Sarah Yocheved Rigler
A week before Rosh Hashanah, my friend Batya called me. “Today is the twelfth anniversary of our aliyah,” she said, “and I'm calling to thank you for the homemade vegetable soup and wholegrain chocolate-chip cookies.”
“What vegetable soup? What chocolate cookies?” I had no idea what she meant. I had not sent her any food.
“Don't you remember? The day we arrived in Israel, you invited us to a ‘Welcome home’ dinner. You made vegetable soup, wholegrain herb bread in your breadmaker, your special tahini-miso spread, and wholegrain chocolate-chip cookies. I'll always be grateful for the warmth of your welcome.”
I vaguely remembered having them over, but had forgotten the menu completely. I was astonished that someone still remembered those wholegrain chocolate-chip cookies twelve years later.
I put down the phone and felt afraid. It was a week before Rosh Hashanah, also called Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance. If my friend Batya, an ordinary mortal, could recall in detail what I had cooked twelve years earlier, how thoroughly must the Almighty remember what I did twelve years ago, twelve weeks ago and twelve days ago!
Rabbi Tzvi Meir Zilberberg says that our greatest mistake is to underestimate the enormous significance of our actions, both bad and good.
When someone thanks you for a kindness and you reply, “It's nothing,” you reinforce a mistaken view of reality. No action, however small, is insignificant. Did the person ahead of you in the supermarket queue drop a coin, and did you bend down to pick it up? Did you notice an acquaintance in the lift, smile and say, “Have a good day!” as you left? Did you spend five minutes and twenty kopeks setting up and lighting Shabbat candles? The spiritual effect of all these actions is infinite and eternal. Insignificant actions simply do not exist; only an inadequate understanding of each action's effect exists.
Reward and punishment
One of the thirteen principles of faith formulated by the Rambam is belief in reward and punishment. But what reward and punishment?
Judaism teaches that reward and punishment are given primarily not in this limited physical world, but in the infinite, eternal, pure world of spirit that the soul enters after the body's death. Giving a material reward for a spiritual victory—and every choice of goodness is a spiritual achievement—would be like rewarding a soldier who risked his life to save an entire battalion with… one hundred free servings of ice cream. The reward must correspond to the deed. A good deed, aligning oneself with the Almighty's will, or fulfilling a commandment, can therefore be rewarded only spiritually. Any picture of paradise resembling the luxurious hotels or harems of this physical world is fundamentally false.
The great eighteenth-century Kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto explains the nature of reward and punishment:
“The Supreme Wisdom decreed that every act of fulfilling the commandments should bring a person closer to the Almighty to a certain degree. The person then receives His light corresponding to that closeness, and the degree of perfection arising from this sanctification becomes an inseparable part of that person.
“With sin, precisely the opposite occurs. Each sinful act distances a person from the Almighty to a corresponding degree. The person is thereby separated from His light to a certain extent, resulting in concealment. Through this concealment, a particular degree of deficiency becomes an inseparable part of that person.” [Derech Hashem]
In other words, the inevitable effect of any action, good or bad, is to draw the soul closer to the Almighty or move it further away. This makes the person performing the action more complete or more deficient. It applies to every action, word and thought. No action is neutral. Everything we do, say or think either brings us closer to the Almighty and our own perfection, or distances us from them.
As children, we were taught that “everything is recorded in a book.” As adults, we learned that everything is actually recorded in our own souls. I am the product of all my actions, words and thoughts. The chocolate-chip cookies I baked for Batya's family—or rather, the kindness of welcoming new neighbors—have eternal significance, because the soul is eternal. More than “you are what you eat,” you are what you do.
Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler describes the bliss of closeness to the Almighty, given as a reward in the World to Come. He writes:
“Let us gather the scattered hours and minutes of pleasure and enjoyment throughout a lifetime and concentrate them into one minute. Now let us gather all the hours of pleasure experienced by all a person's friends and acquaintances throughout their lives, and imagine concentrating them all into that same minute.”
Rabbi Dessler continues by putting into this minute all the joy experienced by everyone in your city, then your country, then the entire world during one generation's lifetime, and then “all the happiness experienced by all human generations from the beginning of creation until the end of time.” Even this concentrated joy, he explains, quoting Pirkei Avot, cannot compare with “the smallest reward assigned to the smallest mitzvah imaginable.”
So-called small deeds
Imagine you are going to visit your mother and stop at the supermarket to buy the three tomatoes she asked you to bring. “Remember, no more than three, or they'll just go rotten!” The glass doors slide open automatically, you walk in, and suddenly decorative lights flash and an orchestra plays. The manager approaches, shakes your hand and announces, “Congratulations! You are our millionth customer. I am proud to present you with a certificate for 10,000 dollars' worth of groceries and a lifetime discount of twenty percent.”
You stand there stunned. Finally finding your voice, you stammer, “B-but I only came to buy three tomatoes.”
According to Jewish tradition, this is exactly how we will feel when we enter the World to Come. “But I only bent down and picked up a coin.” Can we imagine receiving such an immense, eternal reward for such tiny acts?
