Tonight's class is sponsored by Le'ilui Nishmat (for the elevation of the soul) Farha bat Esther.
We were discussing the few situations that a person can encounter in this world, how to think about them, how to go about them, and what attitude we should have. We're up to number six. Number six is very important: when a person has been promised reward and punishment in this world and the next world.
The first thing we need to remember whenever we discuss reward and punishment is that it's one of the 13 principles of faith, number 11: Hashem promises to reward people for the good deeds they've done in this world, and we expect to be accountable for the misdeeds being done in this world.
Some of it is a tough truth to comprehend and sometimes to accept. We live in a world today of acceptance, where everything is good, everything is okay. We accept ourselves, we accept each other, and everybody is good. It's a liberal atmosphere today, so when we learn these concepts from the Torah, sometimes it's a little bothersome, to say the least. It can be in today's world. But we need to remember that a basis of the Jewish religion and one of the foundations we have to believe in is the concept of reward and punishment.
We've been through this before, in class number—I don't know—five or six, maybe. We explained that if we understand the precision with which Hashem runs the world, all the gifts a person has, and the precision with which he receives those gifts, we would be overwhelmed. Life itself, every breath you take, the movement of every muscle, brain waves, the flow of blood—just to talk about a person's health. Think about a person walking around basically healthy, even though we have issues. Everybody has medical issues, let's say. I don't care what medical issue you have; everybody has something, I'm sure. But you walk around relatively healthy. The gift of that situation is so enormous, and the precision with which we're receiving those gifts is so overwhelming. If we just contemplated it for a while, we'd be completely overwhelmed.
And yet, we still go and do our sins. Nobody should think that they don't do sins; they do. There are many halachot (Jewish laws) that we don't even know. So anytime we violate the halachah (Jewish law), it's a sin. Maybe it's by mistake, but ignorance is not bliss. Everybody says, “Don't tell me. I don't want to know.” Then you get a lot of that. People out there think that if you don't go to a class, you never knew. The rabbi didn't teach you, so you never knew. So it's not my fault. No, the other way around. You're supposed to try to know. If you don't know, that itself is a complaint against you. How come you didn't know? You had a whole life to learn, and you didn't learn. So ignorance is not bliss. Some people shouldn't think that if they didn't know, it's going to save them. Not knowing is not going to save anything. You have to know. Part of the job in life is to learn, to study, and understand what you need to do and what you can't do. You can't hide behind ignorance.
There are so many things that we don't even know. The idea is that we live in sin, at such a level of sin, all the time. For a person to think that it's not fair, or that any punishment I'm going to get is undeserved, you can't even bring it up. It's so absurd. In the world we live in today, where everything is good and everybody is accepted, and we have to accept ourselves and each other for what they are, right? That's what everybody preaches today, right? It's all against the Torah. The Torah doesn't believe in any of that stuff. We have to accept, yes, but we always have to look to get better and never be happy with where we are. We're never happy with where we are. We always look to grow and to stop doing sins as much as we can. If something is against the Torah, it's not acceptable. It's not that we accept you or don't accept you. It's not acceptable. If it's against the Torah, it's not acceptable. Period. There's no two ways about it.
On the other hand, there are many good things that we do in this world. Every Jew has a portion of the world to come. There are exceptions, but it's rare. Every Jew has a portion of the world to come. And why? The entire nation, all tzaddikim (righteous people)? I just got finished telling you how big we are. But the answer is no. We all do many mitzvot (good deeds). Afilu poshei Yisrael, even the sinners among the Jewish people, are filled with mitzvot like a pomegranate. That's how many mitzvot we do. The opportunities to do mitzvot are so rampant, so out there, and we take advantage of opportunities. It's a great thing. We all do so many mitzvot, so we all get reward for something.
