Yankel was a poor tailor who lived
in Pinsk. He sewed day and night but
could never seem to make enough money to feed his family of ten. One day, he learns of an island far away, where
instead of sand, the seashore was full of diamonds. And so he sets off to find his El Dorado.
After months at sea, he finally
arrives. Sure enough, the streets are
paved with diamonds. He fills his
pockets, his knapsack, his hat. He can’t
believe how rich he has become. He then
sets off to the nearest restaurant and orders the finest cuisine. At the end of the meal, he produces a huge
diamond from his pocket to pay.
‘I don’t think you understand,’
says the waiter, ‘diamonds are worth nothing on this island! The currency here is fish!’
Crestfallen, he empties his pockets
and sets out to learn how to fish. He’s
a quick learner and in no time manages to become quite wealthy as a
fisherman. After amassing a small
fortune, he sends word home to his wife to put a down payment on a mansion,
because he is on his way back with fabulous wealth.
He arrives home with three
boatloads of fish. By now, they’re
pretty smelly, having been in the hold for months. Undeterred, he goes to the bank and offers to
complete payment on the house with his spoiled fish.
‘Pardon me,’ the bank manager looks
at him incredulously, ‘but why would I want your smelly fish?’
Realizing his foolishness, the poor
tailor walks away completely distraught.
He gets home, takes off his clothing, he’s getting ready to go to bed,
when he hears a clunk. Out of his pocket
has fallen one lone diamond that remained from his original gathering! His wife has never seen anything so
beautiful. She picks it up, runs to the
bank; and with that single diamond, she pays off the entire new house!
מִי שֶׁאָכַל, וְשָׁכַח
וְלֹא בֵּירַךְ. בֵּית שַׁמַּאי אוֹמְרִים: יַחְזוֹר לִמְקוֹמוֹ וִיבָרֵךְ. וּבֵית
הִלֵּל אוֹמְרִים: יְבָרֵךְ בִּמְקוֹם שֶׁנִּזְכַּר
תַּנְיָא, אָמְרוּ לָהֶם
בֵּית הִלֵּל לְבֵית שַׁמַּאי: לְדִבְרֵיכֶם, מִי שֶׁאָכַל בְּרֹאשׁ הַבִּירָה
וְשָׁכַח וְיָרַד וְלֹא בֵּרַךְ, יַחְזוֹר לְרֹאשׁ הַבִּירָה וִיבָרֵךְ?! אָמְרוּ
לָהֶן בֵּית שַׁמַּאי לְבֵית הִלֵּל: לְדִבְרֵיכֶם מִי שֶׁשָּׁכַח אַרְנָקִי
בְּרֹאשׁ הַבִּירָה לֹא יַעֲלֶה וְיִטְלֶנָּה? לִכְבוֹד עַצְמוֹ הוּא עוֹלֶה,
לִכְבוֹד שָׁמַיִם לֹא כׇּל שֶׁכֵּן
Mishnah: If one has eaten and
forgot to bentch, Beis Shammai says he must return to the place where he ate,
and proceed to bentch there, while Beis Hillel says that he may recite it in the
place where he remembered.
Gemara: Beis Hillel said to Beis
Shammai, “According to you, if one ate at the top of a tower and forgot to
bentch and then descended, should he return to the top of the tower and bentch?”
Beis Shammai replied to Beis Hillel, “Well,
according to you, if one forgot a purse at the top of the tower, would he not go
up to retrieve it? And if he would ascend for his own sake, does it not go
without saying that he should do so for the honour of Heaven?!”
The Chofetz Chaim (Krohn MS 253)
offers the story of Yankel the tailor as a parable about mitzvos in this
world. There are few opportunities to
gather diamonds – mitzvos – in Heaven.
And so the soul travels a great distance to a faraway island called
Earth. In this mythical place, the
streets are lined with diamonds.
Everywhere you turn, there’s another opportunity to do a mitzvah – to
help a needy person, to say a few verses of Tehillim, and so on. And yet these diamonds are so plentiful that
nobody appreciates their value. They
appear to have no real currency.
Instead, people trade smelly fish, which symbolizes the value of
material wealth relative to the value of mitzvah-diamonds. And the longer we are here on this island,
the more we forget the value of a diamond and place more and more value on the
fish.
After 120, we return to Heaven,
proudly displaying all the fish we’ve amassed.
Only to be told that fish have no currency in Heaven. Only diamonds. Realizing how many opportunities we missed,
we feel ashamed before the Heavenly court.