The answer appears in a frequently told Jewish story. Two women collected charity each week for the poor of their community. These friends agreed that whichever died first would return and tell the other about the World to Come. Eventually one died. Soon she appeared to her friend in a dream and said, “Remember when we were looking for a wealthy man's house? Suddenly I saw the street sign. I pointed and said, ‘Here is the address.’ Well, here in this world, I am rewarded for raising my finger and pointing to the address.”
The will of our merciful G-d is to give us an infinite spiritual reward for every mitzvah. For this purpose, each good action is divided into its component fractions of a second, and a reward is assigned to each one.
For lighting Shabbat candles, you receive a reward for:
- Looking for candles in the supermarket
- Putting them in your basket
- Taking them out to pay
- Paying
- Bringing them home
- Taking out the candlesticks
- Setting them on a tray
- Putting the candles in the candlesticks
- Taking the matchbox from the drawer
- Lighting a match
- Lighting a candle with the match
- Reciting the blessing
Realizing this can fill the most ordinary life with meaning and turn the most everyday actions into spiritual flight.
What about punishment for sins, the acts that harm others and distance us from our Creator? The good news is that good deeds are written in permanent marker; no subsequent action can erase them. Sins, by contrast, are written in washable ink. They can be erased through a two-stage process: teshuvah and kapparah. Kapparah, atonement, is the solvent, taking the form of a degree of suffering, that removes every trace of sin. The next time you receive a parking ticket, lose your wallet, burn a finger or miss a train, remember that frustration, pain or suffering accepted with love can remove stains from the soul.
Great mitzvot
Although the reward is intended for the next world, the transforming influence of a mitzvah, described above by Rabbi Luzzatto, can sometimes be seen even in this world.
Several years ago, a rebbetzin I knew in America called me. She asked whether her nineteen-year-old daughter Mandy, who was attending a program in Israel, could come for Shabbat with a friend. Reading between the lines, I understood that Mandy was having spiritual difficulties and had been sent to Israel in the hope that she would find her way.
I happily agreed to host the girls and asked them to arrive on Friday morning to help me cook, because we would have many Shabbat guests. At ten that morning, I discovered that not one of my planned dishes was ready. I began to panic.
Just then the phone rang. It was Maayan, a former drug addict I was trying to help—but that is another story. Maayan was crying and mumbling into the phone. She had an infection and a high fever and urgently needed medicine. Could I collect her, take her to a doctor for a prescription, and then help her get the medicine?
I listened in dismay. Even at the best of times, Maayan had difficulty walking. At thirty-eight, she lived with her elderly parents, and I knew they could not help: her mother was ill and her father mentally unstable. Maayan had stopped taking drugs barely six months earlier. I feared that any crisis, such as an untreated infection, might push her back into addiction.
On the other hand, numerous guests were coming for Shabbat, and I could not spare a minute, let alone the two hours I knew this mission would take. As I stood there uncertain what to do, the doorbell rang. Mandy and her friend stood on the doorstep.
Without ceremony, I told them, “I need one of you to help in the kitchen and the other to do a great mitzvah.”
The girls looked at one another. Mandy's friend offered, “I can cook. I'll help in the kitchen.” Mandy, who inherited the difficult mission by default, asked uncertainly, “And what am I supposed to do?”
“It isn't easy, but it's a very great mitzvah,” I told her. “Listen, I'll write everything down in order. First, take my credit card, go to the cash machine and withdraw two hundred shekels. Then take a taxi to this address. Ask the driver to wait outside. Go up three flights of stairs to the door marked ‘Shtrit.’ A woman named Maayan, a former drug addict, will be waiting there. She is ill and needs medicine. You may have to help her dress. Then help her downstairs—she has trouble walking—put her in the taxi and take her to the clinic. Once the doctor writes a prescription, take another taxi to the pharmacy. She doesn't have to go inside with you, but make absolutely sure to take her health card. Collect the medicine, take Maayan home, help her upstairs, then come back here. Any questions?”
I looked up from the paper on which I was writing the instructions and saw Mandy's eyes wide with terror. “I don't think I can do this,” she said quietly, her voice trembling.
I sighed. “You have to do it. I have to cook, so I can't leave home, and there's nobody else I can send. If nobody helps Maayan, she might return to drugs.” Then I added, “This is a great mitzvah. You may save her life.”
Mandy looked as though she had been put into an astronaut's suit without any training and sent to the moon. Trembling, she took the paper and my credit card. I walked her to the door, explaining the way to the cash machine. Her last words were, “I'm not sure I can do it.”
Two and a half hours later Mandy returned. Smiling broadly, she came through the door and announced, “Mission accomplished! Mission accomplished!”
I applauded and hugged her. “You did an enormous mitzvah,” I told her. “You may very well have saved Maayan's life.”
Now Mandy had a request: “I'm going to call my parents to wish them a good Shabbat. Could you take the phone and tell my mother what I did?” I saw how important this was to Mandy and gladly agreed. A sad story with a happy ending, I thought.
Two years later, I received an invitation to Mandy's wedding. She had indeed found her way and was marrying a wonderful young man with all the qualities she had hoped for and her parents had dreamed of. At the wedding, as I wished Mandy's delighted mother “Mazel tov,” she looked at me and said, “You know, you played a big part in this.”
“I…?” I asked, bewildered. I had not even seen Mandy once during the past two years.
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “When you sent Mandy to help the drug addict, she saw that she could do something truly important. It was the turning point of her life.”