A sin is something utterly absurd! Is it even possible? - Chapter 12 - Part One

00:00 Today we’re starting a new chapter, chapter 12. Chapter 12 is where the Alter Rebbe begins to address the whole purpose he wanted to reach in Tanya. After all, the Alter Rebbe calls Tanya the “Book of the Beinoni.” The first eleven chapters were an introduction to understanding who the beinoni is—the person the Alter Rebbe wants to discuss. In other words, we know that the whole purpose of Tanya was for the Alter Rebbe to offer a path in serving Hashem for the ordinary person. That was his goal, his purpose, his plan, his direction: to take the ordinary Jew, the simple Jew—not people with lofty, exceptional souls—and teach how every Jew can fulfill “for this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it”; how every Jew can be complete in observing Torah and mitzvos, in thought, speech, and action. That is what the Alter Rebbe calls the beinoni. So throughout the first eleven chapters, to understand who the beinoni is, the Alter Rebbe first had to explain the nature of the soul and how it is structured. That is why he devoted the opening chapters to the two souls, the soul’s faculties, and the soul’s garments of thought, speech, and action. He explained each side in contrast to the other: how these work in the G-dly soul and how they work in the animal soul. He explained the nature of kelipah, the three completely impure kelipos, kelipas nogah, and the struggle. Then, in chapter 9, he began discussing the struggle that takes place within each person—the right chamber, the left chamber, the mind, the heart, and the whole dynamic, the whole structure, of the inner struggle between the two souls. Then the Alter Rebbe began explaining that within this struggle are all the levels we discussed, which he introduced at the beginning of Tanya. On one side are tzaddikim, and even among them there are

02:14 several levels. Broadly speaking, there are two levels, though there are many gradations within the level of tzaddik. At the other extreme, in contrast, is the level of the rasha, and here too there are several levels. Broadly speaking, there are two levels, though there are many gradations. And then there is also the category of the beinoni, which is the main subject. That is what the Alter Rebbe now comes to explain in chapter 12, after explaining the two extremes. As we said, the Alter Rebbe’s goal is to speak about the beinoni, because that is what concerns each of us. As the Alter Rebbe will explain in the coming chapters, the level of the beinoni is the level attainable by every person. Everyone can be a beinoni, needs to be a beinoni, and is drawn to be a beinoni. We only need to know the way, and that is why the Alter Rebbe wrote Tanya for us: to teach us the path of the beinoni. To understand the beinoni, we also need to know the extremes. Who is the tzaddik? Who is the rasha? Only then can we understand who the beinoni is. In particular, when we study Tanya, we notice that the beinoni is not something superficial. It is a very deep, very subtle level, and it is easy to make many mistakes about it. If you do not study Tanya properly, if you look at it only superficially, on a first reading, you can make many mistakes and fail to understand exactly who the beinoni is. We’ll see that now as we begin studying the chapter inside—how we need to understand the depth of the matter and what the Alter Rebbe is saying here. At first glance, if you ask someone who studies Tanya but has not studied it properly—he has only read it superficially and has not really delved into it—ask him, “Tell me, who is a beinoni?” He will simply say, “A beinoni is someone who does mitzvos and does not commit transgressions.” That is