So it's not a balance sheet at the end. It's not a bank statement where you have debits and credits and balance it out at the bottom, and then you either get positive or negative, right? No, that's not how it works. You get reward for the mitzvot, and you get punished for the avonot (sins). They don't cancel each other out. That's not how it works. Everything is paid back; everything is paid for. There's payment. That's what Hashem promises us: positive and, unfortunately, negative consequences. Now, negative consequences are not guaranteed. You can do teshuvah (repentance); there's always teshuvah to do. And with real teshuvah, a person could avert punishment.
But punishment is not a bad thing; we have to remember that. That's another thing we have to remember. Punishment is not a bad thing. Punishment is an opportunity to get rid of sin. We should view punishments as good things. These are opportunities to get rid of our sins. And there's no greater opportunity than that, because we care so much about the sin. We're so bothered by the damage we've done to the world and to ourselves with the sin. We'll do anything to get rid of it. If the suffering helps us get rid of sin, what's better than that? We'll take it, because it's worth it.
I'll suffer in this world, a temporary world, with suffering that starts and ends. And the trade-off, the return—what do I get? I get a clean soul. I get rid of how many sins? Who knows. It depends how great the suffering is. I get rid of all my sins. It's the greatest investment you can have. The greatest investment you can make: you go upstairs after 120, and you have all mitzvot. Go straight to Olam Haba (world to come), because you took care of all your sins in this world. It's a tremendous, tremendous opportunity.
But it's only when you accept it with happiness. If you accept it kicking and screaming, and you're trying to end it, doing what you can to end it, going to rabbis and saying, “Give me this, end it,” then you lose most of the benefit. The main benefit is when you accept it with happiness. If you can be happy, that's the benefit of the suffering. That's where the suffering really, really cleanses. When you say to yourself, “I'm happy to endure. I'm happy to endure because Hashem wants me to endure. And I'm happy to endure because it's going to be an investment for me for the future. I'll get rid of all my sins with it.” If we can do that, that's where it starts to work.
These are basic, basic concepts that we need to remember. It's very hard to get out of the influence of today's society. Today's society, no matter what you're going to hear—in the media, from people, even in speeches today—you don't hear this stuff. People are afraid to say this stuff. It's very hard to get away from the influence of society today and to remember the purity of the Torah, the pure concepts of the Torah. It's very, very hard to do. That's the challenge of this world today. That's one of the challenges of our generation: to combat all this, to combat the liberal ideas they try to teach us.
If we delve into it a little more, you'll notice that in the Torah, the Torah specifies punishments for different things. There are times when Beit Din will kill somebody. There are times when Beit Din will give Malkut; it's called that. They give 40 lashes, 39 lashes. There are times when a person gets Karet (spiritual excision), and times when a person has to pay money, a fine, financial fines, right? There are a lot of penalties that the Torah brings down for certain sins. The Torah is full of them. But you never find—you never really find Olam Haba mentioned in the Torah or specified at all. There are hints to it, certain hints. But for some reason, the Torah never specifies any kind of real description of Olam Haba. It's only, you know, it sounds like it's only the bad things. All right?
But the reality is that Olam Haba is very hard to describe. It's really very hard for a person to gain an appreciation for what Olam Haba would be. One of the reasons—I want to go through a few reasons here; he brings down a bunch of reasons—is that Olam Haba involves the Neshamah (soul). It's a spiritual experience. So if you're going to describe it in a physical sense, besides not doing it justice, it's just inaccurate. It's not a physical experience. You can try to compare it to something physical, but it's just inaccurate, and I'm really not doing it right.
