Chapter Ten

The Warrior’s Journey

This is the point in Tanya where all the pieces start falling into place. It turns out that the battle we just described is the key to understanding everything that’s going on inside you. Here’s why:

If life were a journey over hilltops and valleys, you wouldn’t need a guide like Tanya. If there were only one soul inside you, capable of both good and bad, the holy and the mundane, you would need only a simple map of a highway over the hills of bad, good, and better, showing you where you are right now and where you need to go next.

But life is a war, and war is a drama. One side rises, the other comes crashing down. There are sudden turns of events, shifting alliances, groundbreaking decisions, and flash victories. And victory itself comes in multiple flavors – there’s deterrence, siege, embargo, conquest, and ultimately a true and lasting peace.

Tanya talks about five distinct states in the battle over the small city, each with a clear, sharp threshold. They come represented in two distinct flavors of rasha, two distinct flavors of tzadik, and the person in between – the beinoni.

In the upcoming chapters, we’ll see what these categories are really all about, how they tell us who holds the gates, who holds the streets, who has retreated but not surrendered, and who has captured the throne. They are five different maps of the same city – each drawn for a different plan of war.

What Makes a Tzadik a Tzadik?

This chapter will deal with winning the war. There’s two sorts of winning, represented by two categories of tzadik.

And along the way we discover what a tzadik truly is: Not just someone better than the rest. Not just someone who does lots of good things. A tzadik is someone whose divine soul shines through and through, leaving no room for bad to exist. He lives on an entirely different plateau of life than the rest of us.

We all feel the inspiration of our divine soul from time to time – it picks us up, it moves us. But a tzadik is the embodiment of that soul. There isn’t a beat of his heart that doesn’t pulse with the divine, not a cell of his body that isn’t drenched with love for G‑d. If we are a candle with a small wick aflame, a tzadik is pure energy.

We are at war; he is at peace. We are becoming; he has arrived. We struggle with a duality of self; he lives in sublime, internal harmony. More fundamentally, where we perceive a coarse, harsh world, the tzadik perceives G‑d’s presence from all directions, shining within each thing and every event.2See Chapter 15; Mareh Mekomot Hagahot V’Ha’arot Ketzarot L’Sefer Shel Beinonim, p. 82.

What’s He Doing Here?

This raises a crucially important question: What’s the tzadik doing in the “Book of the Beinoni”?

Tanya is a practical book. Tanya speaks to you wherever you may be in life, telling you who you are and what you are capable of achieving. So when Tanya tells you what a tzadik is, it must be teaching you something of crucial relevance to your life right now.3Igrot Kodesh – Admur Moharayatz, vol. 14, p. 446; Torat Menachem – Hitva’aduyot, vol. 32, pp. 342–343; vol. 59, p. 318. See The Author’s Title Page above, guide note To Explain Clearly. See also the Rebbe, Igrot Kodesh, vol. 9, pp. 182–183.

And it is. The tzadik is a divine soul in the raw, the veils of kelipah stripped away. And you, at your innermost core, are a divine soul.

Looking at it this way, it makes sense that everything the tzadik achieves within himself, you can also apply in some way within the limitations of your own world.4Sefer HaMa’amarim 5665, p. 132; 5704, p. 153. Each lesson here, even about a tzadik such as Moses or Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, has practical implications for the way you run your life right now.

Here’s one example: Whenever you are learning Torah, doing a mitzvah, engrossed in your prayers, or engaged in anything that has divine purpose, throw yourself into the holiness of that moment. Shut off all distractions. Be there, all of you, as though nothing else exists.

Then, in your personal world, at your own level, you will be Moses, you will be Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai. Whatever you were doing a moment before is irrelevant. For this eternal moment, you will entirely transcend the beast. Let this be your tzadik moment.5Torat Menachem – Sefer HaMa’amarim Melukat, vol. 4, pp. 122–123.

You also need to know what tzadikim are so that you can find them, appreciate them, and connect to them. As we learned in Chapter Two, every Jew’s soul is inherently, intimately bound up with the true tzadikim, and that connection is the lifeline of our souls. The more you can appreciate the essence of the tzadik, the stronger your bond and that flow of life.