Preparing for the World to Come - Reward or Responsibility? - Rabbi Yitzchak Botton

good morning everyone um you guys in the back there's room up here if you want to move up uh okay so today we'll be starting our series on purkiavot ethics of the fathers the general uh custom has developed over time to read these set of chapters there's officially five chapters to this masechet but they've added a sixth chapter of officially called braitot which is uh to make it six chapters in order to coincide with the weeks between pesach and shavuot the customers to read these six chapters between pesach and shavuot the reason being that the ideas that we learn and we talk about in parque ya vote are different from most of the other mishnayot most mishnayot deal with directly talking about mitzvot what's permissible what's usher this unique uh uh chapter talks about ethical and moral guidance the character development you know morality so it's a unique chapter among the mishnayot so it was chosen to as a preparation to the receiving of the torah which is of course why we celebrate uh shavuot is that the day we receive the torah matan torah so as a preparation they bring a very nice muscle you know if you have the best wine and you pour it into an old rusty tarnished cup so that wine is going to become spoiled it's not going to taste good so too to be ready to receive the torah we want to be clean and pure and ready to that we should absorb it in the in the right way so as a preparation to receive god's divine wisdom the torah and be ready to fulfill them its fault we prepare ourselves with these uh these this small and ethical guidance uh before mountain torah now this is interesting it reminds me of an idea that actually in the name of the villenegon he mentions that torah is compared to water and he explains one of the ideas we can take out of this comparison if you take a field and you just water it without really taking care of the field and making sure to plant the proper seeds and things and just just water a field so whatever is there in potential will grow if there are plenty of weeds that are potentially there that could grow so then the field will come out looking you know a mess with all these weeds and things that are not good not desirable however if you work the field beforehand preparing it planting the right seeds and then you water it so then of course you know you'll have the right type of produce so it says sotu with torah torah is a powerful set of ideas and torah has an effect on a person that learns it he says if a person doesn't work on himself so whatever's inside will develop we'll grow just like water makes all things grow so the torah will also make a person grow and it can come out negative if he's if he doesn't work on himself properly but if he prepares himself then it will bring out the right things and that is really connected to what we're talking about in order to be a vessel proper vessel for for the torah that we should be this conduit to facilitate that the world should see what what a bentora is really meant to be what a godly person is what a person that follows in the ways of torah is it should make a kin hashem make god's name beloved in the world so it also requires our own self-introspection and working on oneself to be ready to be this vessel for torah and that's what we're really here the next six weeks to work on so let's uh take a look at the opening mission that we the customers to read before per kia vote and it's interesting it's not one of the actual mishnayot from the messerhet of avot rather it's taken from sanhedrin and it's the mission that talks about the having a portion in the world to come now we read the mission to translate it and then we'll of course get into different commentaries one of the questions that that people bring up is why was this mission chosen as a hakadama as a preface to the entire learning of perciavo this time of year and we'll address that but let me first read the mission so we can appreciate what the content is of this first opening uh idea that the rabbis want us to be introduced to before we begin the actual learning of perky evolut so it writes here yes all israel has a portion of share in the world to come shane the pastor comes to try to prove it help us understand why your people are all righteous they will forever inherit the land they are a branch of my planting my handiwork in which i take pride in which to take pride in now we'll of course analyze the different parts of this mission but first let's address the initial question i mentioned seemingly this mishna what is it coming to teach us what is the basic idea here in the mishnah so it's coming to tell us that call is that all jews are righteous and they have a portion in the world to come so we want to understand why is it that we mention the idea of having a portion in the world to come before we start to learn perkiavot what is what is the essence of perky of what we mentioned some of the ideas the content of percyavod one of the other ideas mentioned this comes from the gemara gemara says who wants to be a khasid translates to be pious who wants to be pious but the word khasid is also rooted in the word that's the root for it which means kindness we'll get to that so who wants to be pious he should learn the chapters of prakayavod it says in another place what is a hasid who is a hasid one who is mithra said with his creator one who does kindness for his creator so seemingly the body of perceyavod is really meant to teach us how to serve god on the purest highest level without expecting reward as a matter of fact the third missionary in percyavod from antignos is tells us that we should not be like servants that serve their master on condition to receive a reward but rather we should serve the master on condition not to receive a reward or sorry not on the condition of receiving a reward i.e we should serve god purely altruistically without wanting anything in return the most pure wholesome genuine you know satisfying service to hashem is because we do it because we love hashem just pure love without expecting or wanting anything in return the fact that god wants to give us back things that's because he loves us as well but that should not be mixed at all in with why we do what we do so this high high level of divine service is what really perciavo tries to bring us to so why should we start the discussion of perkiavot with a mission that focuses on