By Rabbi Dovid Sapirman, Dean, Ani Maamin Foundation
In the beis din shel maalah stands a scale for every human being. One side holds their merits, the good things they have done; the other side holds all of their sins. Fortunate is the one whose zechuyos outweigh his avonos! Woe to he whose avonos outweigh his zechuyos. The Gemara states that a person should always see himself as standing at exactly fifty-fifty: one right move will tip the scale in his favor, and one wrong move will bring disaster. Not only that, we should view the entire world the same way. With one mitzvah, we can tip the whole world to the good; with one sin, to the negative.
The Gemara tells us that every time Rav Yochanan reached a certain pasuk in Malachi, he would cry. This pasuk describes how Hakadosh Baruch Hu will judge us for the severest sins and even the lighter ones. “A servant whose master counts light infractions like severe ones—is there any hope for him?”
The Mesilas Yesharim explains that the consequences of less severe sins will, of course, not be identical to those more severe. What it means is that nothing will go overlooked. Every action is placed on the scale and weighed accordingly.
When I was a teenager in the Yeshiva of Philadelphia, we hosted Rabbi Naftali Riff, the rav of nearby Camden, New Jersey, for Shabbos. He was a grandson of the Netziv and president of the Ezras Torah charity fund. Despite his advanced age, he always took the charity checks to the post office himself. When asked why he did not send them with someone else, he replied with the famous story of the wife of the Vilna Gaon. She and a friend used to collect and distribute tzedakah. They made a pact that whoever died first would come back to the other in a dream and report on the judgment. When the friend passed away, she appeared to the Vilna Gaon’s wife in a dream. “In Heaven, they calculate every action,” she said. “We were once looking for a certain woman, and I saw her in the distance and waved. I received a reward for that wave.”
Hence, said Rabbi Riff, he wanted to bring the tzedakah checks to the post office, and be rewarded for his efforts.
Nothing we do is overlooked. Our tiniest good deeds will be rewarded. A kind word or a smile, a tiny increase in kavanah while saying a bracha—all of it goes on the scale.
So, too, does even the slightest infraction.
This is the system by which we are judged each year, and when it comes time to leave this world. May we all merit that the scales be tipped in our favor, for each of us, for the Jewish nation as a whole, and for the entire world.
