We continue with the Hovot Halevavot’s discussion of why Olam Habah isn’t mentioned in the Torah.
The second reason he gives is a short one: Not everything is mentioned in the Torah. Where does it say where to put Tefillin, for example? Certain things are accepted and well known. They are handed down from rabbi to student - The Torah שבעל פה (Oral Torah).
The third reason is that G-d deals with the Jewish people like a father who loves his son. As the pasuk says,
נער ישראל ואוהבהו
The Jewish people are a lad and G-d loves them.
Hashem is like our father. When a father wants to give incentive to his young child, he doesn’t tell him, “Work hard because you’ll get a college degree.” The child doesn’t understand that. Instead the father says, ״Work hard and I’ll give you a lollipop.” Similarly, whether right or wrong, teachers use candies as incentives. They tell their students that if they read well, they’ll get a sour stick. If they keep their finger on the place, they can get a jelly bean. This is a little silly. It’s Torah after all, it’s Olam Habah. And yet the teacher doesn’t say that. The reward for reading the pasuk well is a sour stick? Yes- because at that stage, that’s what important to the child.
As we get older, the incentive may be a nice suit or coat. Or in the Hovot HaLevavot’s words, a nice chariot (which today would be a car). As time goes on, we up the ante with greater and greater external incentives. In truth, however, the learning itself is the incentive, but we can’t appreciate that initially.
The same goes for punishment. We tell the children that if they don’t learn well that day, they may get a whack (in the old days), or detention. The real punishment is actually that they didn’t learn well, but they don’t understand that.
This is the way G-d works with us. As we grow and mature, we’ll come to appreciate that we work for the ultimate goal: lishmah- for the sake of G-d. That’s the ultimate goal: to appreciate that everything is about the next world, which is far from us, but we can at least mention it.
There’s a story told over about the Ger Tzeddek, a pious, righteous convert from Vilna (called Vilnius today), 250 years ago. He was prince who converted to Judaism, which was illegal at the time. He was eventually caught, tried and sentenced to death. As he was walking to his death, he and his executioner began discussing this world and the next world. The executioner was so impressed with the Ger Tzeddek, that he felt bad that he had to kill him. He asked, “Are you going to have complaints about me in the next world?”
The Ger Tzeddek answered that as a child, he’d been a prince, and that his father was very powerful. He said he often played with the servants’ children. One day, he built a castle in the sand, and a servant’s child knocked it over. He told the child, “When I get big and become powerful, I’ll take vengeance against you.” But when he matured, he realized it was all petty and not worth fighting over.
Similarly, he told the executioner, “Right now, in this world, of course I don’t want to die. I’m in this word and this is my sandcastle. But when I get up there, I’ll look down and see that I’m a big boy now, and sand castles won’t mean anything to me.”
We are in this world, which really a world of sandcastles. We can’t appreciate that every thing we are involved with is trivial. Therefore, G-d, the ultimate pedagogue, knows that He has to give us incentives that we can appreciate right now, like a father to a son. G-d knows that we need physical rewards and punishments, incentives that we can relate to. Then, hopefully, as we get older, we’ll start to understand better, and reach the level of lishma (for G-d’s sake).
As the pasuk says,
: "לעולם יעסוק אדם בתורה ובמצות אף על פי שלא לשמה,
A person has to start the system with external motivators. He can’t directly become self motivated.
שמתוך שלא לשמה, בא לשמה
And from doing things for superficial reasons, he will come to do them for the right reasons -for Hashem’s sake.
In our next class, we will continue with more reasons brought down.
Have a wonderful day.