Rabbi Frand
During the period that Pharaoh thought he could negotiate the exact terms of Jewish people’s exit from Egypt, he told Moshe: “Go – serve Hashem, only your flock and your cattle shall stay put; even your children may go with you.” Moshe responded: “You, too, will give into our hands feast- offerings and elevation-offerings, and we shall offer them to Hashem, our G-d. And our livestock, as well, will go with us — not a hoof will be left — for from it we shall take to serve Hashem, our G-d; and we will not know how we shall serve Hashem until we get there.” [Shmos 10:24-26]
The Chiddushei Harim (the 1st Gerer Rebbe) once commented that the words “we will not know how we shall serve Hashem until we get there” were not only meant for Egypt. These words are meant for every Jew in every generation until the end of time.
We will not know how successful we were in our worship of the Master of the Universe until we arrive in the next world (after 120 years). These words are a charge! Until we get “there” we will never know if we did what we were supposed to do in this world.
Rav Shrage Feivel Medelowitz, zt”l, used to cry every Rosh HaShanna during the Mussaf prayer when he came to the words “ma’aseh ish u’fekudoso” (G-d will take into account) the actions of man and his mission. [Fekudoso comes from the word "tafkid” – mission]. Every person has a mission. We are judged according to how close we came to accomplishing our designated mission in life. This mere thought — did we accomplish it or not — is something we are not going to know until we come to the next world.
The Shemen HaTov interprets a well known Gemara [Bava Basra 10b]: One of the Amoraim had a peek into Heaven as to what transpires there. When he “returned” his colleagues asked him what he saw. He responded: “I saw an inverted world. The ones who are the high ones there are the low ones here and the ones who are the high ones here are the low ones there. ”
The terms “elyonim” [the high ones] and “tachtonim” [the low ones] used by the Gemara are ambiguous. Many interpretations have been given. The Shemen HaTov interprets as follows:
Down in this world, we see people who are extremely talented, people who are extremely successful, people who are very gifted and occupy — rightly so — a place of honor in society. But for some reason “up there,” they are lowly. Why? It is because given the fact that they have such great talents, Heaven correspondingly has great expectations of them. Despite their distinguished talents, who says that they have reached all that they could have accomplished? They are “lowly” up there because due to their talents, they could have and should have done so much more.
Conversely, there are people who we look at — down here — as people who don’t have much to offer, as lowly individuals. “Up there”, perhaps, because of their limited talents, they will be given prestigious positions for what they did manage to accomplish. Their accomplishments came despite the need to overcome great hurdles and handicaps. For accomplishing what they were supposed to accomplish given the “cards that they were dealt,” they will be “elyonim” [high ones]n Heaven.
Sometimes a person may be born with very limited mental capacity, have a significantly shortened lifespan and very limited capabilities. And yet within his potential he came to shul, he always answered Amen Yehey shmei Rabbah, he always responded to Barchu and Kedusha, and he always had a smile on his face. He did the best he could. He faithfully fulfilled the mission he was given on this earth. In the next world, such a person may very well be among the “elyonim”.
Prodigious talents are wonderful, but they come with tremendous responsibility. The responsibility is to do and accomplish all that can be accomplished with such talents. If one fails to fulfill “the actions of man and his mission” then he will not achieve the same place of honor achieved in the next world by a perhaps less talented and less accomplished individual.
[Torah.org]