04:03 seemingly what the Alter Rebbe says. What is the difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni? A tzaddik not only does not commit transgressions; he has no yetzer hara at all. The beinoni has a yetzer hara, but in actual practice he observes all the mitzvos and does not commit transgressions. That is why he is called a beinoni. That is how it seems on the surface. But when you study Tanya carefully, you see that it goes much deeper. It is not so simple. A person may actually observe mitzvos and refrain from transgressions and still not be called a beinoni. He is still called a rasha—at least, a rasha as defined in Tanya. We will understand this now as we study the Alter Rebbe’s words here in chapter 12. Before we go inside, it is well known—our Rebbeim said this, and it appears in sichos—that this is a teaching passed down from Rebbe to Rebbe. Some even attribute it to the Alter Rebbe himself: that even the tzaddik of Tanya is, in fact, a beinoni. In other words, although Tanya speaks about tzaddikim—we mentioned this when we studied chapter 10—the Alter Rebbe once said that the tzaddik he discusses and explains in chapter 10 is also, in fact, a level of beinoni. The Alter Rebbe does not even explain the true tzaddik here. As is well known, the Alter Rebbe wrote a book for tzaddikim. There is the famous story the Rebbe relates in the Reshimos: the Shpola Zeide saw the book and said that the world was not ready to receive it. The Alter Rebbe had written a book for tzaddikim. It was a manuscript, and the Shpola Zeide came upon it in a box or [unclear]. He saw the book and said that the world was not ready to receive it, and therefore the book would go up in a flame to heaven,

05:52 “and I, too, will ascend together with it.” And so it was: on the day, or around the time, of the Shpola Zeide’s passing, there was a fire at the Alter Rebbe’s home, and the book was burned. As the story goes, the book for tzaddikim was burned, and the Alter Rebbe was very distressed, and so on. This is not the place to go into the details of the story, but it is well known that the Alter Rebbe wrote a book for tzaddikim. The Tanya we have is a book for beinonim, and accordingly, even the tzaddik of Tanya is also a kind of level of beinoni. There is another well-known story people tell: once the Alter Rebbe said of himself that he was a beinoni, and his brother asked him—I think it was his brother; I’m not certain I remember the story correctly. It was Rabbi Pinchas Reizes or his brother, Reb Mordechai Leib. In any case, he asked him, “How can you say of yourself that you are a beinoni? You leave no room for anyone else to live!” And they say the Alter Rebbe told him that there are five hundred levels of beinoni. Exactly how it goes—there is also a tradition like that, a saying that chassidim repeat. In any case, Tanya is the Book of Beinonim, and the Alter Rebbe comes to explain to each of us exactly who the beinoni is, so that we understand how each of us needs to aspire and want to reach that level, and to try to become a beinoni. The Alter Rebbe says—and now we’ll study a little inside—the Alter Rebbe says here in chapter 12: “The beinoni is one in whom the evil never gains enough strength to conquer the small city.” Who is the beinoni? A person in whom the evil never gains enough strength to conquer the small city. Notice the precision of the Alter Rebbe’s wording: “The evil never gains enough strength.” He means that the beinoni does have evil within him; he does have a struggle; he does have a yetzer

07:48 Evil has desires. So there is a struggle here. The evil inclination in a beinoni sometimes does gain strength and tries to bring him down through desires. But this is what the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize: the evil does not gain enough strength to conquer the “small city.” It does not have the power to bring a person to actually commit a sin—to take control of the body and cause him to sin. The Alter Rebbe explains this in detail: “That is, the three garments of the animal soul—thought, speech, and action on the side of kelipah—do not overpower the G-dly soul in him and clothe themselves in the body, in the brain, the mouth, and the other limbs, causing them to sin and defiling them, G-d forbid.” What, says the Alter Rebbe, is the definition of a beinoni? A beinoni is someone whose animal soul has no control. As we said, the animal soul can still stir within a beinoni; he has a struggle. But in actual practice, the animal soul cannot overpower his limbs or his body. The Alter Rebbe spells it out: not his brain, which relates to thought; not his mouth, which relates to speech; and not his other limbs, which relate to action. “Causing them to sin and defiling them, G-d forbid.” Why both expressions, “causing them to sin” and “defiling them”? Causing them to sin means an actual transgression. Defiling them includes even a sinful thought. A sinful thought may not be an actual sin, but it does cause a certain blemish in the soul. “Thoughts of sin are more difficult than sin,” as we discussed in the previous chapter. So this is what the Alter Rebbe is saying: in a beinoni, the animal soul can neither cause his limbs to sin nor defile them, G-d forbid. That is the “turn away from evil” side. And what is the “do good” side? “Only the three garments of the G-dly soul clothe themselves in the body”

