If you walk in My laws.”
The purpose of this world is to be factory to produce a product called olam haba the World-to-Come. However, you can read the Torah from cover to cover and you wont find one specific promise about the reward for keeping the mitzvot in the next world. Promises of reward in this world abound. We are promised the rains in their time; the land will give its produce and the trees will bear fruit; there will be an abundance of food that we will eat to satiety. We will dwell securely in our land. No one will walk down a dark street and be frightened. No one will worry about sending their children off on the bus in the morning. There will be abundance and peace.
Why is it the Torah makes no open promises about the reward for keeping themitzvot in the next world, but is replete with details of their reward in this existence?
The Rambam explains: All reward and punishment in this world is through hidden miracles. When a person eats a bacon/cheeseburger and dies prematurely, nobody knows that he died because he ate a bacon/cheeseburger. People die at his age when even when they dont eat bacon/cheeseburgers. They die younger. A person gives tzedaka and becomes rich. You dont see that he became rich because he gave tzedaka. There are plenty of rich people who dont give tzedaka they inherited it or they won the sweepstake. The hidden miracle is that this person wasn’t destined to become rich or wasnt supposed to die young, but because he gave tzedaka or because he ate non-kosher, G-d changed this person’s destiny. Its miraculous, but it’s hidden. It looks like nature, but if it were actually the work of nature, then nothing that a person did in this world could have any effect on himself. For a person is born under a certain mazal, a certain destiny and without the intervention of an outside force the hidden miracle nothing that a person did, whether for good or bad, would have any repercussions in this world. That’s why the Torah speaks at great length about the outcome of the performance (or non-performance) of the mitzvot in this world. For it is truly miraculous that our actions should affect anything in this world, a world that, aside from these hidden miracles, is run by a system of mazal and nature.
However, as far as the next world is concerned, its obvious that our actions will have repercussions there. The Torah doesnt need to stress the reward and punishment in that existence because its obvious that people who engage in spiritual pursuits and serve G-d faithfully should receive spiritual rewards. But it is certainly not natural that people who are immersed in the work of the spirit, the study of Torah and the performance of mitzvot should receive their reward in this world as well. Thus the Torah stresses the reward for keeping the mitzvot in this world because that is something that no one could surmise without being told of its existence.
Prepared by Devorah Abenhaim