However, as we are changing into our angelic robes, a diamond or two
will fall out of our pockets, for there is no individual who has not performed
a mitzvah in this world. At the time,
they had no idea what an incredible impact they were making with their actions
and the true value of their seemingly small spiritual acquisition!
We’re often faced with the
opportunity to do a mitzvah, and we say to ourselves that it’s just too much of
a hassle. Beis Shammai offers us a
helpful framework to keep things constantly in perspective. If we would only have an inkling of the value
of mitzvos, we would be running around all day, every day, to perform as many
mitzvos as possible! Says Beis Shammai: Every
time you find yourself lacking the motivation to go the extra mile to do a
mitzvah, ask yourself, ‘If I’d forgotten my wallet, would I bother going back
to look for it?’ If you would, then most
certainly you should be running to fetch a mitzvah opportunity!
I find this advice very useful when
I’m on holiday and the shul isn’t around the corner. Does G-d really expect me to take a cab to
the other side of town to daven with a minyan?
And then I tell myself that it’s not about what G-d expects or
doesn’t. The real question is: How much
do I value this mitzvah? Surely, it’s
considerably more valuable than the ten quid the cab cost! Money comes and goes, mitzvos are for all
eternity!
Often in life, you find yourself
lacking motivation to pick up those diamonds.
You really can’t be bothered. You
look at others who appear to have all the energy in the world. Somehow, they’re always on the go and able to
achieve so much. And you say to yourself: I know I could accomplish amazing
things, but I struggle with laziness.
It’s not really my fault, it’s just my character.
Rabbeinu Yonah lived in 13th
century Spain. A Torah giant, he was a
motivational speaker par excellence. In
his treatise on the subject of laziness, he puts it candidly: Stop thinking you’re special. That you’ve been uniquely ‘blessed’ with a lazy
nature. That’s not the case, says
Rabbeinu Yona. Everyone is lazy, from
the average joe to the greatest rabbi.
When you think about it like that,
you begin to realize that there’s only one difference between successful and
unsuccessful people. We’re all just as
lazy as one another. Unsuccessful people
allow their yetzer hara (inner tempter) to convince them that laziness
is a good excuse for failing to reach their potential. Whereas successful people spend their entire
lives battling their yetzer hara and winning. Which one do you want to be?
The Gemara concludes with a
powerful story:
רַבָּה בַּר בַּר חָנָה
הֲוָה קָאָזֵל בְּשַׁיַּירְתָּא, אֲכַל וְאִשְׁתְּלִי וְלָא בָּרֵיךְ. אֲמַר:
הֵיכִי אַעֲבֵיד? אִי אָמֵינָא לְהוּ ״אִנְּשַׁאי לְבָרֵךְ״, אָמְרוּ לִי:
בָּרֵיךְ, כׇּל הֵיכָא דִּמְבָרְכַתְּ — לְרַחֲמָנָא מְבָרְכַתְּ. מוּטָב
דְּאָמֵינָא לְהוּ: אִנְּשַׁאי יוֹנָה דְּדַהֲבָא. אֲמַר לְהוּ: אִנְטַרוּ לִי,
דְּאִנְּשַׁאי יוֹנָה דְּדַהֲבָא. אָזֵיל וּבָרֵיךְ וְאַשְׁכַּח יוֹנָה דְּדַהֲבָא
Rabbah bar bar Chana was once
travelling with a group of people. He
ate lunch, but then forgot to bentch (Grace After Meals). Realizing that the
right thing to do was to return to the place he had eaten, he found himself in
a bind. “What should I do?” he thought
to himself, “If I say to the others, I need to go back to bentch, they will say
to me, ‘Say it here. Wherever you
bentch, G-d can hear you!’ I had better tell them that I have forgotten a
golden dove.” And so that’s what he did
and they waited for him before travelling any further. He quickly headed back
to the diner they’d stopped for lunch and proceeded to bentch. Lo and behold, there right next to him was a
golden dove!
Did he find a physical golden
dove? Or is the Gemara narrating the
original parable of the diamonds? While
his fellow travellers may not have appreciated it, Rabbah understood that the
mitzvah he was going back to retrieve was worth far more than the value of any
golden dove.
It’s not easy to motivate ourselves
to do mitzvos. We don’t see their true
value. It’s not that we don’t care
to. It’s just that laziness is our
default position a lot of the time. May
you overcome the inner tempter and fill your pockets – and suitcases – with diamonds!
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