Chapter 1: Tzaddik, Beinoni, Rasha — and the Two Souls

We learn (Niddah, close of chapter 3) that before birth a person is made to swear: “Be a tzaddik and not a rasha. Even if all the world assures you that you are a tzaddik, regard yourself as a rasha.”

This needs to be understood, because the Mishnah teaches (Avos chapter 2): “Do not be a rasha in your own eyes.”

Besides, someone who sees himself as a rasha will feel hurt and low, and then he cannot serve G‑d gladly and with a happy heart. And if it does not hurt him at all, it may lead him to treat things lightly, G‑d forbid.

The explanation: the Gemara speaks of five kinds of people: a tzaddik who has good, a tzaddik who has bad, a rasha who has good, a rasha who has bad, and a beinoni (an “in-between” person).

The Gemara explains: “A tzaddik who has good is a complete tzaddik; a tzaddik who has bad is an incomplete tzaddik.” The Raya Mehemna (Zohar, Parshas Mishpatim) reads “a tzaddik who has bad” as someone whose evil is held down beneath his good. And at the close of chapter 9 of Berachos the Gemara says: “Tzaddikim are governed by the good inclination; reshaim are governed by the evil inclination; beinonim are governed by both.” Rabbah said: “Someone like me is a beinoni.” Abaye answered him: “Master, you leave no creature room to live!”

All this needs to be explained well. We also need to understand what Iyov said (Bava Basra chapter 1): “Master of the world, You created tzaddikim and You created reshaim.” But before birth it is not decreed whether a person will be a tzaddik or a rasha (Niddah 16b).

We also have to understand what a beinoni actually is. It surely cannot be someone whose deeds are split evenly between merits and sins. Were that so, how could Rabbah have counted himself a beinoni? Everyone knows his lips never paused from Torah study, to the point that the Angel of Death could not prevail over him (Bava Metzia 86a). How could he have wrongly thought that half of what he did was sinful, G‑d forbid?

Furthermore: at the moment a person sins he is called a complete rasha, and if he afterward does teshuvah he is called a complete tzaddik. [So when would he be “half and half”?]

Even someone who breaks a minor rabbinic prohibition is called a rasha (Yevamos chapter 2; Niddah chapter 1). Even someone who could have protested against wrongdoing and did not is called a rasha (Shevuos chapter 6).

How much more so one who fails to keep a positive mitzvah he was able to keep, for example anyone able to study Torah who does not. Of him the Sages applied the verse “Because he scorned the word of G‑d … that soul shall surely be cut off.” He is plainly called a rasha, more than one who transgresses a rabbinic prohibition.

So we have to say that the beinoni does not carry even the sin of failing to study Torah. That explains how Rabbah could think of himself as a beinoni.

Note: The Zohar (III:231a) says that one with few sins [is a “tzaddik who has bad”]. That is Rav Hamnuna’s question to Eliyahu. But by Eliyahu’s reply there, “a tzaddik who has bad” means what the Raya Mehemna said above. And there are seventy faces to the Torah.

There is the familiar usage that someone with equal merits and sins is called a beinoni, and someone with more merits is called a tzaddik (Rambam, Laws of Teshuvah 3:1; Rashi to Rosh Hashanah 16b). That is a borrowed term, used for reward and punishment: he is judged by what most of his deeds are, and he is called “tzaddik” in his verdict because he comes out innocent. But the true definition of tzaddik and beinoni is what the Sages said (Berachos 61b): “Tzaddikim are governed by the good inclination, as it says, ‘My heart is hollow within me’.” That is, he no longer has an evil inclination, having slain it through fasting. Whoever has not reached this, even if his merits outnumber his sins, has not reached the level of a tzaddik at all.

This is why our Sages taught in the Midrash: “G‑d saw that tzaddikim would be few, so He set them down in each generation,” as the verse says, “A tzaddik is the world’s foundation.”

The matter is explained on the basis of Rabbi Chaim Vital’s words in Shaar HaKedushah (also Etz Chaim, Shaar 50, chapter 2): every Jew, righteous or wicked, has two souls, as the verse says, “and the souls (neshamos) that I made.” One soul is from the kelipah and sitra achra. It is vested in the person’s blood and keeps the body alive, as it says, “the flesh’s life is in the blood.” All the bad character traits stem from it, arising from the four bad elements it contains. Anger and arrogance come from its fire element, which rises up. Craving for pleasures comes from its water element, since water makes every kind of delight sprout. Silliness, mockery, bragging and empty chatter come from its air element. Sluggishness and gloom come from its earth element.

From this soul also come the good traits found by nature in all Jews, such as compassion and doing kindness.

In a Jew, this kelipah soul derives from kelipas nogah, which does contain good. Its root is the secret of “the Tree of Knowing good and evil.”

The souls of the gentile nations are different. They derive from the other, unclean kelipos, which hold no good at all, as Etz Chaim (Shaar 49, chapter 3) writes: “Whatever good the nations do, they do for their own sake.” So the Gemara reads the verse “the kindness of nations is a sin”: whatever charity and kindness the nations perform is only for their own glory.