Avos 2:15-16

בס׳ד

אבות ב:טו/טז

Rabbi Tarfon says: The day is short, the work is heavy, and the workers are lazy - but the pay is rich, and the Boss is in a hurry! He used to teach: It’s not your responsibility to finish the work, but you’re not free to give it up; If you’ve learned lots of Torah, you’ll get a great reward, for your Foreman can be trusted to pay you exactly what your work is worth; And know this - the reward of the righteous is in the coming Future.

רַבִּי טַרְפוֹן אוֹמֵר, הַיּוֹם קָצָר וְהַמְּלָאכָה מְרֻבָּה, וְהַפּוֹעֲלִים עֲצֵלִים, וְהַשָּׂכָר הַרְבֵּה, וּבַעַל הַבַּיִת דּוֹחֵק: הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה. אִם לָמַדְתָּ תוֹרָה הַרְבֵּה, נוֹתְנִים לְךָ שָׂכָר הַרְבֵּה. וְנֶאֱמָן הוּא בַעַל מְלַאכְתְּךָ שֶׁיְּשַׁלֵּם לְךָ שְׂכַר פְּעֻלָּתֶךָ. וְדַע מַתַּן שְׂכָרָן שֶׁל צַדִּיקִים לֶעָתִיד לָבֹא:

        Rabbi Tarfon served as a Kohen in the Temple as a boy and, after the Hurban, seems to have studied at Yavneh.  But he is not listed in Avos 2:8 as one of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’s major disciples. Nevertheless,  if you compare his teaching in Avos 2:16 to that of Rabbi Elazar (Avos 2:14) you’ll find some obvious similarities.  The ambiguity about Rabbi Tarfon’s relationship to the main disciples at Yavneh probably explains why the Mishnah lists his teachings after theirs.  His important student, Rabbi Yehudah ben Ilai, was a great scholar in the Ushan yeshivah who contributed hundreds of halakhic rulings to the Mishnah.

        Time obviously weighed heavily on Rabbi Tarfon’s mind.  As a boy, he had known a sense of eternity and timelessness that filled the Temple during the sacrificial avodah.  He had himself experienced the loss of that sense of timelessness as Roman legions battered down the walls of Yerushalayim and put the Temple itself to the torch.  He knew how time consumes everything.  So he teaches how to use our time to recover eternity - put your time into Torah, the eternal communication of HaShem and His community.

        As he says in his first teaching: we have but one “day” to do more work than can ever be packed into it, and we barely feel able to begin - yet the labor we put into Torah will bring eternity back to us.  Do you feel overwhelmed?  Of course!  That’s why Rabbi Tarfon reminds us in his second teaching that we aren’t responsible for doing it all - but we have no excuse for failing to make the effort.  All of us must contribute our share to the overcoming of the sense of time that separates us from the eternal presence of HaShem in His Torah.  The coming Future, in Rabbi Tarfon’s opinion, is exactly the recovery of eternity, when the timelessness of the Mikdash becomes available to us once again as the beauty of Torah becomes fully revealed among us.

&&&