There is an interesting incident told about the Vilna Gaon. When on his deathbed, he began to cry. His talmidim asked him why he was crying. The Gaon picked up his tzitzis, held them in his hand and told his talmidim as follows: “We are living in the ‘seven fat years’. The ‘seven fat years’ are this world. For the price of a pair of tzitzis – consisting of a thin little garment with some strings – a person can acquire ‘worlds’. One hour of repentance and good deeds in this world is superior to all of life in the next world [Vayikra Rabbah Chapter 3]. However, the World To Come is the ‘seven years of famine’. In that world there are no more mitzvos. There is no tzitzis; there are no tefillin, there is no learning Torah. True, there is reward in the World To Come, but there is no opportunity to do mitzvos.”
A person has to be a “Chochom” to realize that we are in the ‘Go-Go’ days now. Now it is easy to ‘grab’ a recitation of krias shema, a proper shemoneh esrei, an act of kindness, or a good deed. However, human tendency is to waste money when it comes so easily, to waste oil when it is so plentiful. Only when the resource becomes scarce do we look back remorsefully, while stuck in the gas line, and say “How stupid we were! We did not save! We did not put away!”
This is how people may feel, Heaven Forbid, in the World To Come. “How stupid we were. We had the opportunities. They were just lying around waiting for us.” That is why the Gaon picked up his tzitzis while on his deathbed and started to cry – because there are no more tzitzis in the World To Come.
When we read Parshas Miketz on Shabbos, let us think about the seven fat years and the seven lean years. It is a nice story about the cows and the Egyptian agricultural cycle of millennia ago. But it has a contemporary message for all of us. It is time to act, time to grab. We are in the midst of the seven fat years. One day they will end. We will look back and say, “we wasted them”. We will feel silly and stupid, because the opportunities were lying in the streets and sitting on the shelves, and we failed to take advantage of them. (R’ Frand)
