Additional Suffering
Now the Gemara, after it tells us all this, it adds something else on to the subject. The Gemara says: not only are all the treatments of Gehenom going to have power over the angry person; וֹּוֹת שׁ וֹ לְ טוֹת בּוֹנִיַּ חְ תָּ א שֶׁ תָּ א עוֹ ד אֶ לֹוְ ל – but even more so, he’ll suffer from hemorrhoids.
Hemorrhoids? It seems so anticlimactic. We just got through saying how this angry man is going to be put through the wringer in the Next World and now he comes along and adds something new: He says such a man is even going to suffer the discomfort of hemorrhoids.
Now, I don’t wish hemorrhoids on anyone – well, some people, yes – but it’s not such a terrible disease. Certainly nobody wants it but it’s a discomfort, that’s all. It’s not fatal.
And so it needs an explanation. After telling us the great threat of וֵֹּיהִ נֹּם שׁ וֹלְטִ ין בָּל מִ ינֵי גּכ, which is the worst of all possible things, he comes along and he mentions hemorrhoids? It’s a queer thing.
Worse Than Gehenom
But we are learning now that there’s something worse than suffering; there’s something worse than pain and torture. And that is the loss of the opportunity to utilize one’s life! Worse than suffering is when a person is sentenced to the loss of opportunity for tov; to utilize life in achieving perfection.
Because that is the purpose of life. It’s absolutely clear from many seforim, from many statements in the Torah and Neviim and Kesuvim; wherever we look, if we’ll make a summary, a quintessence, of what we learn, we’ll discover that the purpose of life is to gain perfection. And since we are created and put into this world in order to make out of ourselves the very best that we can, anything that interferes with this purpose, any hindrance to this purpose of life, is to be feared more than Gehenom.
What Comes After Gehenom?
Now, we’ll explain that a little more because it’s so important. We mentioned before that in most cases Gehenom is a purification process; sooner or later it finally comes to an end. Of course people who despise their faith, who turn their backs on their people, who cast away their loyalty to Hashem and intermarry or become atheists, we’re not talking about them; we’re talking now about people who identify with the Am Yisroel.
These loyal Jews, even if they are sinners – and who doesn’t sin sometimes? – they’ll eventually find a way out of Gehenom. Even if a Jew is quite wicked and he’ll have to go to Gehenom to be purified, he’ll finally emerge from there – maybe a little pale, a little weakened, but he’ll totter out of Gehenom and he’ll be admitted to Olam Haba! At last! The great happiness and the great consolation: ָ ל יִ שְׂ רָ אֵ לּ כָאּיֵשׁ לָהֶם חֵ לֶק לָעוֹלָם הַב– All Yisroel have a share in the World to Come.
Achievements Are Forever
However, when he gets to the World to Come his worries are not over. Because it’s not enough to be purified of sin. It’s not enough to be freed of one’s aveiros. Because Olam Haba requires positive merits, acts. You have to do something in order to qualify. It matters what you prepared for yourself in the World to Come. It’s only the Torah and mitzvos and middos tovos and perfection of the Torah mind that a person achieves in this world, that’s what bestows on him the happiness of Olam Haba. And so it’s not purifying your sins that’s most important; it’s your achievements that matter most. Because even though there’s no end to the reward of Next World, you have to come there with the IOU notes in order to collect on that happiness.
So what do we see? Aveiros are a terrible thing. Every sin is a great misfortune and we should be very afraid of them because there is nothing as terrible as Gehenom. But eventually the sin is going to be removed. Eventually you’re cleaned. The punishment has a limit; it’s not forever.
But a mitzvah is forever. Achievements continue forever and ever. And therefore when a person loses opportunities to accomplish tov in this world it’s worse than the punishment of Gehenom! Because ָ לָ הֵּ יהִ נּ ֹ ם כּג – Gehenom comes to an end (Rosh Hashanah 17a) but achievements never come to an end.
The Hemorrhoid Problem
And now we come to what the Chachomim are telling us here. וֹת שׁ וֹ לְ טוֹתּוֹנִיַּ חְ תָּ א שֶׁ תָּ א עוֹ ד אֶ לֹוְ לּב – Even more than Gehenom he’ll even suffer also from hemorrhoids in this world. It means that not only is there a Gehenom waiting for this angry man but even worse he’ll even be visited with hemorrhoids, with pains of illness while he’s still alive.