10:02 —thought, speech, and action. That is the other side of the beinoni. On one hand, the animal soul has no control over his body. On the positive side, his whole body, all his limbs, and all his thought, speech, and action are, in actual practice, devoted only to Torah and mitzvos. “Only the three garments of the G-dly soul clothe themselves in the body: the thought, speech, and action of the 613 positive mitzvos.” That means his garment of thought is entirely devoted to Torah study, to thinking about Torah. As for his mouth, “his mouth does not cease from study”: throughout the day, every free moment, he learns Torah. Likewise, his limbs and his 365 sinews are occupied with Torah and mitzvos. Now the Alter Rebbe adds something else. Okay, so that is the first point. It all seems straightforward: a beinoni is someone who turns away from evil with complete perfection and does good with complete perfection. That concerns actual practice—the garments of thought, speech, and action. The animal soul cannot cause the beinoni’s body to sin, while his thought, speech, action, and all his limbs are devoted to serving Hashem. Now the Alter Rebbe adds something stronger, which seems to create a problem, to make things a little confusing. He uses even stronger words: “And he has never committed a sin in his life.” A beinoni is a person who has never sinned in his life. “And he will never sin.” Not only in the past; in the future, too, he will never sin. “And the name ‘rasha’ has never applied to him, even for one hour or one moment, throughout his life.” Wow. The beinoni, says the Alter Rebbe, not only refrains from sinning in actual practice and does only mitzvos in actual practice—

12:10 he is a person who has never committed a sin and never will, and there has never been any occasion, any moment, when the name “rasha” applied to him, even for one hour or one moment throughout his life. What the Alter Rebbe means is that he has never had any improper thought or engaged in lashon hara, or any evil speech or action. That is why he has never been called a rasha. And here comes the obvious question everyone asks when learning these words. So how—if that is the case, then that’s it; we can close the Tanya. This has nothing to do with us. For whom did the Alter Rebbe write the Tanya? What is going on here? A person who has ever sinned in his life—that’s it, he can no longer be a beinoni? A beinoni is someone who has never sinned in his life, someone who from the day he was born [unclear]. What is going on? Why does the Alter Rebbe set the bar so high, make it so difficult, so lofty? And the question applies in both directions. First, “he has never committed a sin in his life.” Does that mean a person who has sinned has no hope? What about “nothing stands in the way of teshuvah”? Can’t he do teshuvah? What is going on here? What’s more, several times in Tanya itself the Alter Rebbe says that every person can be a beinoni. In the next chapter, chapter 14, the Alter Rebbe writes explicitly that every person can be a beinoni at any time and at any moment. That seems like a direct contradiction. Here the Alter Rebbe says, “He has never committed a sin in his life,” and in chapter 14 he says that every person can be a beinoni

14:11 at any moment. What’s more, later in Tanya the Alter Rebbe speaks about this explicitly. All the boys who regularly learn Chitas remember? They recently learned it in the final chapters of Tanya, where the Alter Rebbe speaks about the beinoni and says he needs to take stock of all the thoughts, speech, and actions he has had since his childhood and youth, and that this is why he has timtum halev, a dullness of the heart. He is talking about the beinoni. But if you now say that a beinoni has never sinned, how can the Alter Rebbe later, in chapter 29, say that the beinoni has bad things he did in the past? What is going on? That is the question about the past. Now there is also a question about the future. What does “he will never sin” mean? How can you say that? How can I be sure I will never commit a sin? How can I know what will happen next week or next year? Even about tzaddikim, the Gemara says that even a complete tzaddik must not—how does it put it?—“Do not trust yourself.” That is said about tzaddikim: you cannot trust yourself, because a person has free choice. Even a complete tzaddik could, G-d forbid, suffer a downfall. It says of Yochanan the Kohen Gadol that he served as Kohen Gadol for eighty years and afterward became a Sadducee. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said, “I do not know on which path they will lead me.” And here we are talking about a beinoni, not a tzaddik. How can you say of a beinoni that he will never sin? So there is a well-known explanation, one accepted among chassidim for generations, that the Alter Rebbe does not mean these words literally. When he says “he has never committed a sin and never will,” he does not mean the words