we all have a portion in the world to come seemingly that is telling us all about the reward coming after our hard work and again we're not supposed to serve god and do this work for the idea of receiving reward or at least the condition certainly not so why is it here in the beginning that is one of the questions that we want to we want to address um on this note there are some nice inspiring stories that really tell us about how the tsadikim the great great righteous ones of past and even of today how they are able to serve god entirely just for the sake of serving god not really desiring even the reward of allah technically speaking serving god on condition to receive a reward a press so included in that is the is the hope of receiving that's it's a part of it it's a very subtle very lofty noble uh end result to want it's obviously people can want much worse things a person could want won't even talk about what's forbidden but at least even within the realm of permissible a person could want a lot of money a lot of power a lot of recognition all of these obviously are not at all what we should be concerned about when we do things for hashem but even the idea that we will have this bliss in the next world you know all of them in the shama khanadin all of that is also technically speaking an ulterior motive it's not the pure just for the sake of doing it because it's the truth and doing it because it's what hashem wants and doing it because we love hashem and the commentators talk about it interesting story that i remember about uh the the alta rebbe the first rabbi of lubavitch so he is quoted as saying about in in a moment of extreme rapture deep connection with hashem saying you know god i don't want your your heaven not your lower heaven and not even the higher heaven all i want is you that's it i only want you and that's meaning that i just want to be connected to you to be with you and not for any of the reward that we're promised to get and he explains actually on one of the later on missionaries that the the ability to connect with god on the highest levels ultimately is through doing a mitzvah even though we don't feel the spiritual effect sometimes we usually don't feel the spiritual effect of a mitzvah so he explains that through doing a mitzvah you connect more intensely and and more closely with god then you will then hashem will be able to connect in in ghanaian because ultimately the neshama cannot experience a a true essential attachment to divinity in ghana and it all it only really benefits from a reflection of a diffused reflection of god's divine light but in this world by virtue of the fact that this world is world of concealment so we don't feel that that beauty of the the divine revelation but in doing the mitzvah we unify with the rats on the the divine will in a much more intense way so the ultimate a person could ever accomplish in his lifetime and even in the afterlife is to do a mitzvah that is why for example we don't wear seat seat outwards we don't put out seat seat out when we go to a grave because it's not nice to show off and flaunt that we get to do a mitzvah and the people that are very can't another example of uh of this we see actually is you know a person's allowed a certain amount of time to be in the world it's very interesting um david was an incredibly lofty beautiful pureness that was given no time to live imagine god made a neshama king david and he had no time to live adam the first man was of course everyone was included in in him he saw through prophetic vision that there's this beautiful special shama that is basically has no time to actually even be in the world he's going to be born and and die he gave him 70 years of his life and that's the life that david was able to live with the years that adam gave him after giving him those years he was he felt bad about it because he losing those 70 years were precious uh it's interesting enough government himself it's recorded at the end of his life so he it came out when was he going to die god he wanted to know the day when he was going to die god said you can't know the day exactly but i'll tell you on which day and it was revealed to him that he would pass away on shabbat now on when a person dies on shabbat so there's a lot of honor that is going to be missing from his burial so the idea was that he could either be buried before shabbat or after shabbat now he asked to be buried after shabbat let me live one more day so that i could pass away on yom and and then i could be buried with the proper honor so god said you can't live one more day because that they already belongs to your son solomon that's his day to rule and you can't live an extra day you can't extend into his rulership so but the idea of living one day less he also didn't accept you know why because one day in this world is so precious one hour in this world is so pressure that you don't give it up and he didn't want to give up that one day so he passed away on shabbat anyhow getting back to this uh this topic so again serving hashem really for the sake of serving him is what the ultimate goal is for us and if we can't reach the the ultimate we have to still aspire to achieve as much of this selfless service as we can and so we'll address the question now so what does it say it says that a person is going to get a portion in the world to come now if we look at the language of the mishnah the mission it says every person of israel is righteous and has a portion now how do how would you translate how does everybody translate that usually so like every book does it says a portion in the world to come in the world they cannot just stand the translation and that's what it means but that's not the way to write that statement when you really want to say a person has a portion in the world to come the way to say it is say say in the world to come in is really represented with the letter bet so why does it say lambda literally usu means either two or four you know for the sake of or two when you say i'm going to a place you say go lech go to the store let's or if you say this is for something say this is for that you know you can do a um you can dedicate something to the bayside they say this is for god so the word the letter lamin can either mean two or four so over here it seems to be misplaced it's not the the mishpat of how to say it you know it's not the correct technical way to say a portion in the world to come so now but based