Illness? While he’s alive? That’s all? And it’s not even the most serious illness. It doesn’t say that he’ll be a heart patient or he’ll be stricken blind – that could happen too if he lives an angry life but even before that happens he’ll suffer from hemorrhoids.
The answer is that it means that he’ll be harassed frequently. And it’ll be a harassment that makes his mind little – a person is not able to think big when he’s always bothered. And this angry, frustrated fellow, he’ll be punished by being constantly weighed down by his little day-to-day worries. And that’s the worst punishment of all because he won’t be able to soar to the heights of perfection.
When he sits down, he experiences pain. Many times when he lies down the pain still accompanies him. And this constant pain, even though it’s not a terrible thing in life but it grinds away his opportunities. It hampers him.
The Big Little Problems
Hemorrhoids is only an example because if it won’t be that it’ll be something else. That’s why the Gemara quotes a possuk on this: וְנָתַ ן ה'ָזּ שָׁם לֵב רַגָלְך – Hashem will give you a heart of excitement. It means that the angry person is going to have all kinds of anxieties, וְ כִ לְ יוֹן עֵ ינַיִם – and your eyes will be worn out, וְדַ אֲ בוֹן נָפֶשׁ – and aching of the soul (Devarim 28:65).
So the Gemara asks, what is such a thing that wears out the eyes and hurts the soul? And so they say it means hemorrhoids. The constant pains are a drag on life. But it might be anything. He’ll have eye problems or headaches or other discomforts. Poor health, even in a minor matter, is the greatest misfortune that there could be – much worse than Gehenom – because they hamper him from greatness. He is fettered to the small nothings of life because of all the vexations and irritants.
A Distracted Mind
And even if he’s perfectly healthy he’ll always be frustrated because of his middah of anger that he never quashed. He’ll always be racking his brains, thinking why this, why that. Why didn’t she do that? Why did he do such and such? That’s the life of a person who angers easily – he’s frustrated and irritated and annoyed. And a person like that is not able to accomplish all the greatness that life holds for him. And that’s the worst thing that could be; because if there’s anything that discourages a person from the ambition needed for going ahead and accomplishing, that’s worse than any other punishment you can imagine.
Let’s say he could go ahead and daven. He could pray with all his heart. What a big achievement that is! Every man and woman should aspire to become great in tefillah because the perfection in awareness of Hashem, in bitachon, in ahavas Hashem, that comes from davening is something you’ll take with you forever in the Next World.
But if there’s a pain nagging you all the time, even a minor ailment but it bothers you and you’re in a hurry. You want to get out of the shul. You can't stand Shemoneh Esrei that long because you're suffering.
Or your mind is somewhere else because of your anger. It’s still back in the kitchen chewing on what your wife said to you this morning. Or it’s at the office angering at your boss for keeping you late in the office again. So you're losing opportunities which are more precious than anything else.
True Freedom
But davening is only an example. A person who has menuchas hanefesh – nothing angers him, he doesn’t get irritated – that person’s life in this world is wide open for him. His mind is unchained. He can learn Torah. He can make cheshbon hanefesh. He can do teshuvah; he can make amends for his aveiros and save himself a lot of trouble.
He can think about Hakadosh Baruch Hu. He can walk down the avenue and practice that Hashem is looking at Him. An unfettered mind can practice that! He can walk in the street and think about the nissim that Hashem did for us. נִפְלְאוֹתָיו אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂהּזִכְרו – Remember always the miracles that Hashem did for us (Tehillim 105:5). It means it’s a mitzvah to think about Yetzias Mitzrayim. It’s a mitzvah, a perfection, to think about the mann and about Kriyas Yam Suf and other miracles.
But if he suffers from tachtoniyos and other ailments, and everything else that comes along with anger and frustration, so that’s the great misfortune of life. Because he’s too busy with his little irritations to achieve the greatness that this life has to offer him; instead of utilizing the opportunity of life that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives him to collect all the precious coins that are going to be his admission to the World to Come and his happiness forever and ever, he’s busy with his tachtoniyos and everything else.
