Q&A: There Is No Reward for Commandments in This World
There Is No Reward for Commandments in This World
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Following yesterday’s lecture on doubt and statistics—on rereading the Talmudic passage in Kiddushin 39a, it seems to me that the Talmud really concludes there that Rabbi Yaakov’s view, that “there is no reward for commandments in this world,” is settled and coherent. Does the Rabbi see any obstacle to arguing that Rabbi Yaakov disagrees with Rabbi Yohanan’s view—to the point that he is a tanna who preceded him by two generations—and holds that “testing the Holy One, blessed be He” is simply not a defined concept, because it is impossible to conduct such an experiment?
Answer
Indeed, that does appear there. But the Talmud still discusses why we should not assume that there was something here that offset that merit. True, in the conclusion it infers that there was not, and therefore this can be applied to any particular case. So the conclusion is that there is no reward for a commandment in this world. The whole discussion there is quite questionable in its logic, of course.
But to claim that Rabbi Yaakov disagrees with Rabbi Yohanan is a stretch. True, when there is a major difficulty, we do of course posit a dispute between passages. In any case, the Tur brings Rabbi Yohanan as the Jewish law ruling, and I also do not recall any commentator who writes that there is a dispute here.
By the way, I am now thinking that the Talmud’s statement that for commandments whose reward is stated alongside them, we do not coerce people to perform them, somewhat contradicts the conclusion here that the reward being discussed is in the World to Come. One can push that off, but only with difficulty.