16:20 in their literal sense. The Alter Rebbe wants to explain—and this goes back to what we said at the beginning of the class—he writes these words to explain the essential character of a beinoni. Of course, he may have committed sins in the past and done teshuvah today. So what does the Alter Rebbe want to explain? A beinoni is someone for whom it is not enough that he is not committing sins right now and is doing mitzvos right now. That alone is not enough to call you a beinoni. You could still be a rasha in the Torah’s terms. In the previous chapter, the Alter Rebbe stated explicitly: what defines a rasha who has good within him? Someone who falls into sin, even only occasionally, and afterward does teshuvah. Nevertheless, the Alter Rebbe writes in chapter 11 that he is called a rasha—a rasha who has good within him, at any rate. In chapter 11, the previous chapter, the Alter Rebbe explicitly describes a rasha who has good within him as someone who has improper thoughts or notions, actions, and so on, and who subsequently regrets them and has thoughts of teshuvah. The Alter Rebbe placed that case under the category of a rasha who has good within him. So right now he is not sinning. Right now he is doing mitzvos, and he has also done teshuvah, yet he is not called a beinoni. What more is the Alter Rebbe trying to tell us? What is the difference? The Alter Rebbe says that a beinoni is someone whose state of mind right now is not merely that he is not sinning and is doing mitzvos in practice. He is now in a state of mind of “he has not sinned and he will not sin.” That phrase does not describe what actually happened. It describes his inner state right now. In other words, right now, in his connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, in his love of Hashem, in his service...

18:26 His service of Hashem, his observance of mitzvos, is such that it is clear to him that this is the only way to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and whatever test he faces, he will overcome it. That is the meaning of “he has never committed a sin in his life.” In other words, in his present state, given the extent of his commitment—even if, as we said, he is not a tzaddik but a beinoni—the beinoni is a person who is completely devoted. He is devoted to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and sin is utterly unthinkable to him. Think of ordinary people, each of us. Even though we are neither tzaddikim nor beinonim—if only we were a rasha vetov lo, as they say—each of us has certain things, both in refraining from evil and in doing good, that are simply a given. We do not struggle with them. Not everything is a struggle. There are young men for whom putting on tefillin is a struggle; for others it is simply a given, and so on. Everyone has things that are a given for them. The same applies to refraining from evil: for an ordinary Jew, eating chametz on Pesach is utterly unthinkable. Eating pork is utterly unthinkable. That is how it is. A beinoni is a person for whom this applies to all 613 mitzvos. “He has never committed a sin in his life.” That does not mean—he may have done teshuvah at some point, but after doing teshuvah, he did the kind of teshuvah through which every form of evil is now utterly unthinkable to him. And likewise, “he will never commit a sin.” It is not that he commits sins or does sinful things. That is also the meaning of “he will never commit a sin.” It does not mean that I can be certain of what he will do. He has free choice. But given the state of mind he is in now, he will never

