T68 (Tinyana) PNC - Ikkar Shleimus HaTzaddik — L'maalah u'L'matah; Banim u'Talmidim She'eyn Chalifos Lamo

**"Ikkar shleimus ha-tzaddik she-yuchal liyhos l'maalah u'l'matah."** Rabbeinu states the test of true tzaddikus in one criterion that may be the most jarring he ever wrote: *the tzaddik is the one who can be both above and below at the same time*, *and without this he is not a tzaddik at all*. Concretely: when someone comes to him imagining himself at a high level, the tzaddik shows him *he is the opposite — far*; when someone comes who is in *the lowest dyota mamash*, in the earth itself, the tzaddik shows him *adraba — he is close to Hashem*. Both moves are needed, and the second one is non-optional. "He must show the one who has fallen to the very bottom — *adayin hu samuch la-Hashem mamash, kivyachol* — and arouse him: *Hashem imach, v'al tira v'al tepachayd v'al teichas, ki Hu yisbarach imach v'etzlecha v'karov elecha mamash*, because **"מְלֹא כָל הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדוֹ"** (Yeshayah 6:3)." Wherever the man fell, *misham yuchal l'dabek atzmo ba-Hashem*. **Now the chiddush within the chiddush** — the gift Rabbeinu offers anyone who feels far: when you are placed at the bottom and *see* you are far, *that very seeing is itself hiskarvus*. Because before, *you didn't even know you were far* — that was the deeper rechok. The moment you know you are far, you are no longer the same distance. **Use the seeing to revive yourself**: *zehu b'atzmo hiskarvus*, this itself — the bare fact that you can see how far — *is itself the closeness*. Build from there.

**The mirror move**: to one who *is* above, in bechinas shamayim, the tzaddik must show *that he is utterly far* and knows nothing in the knowledge of Hashem yisbarach — bechinas **"מֶה חָמִית, מַה יָּדַעַתְּ"** (Hakdamas Zohar 1b). Specifically *there above*, in shamayim, *that* is the place where they ask **"אַיֵּה מְקוֹם כְּבוֹדוֹ?"** (Yeshayah 6:3 — "where is the place of His glory?"). The high are the ones who don't know where He is; the low are the ones to whom He is *karov elecha mamash*. The tzaddik's signature is the *Tzaddik = "כִּי כֹל בַּשָּׁמַיִם וּבָאָרֶץ"* of Divrei HaYamim I 29:11 — bechinas **"דְּאָחֵד בִּשְׁמַיָּא וּבְאַרְעָא"** (Targum there; Zohar Bereshis 31a; Tikkun 22). The very *anatomy* of being-tzaddik is being *one in heaven AND on earth*; collapsing onto either alone is partial-tzaddikus, hence not tzaddikus *klal*. **Now this same shape unfolds into a startling halachah of legacy.** It would seem obvious that the highest avodah is to break free of chomer entirely and rise upward — so why is the obligation that *after* a man is taken upward, he must leave *banim* in this olam ha-gashmi to fill his place? Wouldn't pure ascent be better? *Lo*: *ein zeh shleimus*. Being in *one* world only is incompleteness even when that one world is shamayim. **Both together — l'maalah AND l'matah — that is *olam shaleim*.** Therefore: every man is *m'chuyav* to leave a remnant of himself on earth — a *ben* or a *talmid*, so that even after he has gone above, he is *also* still here. **And the essence of what must remain is the moach.** Bava Basra 116a on **"אֲשֶׁר אֵין חֲלִיפוֹת לָמוֹ"** (Tehillim 55:20): *chad amar ben, chad amar talmid*. Both transmit the moach: with the *talmid*, the moach is *mufshat mi-gashmiyus*; with the *ben*, the moach is *m'lubash b'tipah zar'is*. R' Yochanan, who lost all his sons, held *talmid*. **Both are needed**: a tzaddik leaves himself below in two registers — abstract moach (talmid) and embodied moach (ben), and both lines must propagate themselves *l'doros*: talmidim making more talmidim, banim making more banim. As long as that flow continues, his moach is *kayam l'matah l'olam va-ed*, and the bechinah of *kol bashamayim u'va'aretz* — being one in both — is held open in the world.

**The closing klal**: it must be *bnei banim and talmidei talmidim*. The talmidim must illuminate further talmidim, and *those* further talmidim again, and so onward and onward — and likewise banim and bnei banim and bnei bnei banim. *L'olam va-ed*. The tzaddik's moach is to remain below *l'olam va-ed*, not just for one or two generations. **This is the secret of the bechinah** "כִּי כֹל בַּשָּׁמַיִם וּבָאָרֶץ" — He is *one in shamayim AND in aretz* — not as two halves of a divided self but as one *kol*, one totality, present everywhere because it is propagating into everywhere. The cross-reference Rabbeinu gives — Likutay Moharan I:7, on "Vayehi miketz... ki merachamam yenahagem" — says it more fully there. **The vort to take home**: a tzaddik who has only the highest-of-shamayim and no chain of moach pouring downward through banim and talmidim is not yet shaleim; and conversely, a man who plants nothing of his moach in the world below, no living vessel that carries his Torah further, has not yet entered the shape of shleimus that begins with the very first sentence of this Tinyana torah — *l'maalah u'l'matah, b'shamayim u'va'aretz, k'echad*.