There are pesukim (verses) in the Navi that describe the tremendous pleasure, the closeness that the Neshamah will have with Hashem. It's something that we don't even understand because we live in a flesh-and-blood body. So that's why it doesn't really pay to get into the descriptions. We just need to remember that it's really nothing, nothing that—it's really nothing compared to anything we experience in this world. You really can't compare it to anything you're ever going to experience. If you want to just get an idea, I mean, if you ever feel spiritual accomplishment, if you ever feel spiritual happiness, if you ever feel satisfied with a spiritual accomplishment—have you ever felt that? So that's kind of what that is. Maybe something similar, you know. Also, again, it's hard to know. I mean, I can't really sit and explain it to you. I was never there. I would imagine that if you have a spiritual experience, maybe it gives you an idea, maybe something of what it's like. So if you're trying to say to yourself, “It's worth it because it's compared to something physical that's great,” you know, I don't think that's the right way to go. It's really the wrong way; it's inaccurate, and it's really the wrong way to try to go about it.
Like the Muslims, you know, they go to 72 virgins. The reason why they're wrong is not because they're wrong—of course they're wrong. But the reason why they're wrong is because paradise and heaven are not about doing anything physical. It's not physical; it's spiritual. So that's number one.
Also, you know, just like you find in this world, it's very hard to incentivize a child with the real incentive. If you take a child and try to explain to him the benefit—let's say, not in spirituality; I'm talking about physically now—if you try to incentivize a child to go on a path of self-fulfillment, a path of accomplishment in this world, you try to teach him to get an education, build yourself a career, be self-sustaining. You try to paint a picture that will be motivating to him, so he'll be able to go on the path you want him to take. If you tell it to a 25-year-old, maybe he'll get it. Maybe he'll understand that he's already mature enough to understand what you're trying to say. But if you tell a 5-year-old to go on a path of self-fulfillment and try to explain education and a career and whatever you're trying to get him to do, he doesn't understand. He's immature. You need to explain it to him in terms of candy or other things, the things that he understands. So you need to motivate him by what he understands, and then hopefully, as he grows up and matures, you can change your incentives. He's not going to keep going for the candy anymore. As he gets older, the incentives have to change. The toys have to get bigger. All of a sudden he needs a car. You know how it goes; we all have kids. The toys have to get bigger. The incentives have to get bigger.
A similar thing happened to the Jewish people. When Hashem gave the Torah, that's what it says—very interesting—when Hashem gave the Torah, the Jewish people were immature in their spiritual growth. They were still in their infancy. So when Hashem wrote the Torah, He couldn't describe the ways of Olam Haba in the way that a person who's been working on himself his whole life, or a whole nation after many, many years and decades of working on themselves and growing in spirituality, would be able to appreciate. He's talking about a nation in its infancy. So He has to bring it down to their level, so to speak, and describe it in the Torah in ways that they can understand. So you see, live a long life, things like that. These are things that Hashem felt they would understand and be able to appreciate at that time.
Also, a lot of times the reward a person gets from certain mitzvot is cumulative. It doesn't end when the mitzvah is over. Many times a person can see more reward later on, after the mitzvah is done. Many years later, there's a cumulative effect. There's an effect that people have from that one deed that he did. If people learn from it, if he had an influence on people, or whatever it accomplished, if it could have a ripple effect—if you did a mitzvah that accomplished something, and there's a ripple effect many years later—you could be earning reward. It's like an investment where you keep earning. You keep earning for many years, and decades, and centuries later, if the effect is such a long-term thing. So it's another reason why you can't really codify it, can't really bring it down to clear boundaries of what the reward is going to be and what it's not going to be.
We also have to understand that the main part, the main aspect of what we hope to reap, is the feeling of accomplishment: the fact that we were able to fulfill the will of Hashem. If a person does a mitzvah—and we've experienced this before; I mean, it's not the first time—a lot of times he'll feel that spiritual high. A person feels accomplished, and a person feels happy that he's able to fulfill the will of Hashem. The fact that he was successful in being able to go back to Hashem and say, “I did what you wanted.” And to imagine that Hashem is going to say, “Yes, yes, honey, I'm happy with you.” To be able to put that into perspective—that is the real reward. That's the reward for us. That's the reward of our mitzvot. That's the main part of the reward: to know and to understand that we've fulfilled the will of Hashem. There should be nothing greater for us to accomplish than to fulfill the will of Hashem. It should be our most cherished goal to fulfill the will of Hashem. So if we could know, and know in certain terms, that we've fulfilled the will of Hashem, know 100% that we did it right and correctly, and that it's exactly what Hashem expected, there can't be anything better than that.