20:48 commit a sin. He will not do it. He is in a state in which sin is unthinkable to him, and he cannot imagine himself committing a sin under any circumstances, because his identification with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is absolute. That is the essential difference between a rasha vetov lo and a beinoni. This is what the Alter Rebbe wants to explain to us with these words. A rasha vetov lo may, in actual practice, not be committing sins right now. As the Alter Rebbe said in the previous chapter, he may go for long periods without committing any sin, and he may even have done teshuvah for what he did. But it may be an external teshuvah, an ordinary, simple teshuvah. What does that mean about his potential now? The possibility of sin is not unthinkable to him. His yetzer hara could overpower him, and then he would fall again. He is constantly at risk. So he is called a rasha vetov lo. A beinoni is a person whose service of Hashem is now such that his connection to G-dliness is utterly complete and so firm that no other way is possible for him. There is a maamar of the Rebbe, Mishpatim 5738, that speaks very much to this. Thank G-d, that maamar was also published in an edited version. The Rebbe edited it; it was one of the maamarim the Rebbe delivered in his room. The year 5738 was a well-known period when the Rebbe held farbrengens from his room many times. This is one of the maamarim from his room, and the Rebbe edited it. So we have this edited maamar, and it contains some very, very wonderful words connected with what is explained here in Tanya, chapters 12, 13 and 14. The Rebbe introduces several insights there. The Rebbe discusses a maamar of the Alter Rebbe about the Canaanite servant, the Hebrew servant and the Hebrew maidservant in connection with Parshas Mishpatim,

22:40 several levels of servants. These are explained as different levels, and the Rebbe connects them with the levels of a rasha vetov lo and a beinoni; within the level of beinoni itself, there are several levels. It is very, very interesting. In that maamar, the Rebbe discusses the servant. A beinoni is a servant who, in essence, is a Hebrew servant. Even if outwardly he is a Canaanite servant, in essence he is a Hebrew servant: a Jew whose soul shines within him. The Rebbe cites the Rambam on this—the well-known statement of the Rambam that a Jew, deep down, wants to fulfill G-d’s will and does not want to do anything against G-d’s will. So the meaning of beinoni is that this desire is so strong within him that he will not commit a sin and will never commit one. That is his present state. Up to this point, that is the usual explanation, the plain meaning here in Tanya. Now, just one more point to add, which the Rebbe added in later years. I had the privilege of hearing it from the Rebbe in Cheshvan 5745. At a Shabbos farbrengen, the Rebbe delivered a maamar beginning “Vayihyu Chayei Sarah.” The Rebbe also edited that maamar several years later, in 5751. The maamar “Vayihyu Chayei Sarah” is in the Melukat. There the Rebbe added another point that sheds new light on this passage in Tanya. After all, the Alter Rebbe’s wording is “he has never committed a sin in his life.” According to the explanation we have given, he is presently in a state in which he will not commit a sin. But the Alter Rebbe says he has never committed a sin in his life. What do we do with that wording? The Rebbe said something else that is very, very interesting. As always with the Rebbe, it is based on halachah, of course. It came in the middle of the maamar, and it was a delight to hear. The Rebbe spoke about this in connection with Sarah’s years,

24:37 about which it says, “All of them were equally good”: at one hundred she was like twenty, and at twenty she was like seven. So the Rebbe explained this in relation to the present—the state of the beinoni that the Rebbe was discussing. What else did the Rebbe add in that maamar? The Rebbe said that the Gemara states that when a person does teshuvah, his sins are uprooted retroactively. In other words, there is teshuvah that works from this point onward, and there is teshuvah that also sets the past right. In particular, through teshuvah out of love, deliberate sins become merits for him. It is like what we say about healing: there is healing from this point onward, and there is healing that also changes the past. So too with teshuvah: there is teshuvah from this point onward, but there is also teshuvah out of love, through which even his past sins become merits for him. Accordingly, the Rebbe says, the beinoni has done teshuvah, and, in essence, his teshuvah is the kind connected with teshuvah out of love. A Jew wants to serve Hashem and does not want to be separated from Him. The moment a person does teshuvah, the essential nature of that teshuvah contains an element of teshuvah out of love. Consequently, his past is also completely set right, and “he has never committed a sin in his life” is true even in the literal sense. That is what the Rebbe added: the meaning of “he has never committed a sin in his life” is also literal. He truly has never committed a sin, because through teshuvah, his past too has been completely set right. So here we see just how precise every word in Tanya is.