Thank you, Rabbi Michi.

Let’s say that’s the truth — so what? Why would it matter to you enough that you’d keep all the details of Jewish law, like the laws of selecting on the Sabbath?

I referred you to those columns. You’re assuming there has to be a self-interested reason. That isn’t so.

With God’s help, 1 Av 5780

The World to Come is a world of pure truth, a spiritual world in which one delights only in truth and goodness. The certainty that such a world exists is strengthened by the fact that even in our world we encounter situations in which a person’s spiritual satisfaction, when he does good and attains truth, surpasses any material satisfaction.

Therefore, the World to Come is not only a distant future, but a “world that is coming” — to the extent that a person refines himself and increases his satisfaction from doing good and attaining truth above any other satisfaction, he is already partly within the reality of the World to Come.

Best regards,
Shatz

This world is a world of pure truth, a physical world in which one delights only in truth and goodness. The certainty that such a world exists is strengthened by the fact that here we encounter situations in which a person’s physical satisfaction, when he does good and attains truth, surpasses any spiritual satisfaction.

Therefore, “this world” is not only a distant future, but a “world that is coming” — to the extent that a person refines himself and increases his satisfaction from doing good and attaining truth above any other satisfaction, he is already partly within the reality of “this world.”

Best regards,
Binyamin

And to Binyamin he said —

Indeed, a world in which not only a person’s spirit delights in truth and goodness, but his body too feels sensory pleasure in doing truth and goodness — that is the “this” world, in which truth is seen and sensed physically. This was the level of Adam and Eve before the sin, and with God’s help this will be the level of humanity in the World to Come after the resurrection, according to Nachmanides.

Happy is the one who waits (and happy is the one who imitates 🙂 )

Best regards,
Shy Tzy Rowling (with the letters scrambled)

Rabbi Shach once said to a great benefactor: I don’t know whether I will have a World to Come like the one you deserve for your work in supporting Torah, but the “this world” that I have in the delight of Torah study — I have more of it than you do…

Shatz, you’re talking about satisfaction from doing good and attaining truth, and in that you’ve made the goal a feeling of satisfaction, so seemingly the bread has fallen into the pit.
By the way, what explains the fact that a person is much happier when he thinks of a true idea than when he reads it from someone else? I, for example, have never in my life thought of a single original idea on any non-trivial matter. Even when I thought I had hit on a point, I later saw that usually others had preceded me (and it’s very possible that I had simply seen it before and then later “thought of it on my own,” as has happened and keeps happening quite a bit).
From the standpoint of attaining truth, presumably there’s no difference. So what is there? A sense of gratification. But from the standpoint of attaining truth, it is far better to immerse oneself head and most of one’s body in the responsa of Noda B’Yehuda and the novellae of the Ritva than to ponder one’s own reasoning and innovate and engage in dialectics, etc. I don’t think someone who came up with the idea himself understands it better. In my opinion, very often he understands it less well and also digs in around his own version, but that would take us too far afield.

And regarding Rabbi Shach’s “this world”: of course he had one. There is a very specific type (in all humanity) of person who delights in knowledge and understanding and solving and innovation. And that’s what Rabbi Shach and the Hazon Ish and Rabbi Elyashiv and all the Torah scholars of the generations had. And I can’t believe that, in terms of delight in thinking, there is any difference between Torah study and other kinds of study. Even though Torah study supposedly reveals some real truth and is meant to provide guiding principles for life. In the end every scholar has to understand, and if not, then I fear for his wife, who can never get divorced — because he isn’t revealing much, but mainly just adding roof upon roof, and the “truth” in his words is a negligible minority. Added to that are the sense of power, economic security, and honor, which are admittedly simple drives, but even a holy man of God like Rabbi Shach was not devoid of them.

While occupied with the satisfaction in attaining truth and doing good in the World to Come and in this world, I went to look for material on the song, “The World to Come is a good thing, learning Torah is a better thing, throw away every yoke, learn Torah again and again, the World to Come is a good thing” [= The World to Come is a good thing; learning Torah is better; cast off every yoke; learn Torah no matter what; the World to Come is a good thing], and I came to a discussion of it on the Otzar HaHokhma forum.

There a link was brought to a book called Panav Pnei Tzafon, which cites the book Ze’ev Yitraf, asking: Granted that Torah study is identical with the World to Come, since both are a revelation of pure intellect, but why is Torah study “more than the World to Come”? And it answers: because the World to Come is a future level, whereas in Torah study one delights in truth already “here and now.”

Another explanation was given there by one of the participants, based on the Mishnah in Avot: “Better is one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than all the life of the World to Come, and better is one hour of bliss in the World to Come than all the life of this world,” and as Maharal explained in Derekh Chayim, that the World to Come has the advantage of attained perfection, but this world has the advantage that in it there is movement toward perfection, there is the challenge of struggle.

Best regards,
Shatz

The book Ze’ev Yitraf (which was mentioned in the second paragraph) is Ze’ev Yitraf — on the festival of Sukkot, by Rabbi Ze’ev HaKohen Huberman of Lakewood, chapter 11, “Yoma Teminaya Chedvata DeOraita,” p. 51 (viewable on the HebrewBooks website).

Credit to Binyamin, thanks to whom I became acquainted with the wonderful series of books Ze’ev Yitraf 🙂

Best regards,
Shimshon Tzvi

Has the Rabbi dealt with this somewhere in the trilogy?

Not in detail. Just remarks.