So when we go upstairs, we'll know that. Because when you see the mitzvot, and you see how great they are, and you see how much, how much, how much effect they had in the world, how much effect they had in the universe, how much effect they had in the Shamayim (heavens, when we go upstairs and see that—that is Olam Haba. Right there, just the understanding of that point is Olam Haba. So again, you can't describe that; it's just a feeling that we have. That's another reason why the Torah doesn't really put it on paper.
As we work on the idea of reward and punishment, there's one pitfall we have to watch out for. The more we work on it, the greater the danger is, so we have to be very careful. The Pasuk (verse)—the Mishnah says: “Do not be like a servant who serves the master on condition to accept reward. Rather, you should be like a servant who serves Hashem without the condition of getting reward.”
That means even though we're talking so much about reward and punishment, and it could be a very strong motivating factor, we need to remember that it can't be our motivation. We have to take it as an extra, as extra credit, as a side effect. The real motivation for us serving Hashem should be to give back for whatever He did for us, to fulfill obligations that we have because of what He did for us. We go through our life, like we said before, and see everything that Hashem does for us. Understand how it translates personally. Understand how that obligates us personally to be able to give something back. This should be the source of motivation that we have.
Now, it's a very high level to be able to do that. So you can start off with reward and get yourself going with it as a stepping stone to get to the next level. But we have to know that trying to do that for yourself all the time is not where you want to be. That's good for a start. It's good for a stepping stone, but it can't be your end. You have to keep going.
And remember, Hashem doesn't ask us for anything. Hashem just wants us to keep the Torah. But He gives us so much. He gives us our very lives. He gives us our family. He gives us our health. He gives us our happiness. He gives us our comforts, whatever you may be. Any comfort you have. And if there's a little bit of comfort that you don't have, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what you do have. Any kind of situation that you're enduring, any kind of situation in your life that's becoming difficult for you to tolerate, contrast that with everything else in your life that's perfect. I mean, it can't be any better. And you tell me, which side of the coin are you on? Are you in the red or in the black? And when you realize that we're all in the red, always—and not just us here, but everybody, you and me and everybody else—we're always in the red. There's no way, there's no way we can even come close remotely to paying back, even if we do all the mitzvot in the Torah. We're not even going to come close to paying back what Hashem did for us. We're in the deep, deep red, always.
This should be a motivation to just try to get hungry, to keep doing more and more and more. It's like when a person does something for you, you want to just pay him back. When a person keeps doing something for you, you want to just pay him back to the point that you don't even want to take anymore. Right? You ever get that feeling from other people? When a person does something for you so much and so much, you can't anymore because you're starting to feel so indebted. You're obligated; you have to stop. But we don't stop what Hashem gives us. We keep asking for more. So that feeling of indebtedness should be the same, as deep, even deeper. This should be the main motivating factor for us to be able to serve Hashem.
Those are the first six. The seventh one—and we'll finish with the seventh—is not really a Bitachon thing. It's not really a way to trust in Hashem. You know, it's really just a way of service. We've been learning about this before, where a person has to take the love of this world out of his heart and replace it with the love of spirituality.
Everybody goes through life, and we're physical people. You know, we can't complain about it. It's not a bad thing. It's the way we're created. We're physical; we're all physically inclined. Part of our challenge in life is to uproot our physical desires, our physical goals, and make them spiritual. Replace the physical goals with spiritual goals. The only way we can do that is with work. If, let's say, every day, or once a week if you can do it, you overcome a physical urge and replace it with a spiritual accomplishment. Anything. Any physical urge you might have. I'm not talking about anything that's not allowed. I'm talking about things that are allowed. If it's not allowed, it's not allowed. It's against the Torah. There's nothing to talk about.
