Avos 4:16-17

בס׳ד

אבות ד:טז-יז

Rabbi Yaakov says: This world is like a hallway for the Coming World; Shape up in the hallway so that you can enter the hall! He used to say: One hour of repentance and good deeds in this world is better than the entire life of the Coming World; But one hour of bliss in the coming World is better than the entire life of this world.

רַבִּי יַעֲקֹב אוֹמֵר, הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה דּוֹמֶה לִפְרוֹזְדוֹר בִּפְנֵי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. הַתְקֵן עַצְמְךָ בַפְּרוֹזְדוֹר, כְּדֵי שֶׁתִּכָּנֵס לַטְּרַקְלִין: הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, יָפָה שָׁעָה אַחַת בִּתְשׁוּבָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, מִכָּל חַיֵּי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. וְיָפָה שָׁעָה אַחַת שֶׁל קוֹרַת רוּחַ בָּעוֹלָם הַבָּא, מִכָּל חַיֵּי הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה:

        

You might recall Rabbi Yaakov’s other-worldliness from Avos 3:7, where he spoke vigorously against breaking off one’s Torah study to admire the works of Creation.  Now he offers us an understanding of where his radical point of view comes from.

        It isn’t unusual to find philosophies that deny all value and reality to the normal world of experience and ascribe sole value to another plane of existence. Similarly, we are very familiar with American culture’s celebration of worldliness to the nearly total denial of any reality to other dimensions of spiritual existence.  Rabbi Yaakov here walks a very careful path between both of these possibilities.

        On the one hand, this world is merely a preparation for the ultimate life in the coming World (4:16).  Its sole value is as a kind of vestibule in which, as Rashi says, you “straighten your clothes and comb your hair” in order to enter before your Creator.  So the vestibule is only a momentary stopping point serving the Palace; our life in the mortal world is only a refining-place preparing us for the immortal world.  As such, it has no intrinsic value.

        

        On the other hand, the things we do in order to “straighten up” in this insignificant place are of supreme importance (4:17). The teshuvah and works of Torah we perform are the substance of our lives.  When we engage in them, we open ourselves up to the world of immortality.  They are the sole means we have of coming to know a world totally transcending the one revealed to our senses. Through these acts we participate in the spiritual order in a very intense way. This intensity, precisely because we experience it in the midst of our everyday reality, is in fact of a higher order than the entire experience in  the world of spirit (Avos 4:17, first comment).  Coming in the midst of our immersion in materiality, the “jolt” of the experience of teshuvah comes with intense power and creates a kind of spiritual transport.

        Finally, however, this transport fades, as a result of our natural immersion in physicality.  For this reason, in the ultimate scheme of things, the freedom offered in the Coming World remains the ultimate goal of everything we do here. This, then, is the balance Rabbi Yaakov requires; a complete immersion in the worldly possibilities for our spiritual transformation, in return for a future lived wholly beyond the natural limitations of the world.

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