Nothing is Small
Now, you might think, “Well, I believe in Olam Haba and so I don’t think that this is such an important reason for the mitzvah of burying the dead right away. I don’t believe that seeing a dead body, that being in the constant presence of a dead body, will affect my emunah in the Afterlife. And even if you’ll tell me, ‘yes, that it does’, it’s very minimal.”
But the answer to that is that when it comes to Olam Haba, nothing is minimal. It’s only because we don’t understand how important the awareness of Olam Haba is for our success in this world, that we can think such things. Only then can we think that this mitzvah of burying the dead and the derech hateva that Hakadosh Baruch Hu put into the briyah is not important.
The First Fight
The truth is that emunah in Olam Haba is one of the very first things which people must fight for; it’s the number one thing which people must strengthen. Because you cannot be a Jew, you can not even start being a Jew, unless you first establish in your mind this principle of principles.
You know who says that? The Chovos Halevavos. In his sefer there's a section called Yichud Hama’aseh and he quotes there all the arguments of the yetzer hara and he gives answers to them. Many important foundations of the emunah are brought up in his list: Torah min haShomayim, yetzias Mitzrayim and many other important subjects. But before all the subjects are enumerated there comes one that he says is most important. “The yetzer hara will speak in your ear about many things,” he says, “but ַּ̇לƒח¿ ̇ ר∆ˆ≈ּיַה ֹוּב¿ךָ ֹ̇ו‡ ̃≈ּפַס¿ּי∆ׁ ̆ הָמ, the first thing that the yetzer hara will attempt to cause you to fall into doubt about is this. He will attempt to weaken a man in his awareness of the World to Come.” He’ll do whatever he can to keep that idea far away from his mind, far away from his day-to-day attitude.
Now the question is, there are so many other important fundamentals. Torah min haShomayim?! What’s more important than that? What about briyas ha’olam yeish mei’ayin? Why isn’t that first?
The Fundamental Fight
And the answer is this. Because no matter how much a man is convinced of all the yesodos haemunah — could be he believes in Hashem as if he’s looking at Him directly. Yetzias Mitzrayim is actually yesterday to him and he believes in Matan Torah just as if he had been standing at Har Sinai. Torah sheba’al peh? There's no question in his mind that everything is true. Everything is as clear as day to him. He’s convinced. No doubts at all!
But still it won’t help. Because if he is not well-founded in the belief in the Afterlife, then everything else is worthless. Because what value do all the principles of Torah have – or any principles at all for that matter – if the end is a hole in the ground?
What incentive is there to be virtuous if it’s not the emunah in the World to Come? The only support for humanity, for any kind of correct behavior, for any kind of righteousness, is the fact that there is a Next World. Because when people lose sight of that great fundamental principle of Olam Haba, that רֹו„¿זֹרו¿פƒל ה∆מֹוּ„ ה∆ּזַה םָלֹעוָה – this world is only like a vestibule, ‡ָּבַה םָלֹעוָה י≈נ¿פƒּב – before the Next World, they lose all incentive to be good.
Dangerous Disbelief
Don’t believe these people who say you can be decent and righteous even though you don’t believe in the Next World. Don’t you see what’s happening today? They’re capable of anything. The only reason they still mouth words such as liberty and equality and justice, these words are only a holdover from the old generations when they believed in the Next World. But these people are only repeating words that today have no foundation anymore. They don’t stand the test of time once a person doesn’t believe in a G-d and in the Next World.
Once people kick out from underneath their feet the ladder of the World to Come, of eternal responsibility, all of their ideals of liberty and humanity and morality are just empty platitudes. The ones who are always spouting off about liberty and justice, they have no reason why they should believe in liberty. Don’t you see - they are the ones who are most dangerous.
That’s why they’re trying now to kill old people. They’re preaching the ideal of euthanasia to kill off the elderly. If there’s no Afterlife, no din v’cheshbon, so why not?
Wicked Doctors and Righteous Janitors
And babies surely! They preach you can kill babies. They say it’s before they’re born, but actually in the hospitals, they kill babies even after they’re born. You know they put in a vacuum pump and they pump out the baby but it happens sometimes the baby by mistake didn’t die yet; so it’s born a live baby.
