Silly old days when I thought Torah was everything. I used to run out of the house at 6:30 in the morning to catch a bus to Monsey to teach.”
Oh, to say that is a big mistake! Because she has to remain with that same hislahavus, that love for Torah, that she had in the beginning. Her husband is out of the kollel now? No matter. Her fire is still burning.
Morning and Night
She pushes him out the door early in the morning to the beis medrash. In the morning, it's cold outside and dark but she turns and says to her husband, “Chaim, get up and go to the synagogue. You have a shiur to learn before davening in the morning.”
So Chaim has to put on his overcoat and go out in the cold weather. She's home under the warm blanket but she's a partner. Because she keeps that fire of enthusiasm burning and she pushes him to go, she is a partner in all of his Torah.
When he comes home late at night from learning so she warmed up his supper for him. It was warm and cooled off. She warmed it up again and it cooled off again. But she's patient. It’s for the sake of Torah so she warms it up again. Now, when she does that she's a full partner. The Talmud tells us that; she’s a 100% partner. She’s a partner in his kollel days and in all of the learning he does today too because she understands that the end has to be just as good as the beginning.
That’s the lesson. It’s not enough the beginning of a mitzvah or even the beginning of a day or a zman or a lifetime. Avodas Hashem is a full day job, a full life job. You have to keep it up adei erev. That’s how important the end is.
Part III. A Happy Ending
Approaching the End
We'll listen now to what the Rambam says in Mesichta Avos (4:17) because he makes there a very important statement about what it means ‘the end’. And if we understand his words, if we take them to heart, we’ll be inspired to not let go; to hold on to our idealism and dedication always.
The Rambam says when a man dies, the way he is in the last moment – that’s how he’ll remain forever and ever. Not what you were fifty years before; you won’t be judged only on what you accomplished when you were younger. What matters is that you kept it up as long as you possibly could, all the way adei arev.
I’ll explain this with an analogy. Imagine all of us here are working in a big factory, a pottery factory; we go over to the foreman and each one of us gets from him a lump of fine clay to work with. And then we go over to our place at the table where we have to fashion the clay and make it into the best kind of vessel we can. That's our job.
The Bakery Bell
And the foreman, when he hands us our clay, he warns us, “Shake a leg! Don't talk! Don't waste time! Because a bell is going to ring in the evening and then you have to race with whatever vessel you made out of the clay towards the kiln.”
There's a big kiln on the wall with a lot of little doors, and at the end of the day you have to stick your clay into your little oven and lock the door and in one second it’s baked hard. After it’s baked you can't change it. Whatever it is in that second, that's how it will be forever.
“It won’t help anymore what you want to do to your clay,” the foreman tells you. “You’ll come to me and say, ‘Let me please take it out again and change it. I was negligent. I didn't do a good job.’ I’m sorry but it'll be too late. It’s baked already. It's forever.”
The Lazy Laborer
And so the workers are all standing by their tables with their clay and the smart ones are busy making the clay into a vessel, smoothing it and shaping it and making designs and so on. The foolish ones are talking, laughing, wasting their time – they’ll regret it – but the wise ones are working hard. It’s the morning time and they feel strong and invigorated and industrious.
But suppose now that one of these men who is industrious – he had already made good progress on his vessel – but as the afternoon comes he begins to tire out; he gets distracted or weary. He’s confident about the work he did all morning and he doesn’t spend the last hours of the day like his friend does, adding designs and perfecting the shape.
And now, suddenly, the bell rings. Ooh ah! He wasn’t expecting that. He has to race now with his vessel to the kiln and as he’s running he looks down at his clay with a tinge of regret: “I could have done better.”
The Unfinished Vessel
It won't matter to him that he spent the first half of the day hard at work. What will matter is that he slackened off towards the end and now he’s going to bake his vessel yet unfinished.
And that, says the Rambam, is what death is. Whatever you accomplished until that last moment, that’s how you enter that kiln and in one second you’re baked permanently. That’s how you’ll be forever; not for a hundred years and not for a thousand years. That’s how you’ll remain forever and ever. And so what will it avail you that you were good in the beginning? If you rested on your laurels, if you didn’t continue for as long you could, it’ll be to your eternal regret.
Laboring in Tefillin
Here’s a bar mitzvah boy who puts on tefillin and he puts them on with pride. Because he was inspired and to him the tefillin means something; it’s a sign of greatness, a glory.
And imagine he’s a good boy; he practices those thoughts and he feels more and more elevated every day. He feels a warmth come over him and his character changes every morning because of that. And for a long time he continues to feel that way. He glories with tefillin! Ho ho! Tefillin! He’s happy he's wearing tefillin!
What happens? He gets older and he falls into the rut, and he forgets all about it. And one day, he’s forty years old or fifty years old now, and he puts on tefillin without much thought at all, maybe without any thought.
The Woman Laborer
Or a woman. She used to be so happy with Shabbos. She prepared for that day with thought. Could be she came here once and she heard us talk about Shabbos, about creating the ‘Shabbos Mind’. Everything she cooked she was thinking, “I’m cooking this chicken or I’m baking these potatoes in honor of briyas haolam yeish meiayin, to celebrate that Hakadosh Baruch Hu made this entire universe out of nothing.”
Or maybe she heard a Torah lesson about studying the Hand of Hashem in nature or about working on her character or yiras Shomayim or ahavas Hashem. Whatever it is, she grabbed onto it and made something of herself. She became very great because of it. It could be that nobody knows about her; she’s just a private woman in her humble little home but she became very great in the Eyes of Hashem.