A person has an urge to eat pork. So I'm not going to give you credit for overcoming the urge? Yes. But that's not going to go on this exercise. This exercise is not going to work for you, because that's just keeping the Torah. If you want to overcome your love of the world and replace it with spirituality, you need to take something that's pulling you just for the sake of it, just for the sake of physical pull, and overcome it just because it's a physical pull. That's it. Not because it's not allowed. It's 100% allowed. I'm talking about things that are 100% mutarim (100% allowed). Overcome it anyway, just for the sake of overcoming a physical desire.
That's not the only thing. It will work best if you replace it with a spiritual accomplishment, a spiritual feeling, a spiritual goal at that time. So if a person gets taken on with good food, let's say, and one time he has an urge for something really good, don't do it. Don't eat it. Instead, open a book. Or instead, I don't know, listen to a class, or do something spiritual instead at that time. So you replace the urge with that urge. If you do that often enough, you'll develop in your heart a taste for spiritual accomplishment. You'll also slowly move away from the love of this world, and all those physical urges will slowly wane. You're never going to get rid of them completely. We are human beings. We're not going to become angels. But you'll lose the fire, hopefully. One day you'll lose the fire. And you'll be able to be a spiritual person. It'll be easier to overcome any test that you have, because you'll understand the spiritual benefit and the physical loss of succumbing to a test. It'll be easier to overcome and go automatically to the spiritual side when your fire for the physical world is able to calm down a little bit.
So when you're faced with that situation one day, you'll be able to overcome. It'll be easier to overcome. When a person is able to get to the level where he prefers a life of discomfort, and he prefers poverty over riches—I'm just reading what it says here—he gets to the level where he prefers poverty over rich, sick over healthy, misfortune over serenity, and he gives himself over to the judgment of Hashem. He wants the decrees that Hashem gives him. He's fit. He is the person who deserves the world to come. He was the one who got to the level where he was able to understand that this world is not important and the world to come is important. He accepts the will of Hashem so strongly, even when it's bad. He accepts it with such happiness. He wants that more than the good times, because he understands the benefit. He understands what it means to fulfill the will of Hashem, and that's what he wants. That's the person that earns real reward in the world to come.
That's a big level. That's a very high level, but that's a goal that we can get to. Like I told you guys all the way in the beginning—I don't know if any of you remember—the goals here are not necessarily to get to the summit. Try to. But if we don't get to the summit, that doesn't mean we didn't get it. That doesn't mean it's a failure. If we get even a little closer, it's a tremendous accomplishment. We have to be satisfied with every step we take. These are huge goals, tremendous levels I'm speaking to you guys. It's out of this world. I don't expect people to get there so fast, or even at all. But we need to remember. We need to keep our eye on the ball. We need to keep our eye on the summit, to know where we're getting to. We need to know where we should go. So any step in that direction is a huge, huge accomplishment. Huge. Huge. And it's ten steps ahead of anybody else in this world. Nobody's doing this today. Nobody. Nobody's doing this today. So if we can all do this in this class, it's a tremendous accomplishment. You should be very proud of that. Even if you don't get to the end, even if you don't get to the summit, Hashem sees every step you take, every piece of effort you put in, every little bit of overcoming that you do—even the angels can't comprehend it. Tremendous reward that you're going to get. Tremendous reward. Even the angels don't see. You know why? Because the angels don't comprehend overcoming challenges. Angels don't have any challenges. All they have is their world, which they live in, a world of holiness, a world of spirituality. Nice. But they don't have any natural instincts to overcome. So when a person goes and overcomes a natural instinct, it's a situation they don't understand. So you end up propelling yourself to a world that's even higher than the angels. So imagine that. If you're able to overcome physical desires, that's what we can get.