The Tanya's eleventh chapter turns the mirror around and examines wickedness with the same precision it applied to righteousness.
The "wicked person who prospers"—the rasha v'tov lo (רשע וטוב לו)—is the exact opposite of the "righteous person who suffers." In this person, the good of the divine soul is subservient to the evil of the animal soul. The kelipah (a shell of impurity) has the upper hand. The divine spark is still there, but it has been pushed down, overpowered, silenced.
Like righteousness, wickedness comes in degrees. Some people sin rarely, in small ways, and only when the evil impulse briefly overpowers them. Others are dominated by desire constantly. Rabbi Schneur Zalman catalogs the gradations with unsettling specificity: there is the person who sins only in action—committing minor transgressions but not major ones. There is the person who sins only in speech—gossip, mockery, slander. And there is the person who sins only in thought—the one who does not act on forbidden desires but cannot stop fantasizing about them.
The Tanya makes a counterintuitive claim here: contemplation of sin is worse than the sin itself. The Talmud in Tractate Yoma says this explicitly. Why? Because of the three garments of the soul—thought, speech, and action—thought is the innermost, the closest to the soul's essence. When a person sins in action, the contamination touches the outer garment. When a person sins in thought, the contamination strikes the core.
But here is the Tanya's revolutionary insight about the wicked person: even at the moment of sin, a person is only called "wicked" temporarily. The divine soul has not been destroyed. It has been overpowered. The moment the person stops sinning, the label lifts. Wickedness, in the Tanya's framework, is not an identity. It is a condition—and conditions can change.
“One is the opposite the other”1 Ecclesiastes 7:14.—the “wicked man who prospers” is antithetical to the “righteous man who suffers.”2 Defined in the previous chapter. That is to say, the goodness that is in his divine soul which is in his brain and in the right part of his heart is subservient to, and nullified by, the evil of the kelipah that is in the left part. This type, too, is subdivided into myriads of degrees which differ in respect of the extent and manner of the nullification and subservience of the good to the bad, G–d forbid. There is the person in whom the said subservience and nullification are in a very minor way, and even these are not permanent or recurring at frequent intervals; but on rare occasions the evil prevails over the good and conquers the “small city,” that is, the body—yet not all of it, but only a part of it, subjecting it to its (evil’s) discipline, to become a vehicle and a garment wherein one of the soul’s three garments mentioned above3 Ch. 4. is clothed, namely, either in deed alone, in the commission of minor transgressions and not major ones, G–d forbid; or in speech alone, in the utterance of something that borders on slander and scoffing and the like; or in thought alone, in contemplations of sin, which are more serious than actual sin,4 Yoma 29a. Cf. Chiddushei Aggadot Maharsha, loc. cit.; Netivot Olam, Netiv Haprishut, ch. 2. The reason why “contemplation of sin is more serious than actual sin” is that of the three “garments” of the soul (thought, speech, and act), thought is the innermost and closest to the soul; hence the contamination strikes closer to the core. or even when he does not contemplate committing a sin but indulges in contemplation on the carnal union between male and female in general, whereby he is guilty of violating the admonition of the Torah, “You shall guard yourself from every wicked thing,”5 Deuteronomy 23:10. meaning that “one must not harbor impure fancies by day….”6 “…so as not to defile himself by night” (Ketuvot 46a). or, when it is a fitting time to study the Torah, but he turns his heart to vain things, as we have learned in the Mishnah in Avot, “One who is awake at night [or travels alone on the road], and turns his heart to [idleness, indeed, he endangers his life].”7 Avot 3:4. For by reason of any one of all these things, and their like, he is called wicked at such time that the evil in his nefesh prevails over him, clothing itself in his body, inducing it to sin and defiling it. Presently, however, the good that is in his divine soul asserts itself, and he is filled with remorse, and he seeks pardon and forgiveness of G–d. Indeed, G–d will forgive him if he has repented with the appropriate penitence according to the counsel of our Sages, of blessed memory, namely, the threefold division of atonement which is expounded by Rabbi Ishmael,8 End of Tractate Yoma. as is explained elsewhere.9 Iggeret Hateshuvah, ch. 1. There is also the person in whom the wickedness prevails more strongly, and all three garments of evil clothe themselves in him, causing him to commit more heinous and more frequent sins. But intermittently he suffers remorse, and thoughts of repentance enter his mind, from the quality of good that is in his soul that gathers strength now and then. However, he has not enough strength to vanquish the evil so as to rid himself entirely of his sins and be as one who confesses and abandons [his evil ways, once and for all]. Concerning such a person, the Rabbis, of blessed memory, have said, “The wicked are full of remorse.”10 Nedarim 9b. These represent the majority of the wicked, in whose soul still lingers some good. But he who never feels contrition, and in whose mind no thoughts of repentance at all ever enter, is called the “wicked who suffers,”11 רשע ורע לו i.e., “possessing (only) evil.” for the evil that is in his soul has alone remained in him, having so prevailed over the good that the latter has already departed from within him, standing aloof, so to speak, over him.12 Thus the good that is in the soul is in a state of “suspended animation”—paralyzed, yet not destroyed. Hence, even the “completely wicked” individual can, through a paramount effort, reactivate the good, and repent, for “the gates of repentance are not closed to anyone.” Therefore the Sages have said, “On every gathering of ten [Jews] the Shechinah rests.”13 Sanhedrin 39a. That is to say, even if they are wicked, the Shechinah rests upon them.
