Matt Schneeweiss
I can’t help but smile whenever I
chance upon a fundamental Torah idea eloquently expressed by a non-Torah
thinker. I’d like to share with you an idea from the uncensored collection of
Mark Twain’s writings entitled Letters
from the Earth.
In The Lowest Animal (Part V of the The Damned Human
Race, p.232 in the Google edition) Mark Twain cynically portrays man
as the most inferior and corrupt creature on earth:
“I have been studying the
traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so-called), and contrasting
them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to
me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the
Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the
theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer
one to be named the Decent of Man from the Higher Animals.”
In the last paragraph, after his
cynical diatribe against human nature, Mark Twain makes a single concession to
Man:
“He has just one
stupendous superiority. In his intellect he is supreme. The Higher Animals
cannot touch him there. It is curious, it is noteworthy, that no
heaven has ever been offered him wherein his one sole superiority was provided
with a chance to enjoy itself. Even when he himself has imagined a heaven, he
has never made provision in it for intellectual joys. It is a
striking omission.”
Interestingly enough, the vision
of the afterlife of which, according to Mark Twain, has never been envisioned
by man is precisely the notion of the afterlife promised by the Torah.
The Rambam (Laws of Repentance 8:2) writes:
“In Olam ha’Ba (The World
to Come) there are no physical bodies, but only the souls of the
righteous - bodiless, like the ministering angels. Since there are
no bodies, there is neither eating nor drinking nor any of the other bodily
needs of Olam ha’Zeh (This World), nor are they subject to any bodily
occurrences, such as sitting, standing, sleep, death, sadness, frivolity, or
the like. Such was stated by the Early Sages: “There is neither eating nor
drinking nor sexual intercourse in Olam ha’Ba; rather, the righteous sit with
their crowns on their heads and derive pleasure from the radiance of the Divine
Presence” . . .
“The statement “the
righteous sit” was said metaphorically, meaning that the
intellects of the righteous exist there [in Olam ha’Ba] without exertion or
toil. Likewise, the statement “with their crowns on their heads”
means that the knowledge which they know, in merit of which they
attained life in Olam ha’Ba, will exist with them . . .
“And what was meant by
“and they will derive pleasure from the radiance of the Divine Presence”? - That
they will know and apprehend some of the reality of the Holy One, Blessed is He,
which was unknowable when [encased] in a dark and lowly physical body.”
According to the Rambam, the
ultimate reward promised by the Torah is Olam ha’Ba: an entirely
non-physical afterlife in which disembodied intellects derive pleasure
contemplating the reality of Hashem.
Even the Ramban, who argues with the Rambam and maintains that Olam ha’Ba is physical, nevertheless maintains that the essential reward is the intellectual contemplation of knowledge of Hashem (see Shaar ha’Gmul 357).
Mark Twain was right: Religious Man never envisioned an intellectual afterlife. But, as is often the case, Religious Man was wrong.