T282 PNC - Judge Every Person — and Yourself — to the Scale of Merit; Find the Good Points and Make Melodies

You must judge every person to the scale of merit — even one who is completely wicked. You have to search until you find some little good in him, some little point where he is not wicked. Through finding that little good and judging him favorably, you actually move him from the scale of guilt to the scale of merit, and you can return him to teshuvah. "And yet a little, and the wicked is no more; you contemplate his place and he is not" (Psalms 37:10) — Rebbe Nachman reads this as: "yet a little [good] and there is no [more] wicked one" — by finding the residual good in him, the "wicked" identity dissolves. "Contemplate his place" — gaze at his place, his level, where he stands; and "he is not" — he is no longer the wicked one he was. The good point lifts him out.

And critically — the same applies to yourself. A person must find a little good in himself too. It is well known that a person must always be in joy and distance sadness very far. Even when you begin to look at yourself and see no good, only sins, and the yetzer wants to topple you with sadness and black bile — it is forbidden to fall. You must search and find some little good in yourself. How is it possible you didn't do even one mitzvah or good thing in your days? Even if when you look at that good thing it too looks full of wounds (foreign thoughts during the mitzvah, defects, distractions), even so — how can it be that not one single point in that mitzvah was good? Find it. The smallest possible point of holiness is enough to revive yourself with.

Through this searching and finding little good in yourself, you go out from the scale of guilt to the scale of merit and can return in teshuvah — "yet a little [good] and there is no wicked" applied to yourself. By gathering more and more good points (each pulled out of bad), you make melodies — niggunim. The good points are notes; assembled, they sing.

Through these melodies a person can pray and sing and thank Hashem from his physical state and his deeds, even when he sees how far he is from holiness. He revives himself with his own words — though he has many bad deeds, he searches and finds his good points and gladdens himself. Certainly one should enlarge his joy in every good point of Israel's holiness he finds in himself. Then, energized, he can pray and sing and thank Hashem. "Azamerah l'Elohai b'odi" (Psalms 146:2) — Rebbe Nachman reads "b'odi" not as "in my time" but as "in my still-little" — "yet a little [good] and the wicked is no more." Through that point of "still some good" you can sing and thank Hashem.

Reb Noson adds the strongest warning: this Torah is the foundation for everyone who wants to come close to Hashem and not lose his world entirely, G-d forbid. Many people who are far from Hashem are far primarily because of black bile and sadness — they fall into despair, see the spoilage of their deeds, and give up entirely. They stop praying with kavvanah and stop doing what they could still do. A person needs to be very wise about this, because all the falls of mind, even when they seem to follow real bad deeds, are themselves the work of the master of evil — who weakens the mind in order to topple the person completely. The remedy is to walk in this Torah — always searching for one little good, gathering points, reviving and gladdening yourself, hoping for salvation, praying and singing — "Azamerah l'Elohai b'odi" — until you merit true return.

And whoever can make these melodies — gathering the good points found among all Israel, even in the sinners — can pray before the amud as a shaliach tzibbur, because the prayer leader must be sent by all the public: he must gather all the good points of every davener and include them in himself, then stand and pray with all that combined good. This is the secret of the chazzan in the Mishnah (Shabbat 11a): "the chazzan sees where the children are reading" — meaning, the one who can make these melodies sees from which tzaddik each child receives his speech, from whose mouth they draw breath to enter Torah. Knowing all the tzaddikim, knowing which souls belong to which roots, who can make these melodies — to know all of this is to know the entire spiritual genealogy of Israel.