CHOCHMAS NASHIM: BOOK OF RUTH: REWARD
By: Suri Davis
The Rabbis tell us in Ethics of Our Fathers that one shouldn’t learn torah to get a reward. Yet it appears that the system of mitzvah/good deed and the warning of sin is premised on reward in the world to come or the promise of hell in the world to come.
The Rabbis also tell us that all is in Heaven (G-d’s hands) except fear of G-d. In other words, there is no starter to faith and belief if there is no fear of G-d as core. One who is an atheist, who believes there is no G-d, will not consider following the words of the Torah, because he believes that there is no divinity in the torah and that there is no G-d in heaven who has commanded the laws of the torah. Therefore, fear of G-d, belief that He exists must come from within.
If I ask my child to bring in the groceries from the car, and he is on the phone, he has two internal choices: I love my mother and I want to do as she asks, or he thinks, if I don’t listen to my mother, she will punish me. We learn that doing what G-d commands is at a higher level if we love G-d, than if we fear that he will punish us. To get to the point of love of G-d, we have to truly feel and acknowledge that all that we have and all that happens to us is from G-d, and that it is for the best.
Ruth, in the Book of Ruth which we read on the coming holiday of Shavuoth, newly converts to Judaism. She loses her husband early on in the book and decided to cast her lot in life to G-d and her mother in law Naomi, who is poor, and newly bereft of her husband and two sons. She decides to collect the wheat ration for the poor on a farm for the benefit of Naomi and herself, and in short, decides to marry a relative of her late father in law, Boaz, even though he is old, for the sole purpose of having a Jewish child. [ As an aside, it should be noted, that she merited that her descendant will be the Messiah.]
When she modestly approached Boaz for the purpose of reminding him that he had a responsibility to marry her under Jewish law, he states: “Yehi maskurtaich shlaimah meim Hashem asher baas lachsot tachat knafav/your reward should be complete from G-d, that you came to rest under his wings (protection).” The Midrash Rabbah tells us that that the word shlaimah/complete, should be read as Shlomo, a hint that her descendent will be King Shlomo/King Solomon.
At Yutorah.org, Rav Moshe Tzvi Weinberg gave a shiur on the following:
In the Birchas Maayan, pp. 95-98, whose author is unknown, The gamarah in Kidushin 30b states that the reward for the mitzvoth performed in this world is provided to us in the world to come. Rabbi Heschel who lived in the 1600s in Cracow Poland brings in the verse from Vayikra/Leviticus 19: Lo talin peulat sachir/One is supposed to pay his worker on the day the work is performed. So the question is asked why G-d doesn’t pay us for the work we perform on the day we perform the good deed, why must we wait for the world to come. We learn that G-d is bound by His torah, as we are bound by his torah.
In Choshen mishpat 339, we learn an exception to the rule of paying a worker on the same day the work is performed, which is that when a worker is hired by a third party, the employer needn’t pay him that day. Since Moshe gave us the Torah on Mt. Sinai, which is the event we celebrate on the upcoming holiday of Shavuoth, G-d is exempt from paying us on the day we perform a mitzvah.
During the weeks between Passover and Shavuoth, we read the Ethics of Our Fathers, which is a section of the Talmud, which sets forth wise sayings of Rabbis. Each week we start learning, we recite the same introductional verse that every Jew has a share in the world to come and then states that Moses received the Torah from G-d and transmitted it to the Jewish elders and tracks how the Torah was transmitted throughout the generations to the Jews. This confirms that the transmission of the Torah to the Jews was vis a vis Moshe, and that our reward is not provided to us now when we perform it in this world, but when we enter the world to come.
BUT we learn from Makos 24 that while most of the mitzvoth were transmitted to us from Moshe, on Mount Sinai, G-d transmitted to the Jews directly the first two commandments which are “I am your G-d who took you out of Egypt and you should have no other G-d.” These commandments are the foundation of faith. This is hinted to in Makos: Torah tzivah lanu moshe/The torah was commanded to us by Moshe, the gematriah/numerical value of the word Torah is 611 out of the total 613 commandments of the Torah, leaving the first two commandments which were given to us directly by G-d.
Going back to the beginning of this lesson, everything is from G-d except fear of G-d which is the premise of Emunah/faith, for that, which is represented by the two commandments G-d gave us Himself, it appears because it is the foundation of all the rest of the Torah, because unless we believe that it is G-d who took us out of Egypt and that there is no other power in this world who cares for us, but G-d, we would not have belief in G-d and follow His torah, it is for our faith in G-d, that G-d rewards us in this world. All the good we have in this world is due to our faith in G-d. The commandments we perform as a result of our faith in G-d is rewarded in the world to come.
Chavos yair discusses a verse in Kohelet/Proverbs: “Tov im hashnayim min haechad, asher yesh lahem schar beamalam/It is better to have two people working together [to assist and support one another] so that they can reap their reward for their efforts.” Chavos Yair explains that another way to interpret this verse is that it is good to have received the two commandments from Haechad/G-d who is suigeneris, because we can then reap the benefits of our faith in G-d in this world.
This is supported in Ethics of Our Fathers: 6:1: Rabbi Meir says “Whoever engages in Torah study for its own sake, merits many things.” We just learned that the reward for learning torah is in the world to come. The Hebrew verse states B’torah, adds the letter bet, which has a numerical value of two, added to the numerical value of torah, as stated above. That when one throws in the two commandments of faith and belief to his learning torah, he gets rewarded not for learning torah but for the faith and belief included in the act of learning torah.
This is confirmed in Deuteronomy 11:26: “See I set before you today, blessing and curse.” How does one get a blessing today? The key is in the world Anochi/I, the same word Anochi which starts the first commandment of faith in G-d. By having faith in G-d, we merit reward even in this world.
Coming full circle with Ruth, when Boaz tells her that she should be fully rewarded in this world from G-d, it is because she sought refuge under G-d’s wing, and took on Emunah/faith and Bitachon/belief, i.e., she had faith that G-d would protect her and acted on the faith with belief in taking on and performing G-d’s commandments.
It is for these reasons that before we learn Torah, we say the blessings of reading and learning torah, to establish the connection between G-d and torah and our belief in G-d and that his torah is divinely commanded and given. I submit that any time we do a mitzvah, we should stop, and have in mind that it is because of our faith in G-d, and his commandment to do good, that we are doing the mitzvah, and it is my hope that HKBH reward you in this world for your faith, and in the next world for your act.
Learn well over Shavuoth dear friends.
Shabbat shalom. Chag sameach.
-Suri