on this nuance many commentators have already discussed this in ones but we can also use this uh this shift of language to answer our original question if we understood the mission as trying to promise all of us reward in the world to come so it would have said that every person has a portion in the world to come simple that's the reward waiting for us but by saying every person has a portion for the world to come so then now the statement has an entirely new meaning what is what does that mean a poor person has a portion for the world to come what is that what is that trigger so we also have to appreciate this answer that the word before it as well the word means a portion apart a piece now we know when putting together a puzzle so every piece is necessary you know how much can you sell a beautiful thousand you know 10 000 piece puzzle how much is that worth that's beautiful top quality 10 000 piece puzzle how much do they go for let's say they go for 50 bucks these days everything's made in china so it's maybe less but let's say it's a 50 puzzle you know now how much is it worth if you have uh 9 999 pieces now how much you're going to sell that puzzle for if you're lucky it's not worth anything anymore it's not it's missing a piece i mean okay it's worth a little something but you know what in god's world this perfect world of god one a piece can't be missing there's no such thing as a piece missing a chip at the end you know when you have a beautiful table and you have a chip at the end you know it takes away from the beauty of something the idea of the glory and beauty it's perfect perfection this perfect world that that we're waiting to all be introduced to we should merit be ameno it's perfect so and each piece each portion is priceless because without that portion it affects the whole now with that we can appreciate what's going on over here every person has a helic for the world to come every person has been put in this world with a divine mission now you might say okay very nice divine mission there's a lot of us a lot of missions i'm going to take a break i'm going to take a vacation this this roll this this go around i want to relax have fun and at the beach send me give me some iced tea some santan lotion and i'm going to take a vacation this lifetime so the answer is it's not going to work that way you have been put in this world with a divine mission you have a helic you have a portion that's been placed upon you and you're responsible to take care of if you don't fix your portion which is for what's this portion for it has to be fixed for the world to come so obviously you have your you need to fix it for yourself but you also have to fix it in general because if you don't do your part then that part is missing so the message here is not okay listen don't worry you're going to do a little bit of work but you're going to get you know you're going to get the five-star hotel when you're done that's not the message the message is that everybody has a portion in this perfect world to come just like the puzzle can't be missing the piece your portion can't be missing so you have a responsibility in your lifetime in this world to fulfill your divine mission thereby providing that that portion will be taken care of in the world to come and that's what it means that you have a relic for for the world to come now it's talking about you know responsibility the whole mission here before we talk about purchase not at all talking about reward it's coming to strengthen us and charge us with this mission to do our part in the world to come and that's a whole new message that we can appreciate now now the truth is there are other commentators that have given different answers um another answer just to broaden the perspectives that we can have on this mishna and also to appreciate that a mission speaks to each individual the same way that we read purkiavot bitsibor together in the congregation many have accustomed to actually read it in shul before the end of the shakhra's prayer but the idea is to read it together as a cebu the minute is for all of the jewish people to to read parque about so just like in every congregation you have a mixed multitude of people you have all different kinds of of people you have the you know smartest they're not as smart the workers the learners you have all kinds of people so the word sibor actually which is represents a community is the letters sibor so the commentators have taught us the deeper message behind the word each letter represents a different type of person that sadiq obviously is the righteous people the bet refers to the word benoni the average person and the reish of the word sibor is the rasha yes of course we need the rasha as well as is part of our community ten men come to pray we don't check are you righteous or wicked if you're called the jew af even if a person sin is still the jew and he comes in dominion and he's counted in dominion and he's part of khali israel and so the tsibour is all all facets from the from the lowest to the highest that's at sibo and that's we come to hashem to learn purkiavot between pesach together so for that reason more so than other perhaps other different uh areas of torah the rabbis seem to bring out many different interpretations to these mishnayot that fit to different levels of people for example we can explain a mishna which we will get to it in one of the later chapters where the mission is talking about the righteous people and then we will show you a approach that really tells you now the mission is referring to the below average people so here too we just gave you an explanation that this mission is coming to charges in our divine service to do the will of hashem because you know we have a responsibility however for the people that are on a lower level this is the midrash moell brings an explanation there except you know explains like this it's found this is where it's found he was a he gathered all of the different explanations from many different rabbis so you can find this episode explanation brought there in this effort called midrash so he explains like this happens when a person begins to read parque about the person begins to feed ripos and he sees how how far away he is from really the the perfection that we all wish we can attain these high levels of divine service that we hear about from the tzadikim that uh you know by the time they were five they knew everything by the time they were 