So the doctor takes a look and tells the colored janitor, “Get rid of it.” But the colored janitor is not a scientist; he believes in the Next World. So he turns away and he walks down the hall. “Nothing doing,” he says. “I’m paid to mop the floor, not to kill babies.”
But the doctor has no compunctions. Because no belief in Olam Haba means no compunctions at all. So he gives it a squash and he writes in the medical notes that the abortion was successful. It’s not just stories. That happens all the time! Many times babies come out jumping full of life, but he’s not supposed to be alive. And what reason should the doctor have to pity a human life? He doesn’t believe in anything.
Dishonest Academic Integrity
And when the college professor – he’s wearing ragged jeans and long hair and his chest is uncovered – when he catches a student cheating on the exam so he says, “That's a terrible thing to do. It's dishonest.”
So the student says, “What does dishonest mean?”
And the college professor doesn't know the answer. He also doesn't know what dishonest means. But he'll start giving him arguments, holdover arguments from a society that lived with the hereafter. His father and mother after all were Catholic; they believed in G-O-D in his house growing up. Of course they substituted something else for it, but they call it G-O-D. And they believe if you’ll go to mass and you’ll worship their G-O-D, there’s a Next World. So the professor makes some weak argument to the student. “It’s the consensus of the university community, for the sake of academic integrity. And it compromises our personal ethical code by creating an environment of broken trust. That’s why it's a wickedness to cheat.”
The Youth Rebel
But the student is already from the new generation. So he tells him “What moral code? Yours?! Why shouldn't I be wicked? Why shouldn't I do even worse things than cheat on a college examination? Why shouldn’t I shoot the dean in order to steal from him the key where he keeps the examination papers? Why not?”
And the professor has no answer.
And therefore, these criminals, because they lost the foundation of all humanity – that’s the World to Come – so anything is possible. Of course, the policeman is an incentive. Fines and jails or public disapproval are incentives. But that’s not enough. And so society crumbles; if a man thinks that there’s asylum in the grave so society crumbles.
Looking Inward
But it’s not only society that we are worried about now. It’s ourselves! Because the same question you can ask of a frum Jew. Why shouldn't you steal? So he says lo signov, it's forbidden. It’s this and that. But if the sheol is a beis manos lach, if the grave is your asylum then there is no insurmountable argument for righteousness. And there are a lot of crimes that can be done without being caught, crimes you can do if you pull down the window shades. So what’s to stop a man from being as wicked as he can if he does it secretly or in his heart?
You know when temptation cannot touch a Jew? When he’s aware of Olam Haba. That person won't yield for a taavah. Even the strongest temptation will be meaningless to him if he has clearly before his eyes this picture as he enters the Next World and has to face the Beis Din shel maalah and receive his everlasting judgment and everlasting reward. It’s only when a Jew becomes weakened in his emunah in hasharas hanefesh then he lets his guard down and he is capable of anything.
But I’m not even talking now only about consequences, about punishment. We have bigger things to accomplish in this world than avoiding Gehenom. The mitzvah of וּנ∆רּ¿ב¿ ּ̃ƒ ̇ רֹבוָ ̃ is not for the professors, for the gentiles; it’s for us. Because we’re the ones that matter most – our minds, our perfection, that’s what matters most to Hakadosh Baruch Hu; and any weakening in the awareness of hasharas hanefesh is a peril to this perfection. The gift of life is a one-time opportunity and we have all different forms of perfection we have to achieve in the short time we’re here; perfection in mitzvos, perfection in Torah, perfection in character, perfection in daas, in Torah ideology. There’s so much to do and a person has to be focused on his mission if he’s going to be successful.
Focused on the Endgame
When does a frum Jew lose focus? When does he weaken in his avodah, in his quest for perfection of the neshamah? Only when he weakens in his awareness of Olam Haba. And when it comes down to it, that's the tremendous difference between a true Jew and those Jews who are not attuned to the Afterlife. They are on the other side of the fence from us because you’re only a frum Torah Jew if you...
