So far, we have related to tears of sorrow and sadness as negative, following the directive that we should “serve God with joy.” However, there are exceptions to this rule. There are many positive references to weeping in the Bible and in the sages’ teachings, even when they relate to an individual’s unfortunate circumstances.
In the book of Psalms, for example, King David often refers to his tears.
Refining our sadness is one of the main topics that the Alter Rebbe deals with in the Tanya. He distinguishes between negative sadness in the sense of morbid depression, and positive sadness, which he describes as bitterness. Positive sadness results from a heart broken heart by our distance from God. When the heart cries because of this distance, our tears purify it and lead to constant refinement through repentance.
Paradoxically, this type of bitter sadness does not contradict our sense of joy, as stated in the Zohar (and quoted in Tanya) “Weeping is lodged in one side of my heart, and joy is lodged in the other.” The heart is capable of bearing these two contradictory emotions at one and the same time. As a result, the rectified individual can weep out of bitterness while simultaneously rejoicing that God is with him at all times. Tears wept from this paradoxical state originate from the highest, super-conscious level of the soul; the singular one, where all opposites unite. Indeed, “the singular one” (הָידִחְי), and “weeping” (הָיִּכְּב) have an identical numerical value of 37. Similarly, the numerical value of “living one” (הָיַח)—the second super-conscious level of the soul—is 23, which is the numerical value of “joy” (הָוְדֶח).