12 they knew everything because they were everything you know they're perfect you know the villenegon didn't he slept for less than a half hour and he learned everything and he could count the amount of words and letters in a particular gemara and he could fix all of the different texts uh to be perfect i mean how do we how do we compare to such a person not to mention his humility and his honesty all of his traits you're talking about walking angels this and perky but also it's a it's a very high level it introduces to a high level of divine service so you know think about the the wicked people among the jewish people right so they come to shul they darwin and they read perky about so they could they could give up hope they could say listen there's no hope for someone like me with what i've done you know there's big sins there's small sins there's just you know a lack of doing good deeds so a person that wants to do his self-analysis can say listen i know that the the vilna gaon and the banishkai and they're all going to be in shama i'm having a great time they're going to be in the in ghanaian and in the world of common they're going to be part of this amazing party but i'm going to probably either i'm going to be stuck cleaning or worse i'm going to be down there you know what do i have to look forward to after seeing all this uh what god wants from me i can't even do ten percent not even five percent so it explains like this we we come to we want to reassure every single jewish person that's part of claude israel that you don't give up hope even though you don't reach these levels of perfection that we talk about whatever good you do that is independent we don't mix the good and bad a person they say an aveira doesn't cancel a mitzvah you know sin doesn't cancel out a good deed and a good deed doesn't cancel out a bad deed and you'll say well wait a minute why not i'd rather the good deed cancel out the bad deed you know i'll get rid of a lot of my bad deeds so i'll have less good deeds but at least i don't have any bad deeds i won't have to suffer as much in gehenna and you know purgatory so maybe i'll be better off so the answer is no it's really a hasset of god that he made it that they don't cancel each other out why why is it because the the mitzvah is itself is infinite in its its value the average is a blemish because you you transgressed and there's a level of of suffering or a level of rectification that one needs to go through to get rid of it if he does chuva he can also get rid of it but it's limited negativity but the positive aspect of a mitzvah is infinite now to let a mitzvah erase an average is like using a hundred dollar bill to buy a piece of candy and more so so nobody would want to do that and so too we if we understood the depth of what's going on we would not want a trade-off for mitsupuranavera so god is actually being kind to not to mix them what do we do with our rivers so we're going to have to fix them somehow through chuva through gehenom through gulem there are ways that we erase and fix the average but once the availables are gone then what am i left with i'm left with my mitzvot my good deeds and the reward of those good deeds even if there are few are immeasurable like we see in a mission in later on that one moment in the world of pleasure and reward in the world to come is worth more than all of the good and pleasure that we could think of attaining in this world so even if we do a few mitzvoth those mitzvoth will give us a helic in the world to come so we're coming to to give a a bit of support to those that need it and we all need a bit of support that don't worry you you may have done available you may even be lacking in mitzvot but you know what when it's all said and done you know the available will be taken care of you may have to suffer but they'll be taken care of and that's only temporary but the mitzvot that you've done even if you've just managed to be a good son to your parents that's if you've managed to be a kind to your friend here and there that's it the world is built on that those few little good deeds will serve you for eternity okay you won't get the same exact reward as uh moshe rabino with the village but you'll get an eternal reward and that's priceless and that's precious and that's what the message is here also for the people that need that type of message so for the sadiq the message is you have a responsibility you better get to work and take care of what you got to take care of the world's depending on you you are depending on you hashem's depending on you but for the weaker ones among us like ourselves perhaps so then we're told listen don't worry when it's all said and done you will have what to be taken care of with women and that's that's the other message here with this second explanation we can also answer another question that many of the accountants bring up on this mission and it is how can we promise everyone a portion in the world to come everyone what about the wicked among us do they deserve a portion of the world to come well i've actually preceded the answer to the question but i'll reiterate quickly so we can appreciate it in connection to the question a wicked person seemingly doesn't deserve to get rewarded so how do we reward the wicked how can we promise every person from israel a portion in the world to come so the answer to this question is like i really said i'll just elaborate more on it what is a person made up of who are we so we're not just our physical body we're not even these crazy ideas that come into our minds to do these foolish nonsense things that we do the essence of a person is his soul now the soul that god instilled which is the jewish soul the nismoti israel the souls of israel that he put in every one of us is really a piece of the divine a part of hashem that's why god can command us to be holy because how can you command a a human being in this physical world with a physical body and needs and lust size how can we even have a mitzvah to be holy because we have also in us a holy soul which can affect and dominate us if we work on it and then we can become holy this soul never becomes blemish the essence of the jewish soul never becomes blemished is not affected by our ideology and this part of us always always will receive a portion in the world to come so what gets blemished what has to suffer so it's externally different aspects of our being have to go through as we mentioned