What happened? After some years she begins to weaken. She’s a little lazy about it and now she cools off. Shabbos is just Shabbos – the drudgery of cleaning and preparing and cooking. She’s not reminded of Hashem when she sees a cloud in the sky or a rose in her neighbor’s yard. Her idealism is not there anymore.
Davening Gone Lost
You can see the same thing every day in the shul. Someone who when he was younger he davened with fire but now you can catch him saying noble words, words that should set his heart on fire, but his heart is not in it. Sometimes he's even signaling to his neighbor. Or his neighbor is talking to him. “Did you see, was Shmerel here today?” his neighbor asks him. And he's mumbling, pointing; “mehmehmehmeh, hadarkevodhodecha, mehmehmehmeh.”
Tatte in himmel, what happened to this man? He spent twenty, thirty years davening like a tzaddik and now it’s gone. I’m not saying it’s all gone. He's still an ish kadosh in all his practices, but it has died out within him! The idealism has been extinguished.
Keep Up the Good Work
The Chovos Halevavos warns us about that. He tells us, his readers, that we have to gird ourselves against such things. And he gives an eitzah; he says that you should always review these Torah ideals in your thoughts. You should read the words of the siddur as if you're reading it for the first time. You know the meaning of the davenen already and years pass by; go over it again anyhow.
“That way,” he says, “when you grow older you’ll keep reviewing your accomplishments and increasing them. You’ll stand your ground and continue to develop your mind.”
Not only the davenen. What it means Shabbos and tefillin and niflaos haBorei and learning Torah; everything! All the things you already learned before, all the various ways of serving Hashem that you set out upon in your life, reinvigorate yourself with them when you're older.
Toras HaWatermelon
Even when you eat a watermelon at the age of seventy, go over it again and review all the lessons when you ate the watermelon the first time. Now, I'm afraid you didn't learn anything the first time but if you’re a regular here you know how to dive into a piece of watermelon. You have to dive in with your thoughts. A piece of watermelon is a sugya. It’s like a tasty sugya.
Like this: Why is it that only the outside is deep green but the peel inside has no color at all? The peel is a half inch thick. Why doesn't the green continue into the depth of the peel? It's almost colorless that half an inch. And then starts the red.
What kind of business is this? The plant is like a flag, red, white and green? You see something there! It's purposeful Ya d Hashem. Outside is green because that's how you know whether it's ripe or not. Depending on its shade of green an experienced person will know whether it pays to buy this watermelon. But why waste color? So the color is thin, only on the outside. The rind doesn’t need that color so there’s no wasting.
Now, even though the rind doesn't have to be any color, but when you come to the meat, the meat is red. Why is the meat of watermelon red?
The Joy of Color
Let's say when your wife makes a party she makes ice cream, why does she make it pink? Even if the pink ice cream doesn't taste any better than white ice cream but she adds coloring because it looks better. It's more appetizing. It's to make it more enjoyable.
So Hakadosh Baruch Hu when He is serving you this ice cream – the watermelon He's serving you is better than ice cream – so He colors it red, a beautiful tint of red. You’ll eat it with more gusto that way, with more zest.
So if you know how to eat watermelon the watermelon goes into your stomach but daas is going into your head. That’s the real purpose of the watermelon. That’s how to eat red watermelon.
Go on Red, Stop on Green
Suddenly, however, you come to the rind and you stop eating. Now if the rind was colored red, you wouldn't stop. You would keep on and get a stomachache. Because it's not edible, that's why the color stops. It's an indicator. Ad kan you can eat. From now on, discard. No eating.
You’re supposed to get excited over that! I know that some of you never heard this torah before; I see you’re looking at me with dumb stares. But even those who are regulars here, they heard it already, but they're so tired of hearing it so they don’t hear it anymore. Oh no! We have to keep pushing! We have to think these thoughts every time we eat watermelon - until the sun of life sets.
As Long As the Candle Burns
And that's what Dovid Hamelech said. Let me praise Hashem during my lifetime (Tehillim 46:2). That's what he did. All the days of his life he was singing to Hashem.
Now when Dovid was approaching old age so somebody might have said to him, “Look, you did a good job. Now you can relax. Like it says in the taxi, ‘Lean back and relax.’ Enjoy the ride for the rest of your life. You did so much already.”
“Oh no,” Dovid said. “I’ll sing to My Hashem as long as I’m still around” (ibid.). That means ‘as long as I’m here’. Because that's what's most important, to sing down to the last moment.
Making the End Great
Now in the last moment it's not so easy to sing. Your bones are creaking and rusty, your digestion is not what it used to be, you're not earning money like you used to earn, you don't get as much kavod from your children. As long as the father can hand out big money he’s treated well but now he's an old man, a broken old man. It's not so easy to sing when you're old and weak.
But Dovid continued to sing even when he was lying on his bed and he was so cold because of weakness. They covered him with blankets but he had no warmth left in him (Melachim I 1:1). Still, enough enthusiasm to sing he had. He never stopped singing until his last moment.
And that's the way that shows us a model for our lives. From beginning to end, we are ovdei Hashem. Because that’s the perfection of our service in this world.
Have A Wonderful Shabbos
Let’s Get Practical
Remembering The End
The possuk in our parshah about the bells of the kohen gadol teaches us that ‘the end is important’. Whether it’s the end of a Shabbos, a Yom Tov, or a lifetime. Furthermore, we learned that the end is so important that sometimes the end can atone for all that we missed out in the beginning. This week bli neder, three times a day, as I finish Shemoneh Esrei and I take three steps back, I won’t rush to finish and move on with my day, I will savor the ending of Tefillah as I review these lessons in my mind.
