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Chapter 1
A teaching states [at the end of chapter 3 of Niddah (Niddah 30b)]: They put him under an oath, Be a tzaddik (a righteous person), and do not be a rasha (a wicked person). And even if the whole world, all of it, says to you, You are a tzaddik, be in your own eyes like a rasha.
And this needs to be understood. For we have learned [Avot, chapter 2 (Mishnah Avot 2:13)]: And do not be a rasha before your own self. And also, if he is in his own eyes like a rasha, his heart will be grieved and he will be sad, and he will not be able to serve Hashem (God) with joy and with a good heart. And if his heart is not grieved at all from this, he can come to taking things lightly, God spare us.
But the matter is this. For behold, we find in the Gemara five classes: a tzaddik and it is good for him, a tzaddik and it is bad for him, a rasha and it is good for him, a rasha and it is bad for him, and a beinoni (the in-between person). And they explained in the Gemara (Berakhot 7a): a tzaddik and it is good for him means a complete tzaddik. A tzaddik and it is bad for him means a tzaddik who is not complete. And in the Faithful Shepherd (Raaya Mehemna), the portion Mishpatim, it explained: a tzaddik and it is bad for him means that the bad in him is bent under the good, and so on. And in the Gemara, at the end of chapter 9 of Berakhot (Berakhot 61b): tzaddikim, the good yetzer (the urge) judges them, and so on. Reshaim, the bad yetzer judges them. Beinonim, this one and that one judge them, and so on. Rabbah said: For example, I am a beinoni. Abaye said to him: The master leaves no life for any creature, and so on.
And to understand all this, explained well. And also to understand what Job said [Bava Batra, chapter 1 (Bava Batra 16a)], Master of the world, You created tzaddikim, You created reshaim, and so on. But (Niddah 16b) it does not say tzaddik and rasha. And also to understand the real nature of the level of the beinoni. For he is surely not half merits and half sins. For if so, how did Rabbah err about himself, to say that he is a beinoni? And it is known (Bava Metzia 86a) that his mouth did not cease from the text of his study, so that even the angel of death was not able to rule over him. And how could he have been able to err about half sins, God spare us? And further, at the hour when he does sins he is called a complete rasha. [And if afterward he turned back, he is called a complete tzaddik.] And even one who transgresses a light prohibition of the words of the scribes is called a rasha, as it is stated in chapter 2 of Yevamot (Yevamot 20a) and in the first chapter of Niddah (Niddah 12a). And even one who has it in his hand to protest and did not protest is called a rasha [in chapter 6 of Shevuot (Shevuot 39b)]. And how much more so, from a light matter to a heavy one, with one who nullifies some positive mitzvah (a commanded deed) that it is possible for him to fulfill, such as anyone for whom it is possible to be occupied in Torah and he is not occupied. Concerning him the sages of blessed memory expounded (Sanhedrin 99a): “For he scorned the word of Hashem,” and the rest, “be cut off, it shall be cut off,” and the rest (Numbers 15:31). And it is plain that he is called a rasha more than one who transgresses a prohibition of the rabbis. And if so, of necessity the beinoni does not have in him even the sin of nullifying Torah. And because of this, Rabbah erred about himself, to say that he is a beinoni.
Gloss: (And what is written in the Zohar, part 3, folio 231, everyone whose sins are few, and so on, is the question of Rav Hamnuna to Elijah. But according to Elijah’s answer there, the explanation of a tzaddik and it is bad for him is as was explained in the Faithful Shepherd, the portion Mishpatim, above. And the Torah has seventy faces.)
And that which we say in general, that half against half is called a beinoni, and a majority of merits is called a tzaddik, that is a borrowed name, for the matter of reward and punishment, because he is judged after his majority, and he is called a tzaddik in his judgment, since he is meritorious in the judgment. But as for the truth of the name of the description and of the rank, of the separate ranks and levels of tzaddikim and beinonim, the sages of blessed memory said (Berakhot 61b): tzaddikim, the good yetzer judges them, as it is said (Psalms 109:22): “and my heart is slain within me,” for he has no bad yetzer, because he killed it by fasting (Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 9:5). But anyone who has not reached this level, even though his merits are many above his sins, is not in the rank and the level of a tzaddik at all. And therefore the sages of blessed memory said in the midrash (Yoma 38b): The Holy One, blessed be He, saw the tzaddikim, that they are few. He arose and planted them in every generation, and so on. And as it is written (Proverbs 10:25): “and a tzaddik is the foundation of the world.”
But the explanation of the matter is according to what Rabbi Chaim Vital, of blessed memory, wrote in the Gates of Holiness [and in the Tree of Life, gate 50, chapter 2], that every man of Israel, the one a tzaddik and the one a rasha, has two souls. As it is written (Isaiah 57:16): “and the souls, I made,” which are two nefashot (a nefesh is the lowest level of the soul). One nefesh is from the side of the kelipah (a husk that hides holiness) and the sitra achra (the other side). And it is the one that clothes itself in the blood of the person, to give life to the body. As it is written (Leviticus 17:11): “for the nefesh of the flesh is in the blood.” And from it come all the bad traits, from four bad elements that are in it. That is, anger and pride from the element of fire, which rises upward. And desire for pleasures from the element of water, for water makes every kind of pleasure grow. And wildness, and scoffing, and boasting, and idle words, from the element of air. And laziness and sadness, from the element of earth. And also good traits that are in the nature of all Israel as they are born, such as mercy and the doing of acts of kindness, come from it. For in Israel this nefesh of the kelipah is from the kelipah of nogah, in which there is good as well, and it is from the mystery of the tree of knowledge of good and bad. It is not so with the nefashot of the nations of the world. They are from the other unclean kelipot, in which there is no good at all, as it is written in the Tree of Life, gate 49, chapter 3. And all the good that the nations do, they do for their own selves. And as it is stated in the Gemara (Bava Batra 10b) on the verse (Proverbs 14:34), “and the kindness of the nations is a sin,” that all the charity and kindness that the nations of the world do are only in order to boast, and so on.
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