The puzzle
Before a soul is born it is made to swear: “Be righteous and do not be wicked; and even if the whole world tells you that you are righteous, see yourself as wicked.”
But Pirkei Avot (2:13) says: “Do not be wicked in your own eyes.” How can both be true? The whole Tanya grows from this question.
Three kinds of people
“The righteous are judged by their good inclination… the wicked by their evil inclination… the in-between (beinoni) by both.”
The Tanya will teach that the beinoni — the person who feels the struggle but never lets it win in action — is a level every person can reach, every day.
The animal soul
Every Jew has two souls. The first is the animal soul, which gives life to the body and is the source of natural traits — both good ones like kindness and harmful ones like anger and pride.
The animal soul is not evil. It is natural — and it can be refined and elevated.
The Divine soul
The second soul of a Jew is “truly a part of God above.”
The Alter Rebbe compares it to a child who comes from the very essence of the father’s mind. Even the simplest Jew carries this soul, connected to its source.
What it means for you
The inner conflict you feel is not hypocrisy. It is two real souls — and the Divine one is never absent.
Judaism does not ask you to stop feeling the struggle. It asks you to choose, one act at a time. That is the beinoni — and that is One More Mitzvah.
The whole picture
Tanya’s first two chapters reframe the struggle: you are not a bad person pretending to be good. You are a Divine soul and an animal soul in one body, and every choice decides which one leads.
When you feel pulled two ways today, ask: which soul is speaking right now?
This week: Read Tanya chapter 3 next week — it maps the Divine soul’s ten powers onto the ten Sefirot.
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