different things to rectify our sins but ultimately that is eliminated we take care of it and what's left is the essence of the person who all the souls of israel have a portion in the world to come and that's a beautiful promise a beautiful thing and that's why we could say because the essence of the jewish is it's the external aspects of negativity that have attached themselves to him which may bring him to sin and he's responsible for those sins sins but once we get rid of them so then there's the topic still there um there's an interesting idea that's connected to this so it's brought in one of the very deep spoke with different spirits after they left the world over there he has a discussion with one of the really unfortunate infant infamous very wicked wicked people among the jewish people we don't i don't want to get into the details too much but we know that unfortunately someone rose up in the early or mid 1600s and went and proclaimed himself to be a false messiah and was responsible for terrible terrible things in the in europe you know chapter we know this is part of the jewish history the unfortunate part of jewish history and all the problems that were involved in that now needless to say when he passed away so he he was in big trouble unfortunately his soul suffered tremendously after his passing but generations later somehow through divine you know providence this great sadduce was a great mystic mukubal and knew how to work with spirits was involved in helping to fix up his neshama in order that he should even get the privilege to go to gehenom to become further fixed and eventually also we've become we have rejoined with the within with the jewish people and and so even people as wicked as we can imagine no one loses their share in the world to come even the few that the gemara mentions lose their share in the world to come according to the kabbalah it doesn't mean they lose it entirely and it doesn't mean they can never get it back it just means they have a lot of work to do and they might have to you know be granted a place in the world to come as a almost that they didn't earn as much so they don't they don't have the full reward that everyone else has but even the souls that it says do not have a portion of the world to come it's still not really over for them they all have a chance to regain their uh position back in in allah different ways that it takes place in any event this this story about uh about chapters so in one part there's a conversation between and and sharp tight sweet and ashamed of sabotage and he's trying to give him his trying to to strengthen him in order that he could help him to help him and at that point he's being very negative and very disrespectful and he doesn't want help and he's been very threatening even and he explains him the exact point that i'm trying to mention he says listen yo neshama is beautiful you know shama is perfect you know is still there all this that you're experiencing that this negativity it's all because of the clipper that the forces of evil have been able to trap you and and encompass you with such you know tarnishing such terrible energy that that that's why you're so bad but you know eventually with my help with hashem's help of course we can remove that and and your neshama is still there and it's still salvageable so if he says it's such a person that we understand was responsible for so much negativity obviously everyone is included in this concept and that's what we're saying that call yourself that once we eliminate this negativity we all have hope and we all have a place in the world to come so that's another question that we bring up on this first mission is how can we say everybody can be there and you know what it's interesting because when you think about it it almost has to be that way for explain what i mean first we'll confuse you a bit more with a interesting uh story which you won't understand where how it's connected but at the end hopefully it'll be connected i hope anyway so imagine a father wants to have a very big family reunion and have his his family with them for well you know we'll say the pesach seder now but you know he's an old man and he had many children who had many children so he has you know he's to fill up a whole hotel with his offspring so but you know once they're gonna try to do it so they get everybody together now let me ask you this father that wants to have all of his children and grandchildren at the table together with him at the seder so imagine they set up this beautiful table and you know half the table is half the table is empty is he going to be happy they're all his his family they're all part of his uh they all come from him he wants everybody there so hashem also when we talk about the great feast that's going to take place in the end of days the feast with the leviathan and this sudah with mashiach we're going to merit the real the our final redemption so this great feast if we imagine we set up the tables we're talking about all of the jews that ever lived we're going to are invited now imagine the first few show up the righteous they're there and you know there's a lot of empty seats but they're there and they're ready because of course they were righteous what you think hashem's response is going to be he's going to want to start the party with half the seats missing half his children not there god wants everyone there that's one of the things that we're taught that that every single soul is precious to hashem that not even one he doesn't want to see even one get lost furthermore every soul is connected if one is missing then it causes a blemish in the whole so just like god wants everyone to be there at the suta and even if one is missing you know it'll be felt so too that's why it's it's it's fitting that every single one of the nishima isla have a portion in the world to come because how can the father bear to see one so one son be taken away imagine you know god forbid person is offered listen you have a bunch of kids just i want to give me one of them i mean you have enough kids i want to buy one of them from you who knows god forbid what the kid wants what he wants to do with them but would a father give up one of his children how would the father give up one of his children so too hashem doesn't want to give up any one of us and that's why you know the world and the exile has been so long as exactly because he's trying to save every single one of us you