah rests.’” Because even in a rasha v’ra lo, the good remains. He has never lost the good completely; at the very least, it remains as a makif. This shows us the power of Jews. And that is why the statement says “wherever ten are gathered.” What exactly does that mean? The Alter Rebbe means wherever ten are gathered, no matter who they are. They could be ten wicked people, ten people who are each a rasha v’ra lo. But if ten Jews are in one place, even if they are on the lowest level, completely disconnected from G-dliness—the level of rasha v’ra lo—the Shechinah rests there. Wow. They can say Kaddish, Kedushah, and Borchu. Why? Because their makif always remains whole. And because the makif remains whole, when ten Jews are together, that makif is present and the Shechinah rests there. As Chassidus teaches, what is special about ten Jews? The yechidah is revealed then, and so the makif, the Shechinah, comes there. The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya, Igeres Hakodesh, section 23, that if an angel were present at a gathering of ten Jews, even if they were not speaking words of Torah, the angel would be utterly nullified by the dread and awe that would come over it from the revelation of the Shechinah in that place. They are not speaking words of Torah. That means they are not doing what they should. Ten people are together, and they are not speaking words of Torah or saying Tehillim. Nevertheless, the Shechinah is there, because the Shechinah is bound up with the fact that he is a Jew, that he has

19:39 has a soul, and everyone has that, even a rasha v’ra lo, if only in an encompassing way. That is what it means when we say that wherever ten Jews gather, the Shechinah rests. At least in an encompassing way, the Shechinah is there. There’s a story chassidim tell in connection with what we’re learning here, about a rasha v’ra lo. I once heard from Rabbi Milotovsky[?] a vort that, he said, he had heard about a farbrengen with the Frierdiker Rebbe where Reb Itche der Masmid was present. Reb Itche der Masmid had a little l’chaim. And when Reb Itche der Masmid had a l’chaim, he would speak even in front of the Frierdiker Rebbe. So at one farbrengen, Itche had a l’chaim and said, “A chossid is worse than a rasha v’ra lo.” Wow! The Frierdiker Rebbe asked him, “Why do you say that?” He said, “Because what is a rasha v’ra lo? The Alter Rebbe says he has no thoughts of teshuvah. A chossid thinks he’s a chossid, that he has a Rebbe, and that the Rebbe will take care of him, so he doesn’t do teshuvah. So he’s a rasha v’ra lo: he has no thoughts of teshuvah. Who has no thoughts of teshuvah? A chossid who thinks that because he learns Chassidus and because he has a Rebbe, everything is taken care of, so he doesn’t do teshuvah.” The Frierdiker Rebbe asked him, “Nu, but why do you say he’s worse than a rasha v’ra lo?” He said, “It’s simple: a rasha v’ra lo hasn’t learned Chassidus. But this one has learned Chassidus and still doesn’t do teshuvah. That’s worse.” The Frierdiker Rebbe told him he didn’t agree. The Frierdiker Rebbe rejected that idea. He told him there was no need to speak with such gloom. The Frierdiker Rebbe dismissed the whole idea, but Itche had had some mashke, and, well, that was that. That happened among us. But in any case, the main point is that here, up to

21:48 this point, we’ve learned about both ends of the spectrum. In the last two chapters we learned about two general levels: tzaddik v’tov lo and tzaddik v’ra lo. On one hand, there’s a person who has succeeded in subduing the evil even within himself, to the point that he has transformed it. Within that, too, there can be several levels, as we discussed. Conversely, there’s the rasha, in whom the evil dominates the good, and there, too, there can be several levels from one extreme to the other, as we explained. So the question is: What’s left for the beinoni? That’s what makes it difficult now to understand what a beinoni is. We said that a rasha v’tov lo can be someone who doesn’t commit any sins, yet he’s still a rasha v’tov lo. So what is a beinoni? On the other hand, we said that the beinoni is also at war within himself. He isn’t a tzaddik, he isn’t a rasha; he’s a beinoni. What exactly is the level of a beinoni? The Alter Rebbe will continue with this in chapter 12, G-d willing, in the coming classes.