Editor’s note: This series is reprinted with permission from “Insights & Attitudes: Torah Essays on Fundamental Halachic and Hashkafic Issues,” a publication of TorahWeb.org. The book contains multiple articles, organized by parsha, by Rabbi Hershel Schachter and Rabbi Mayer Twersky.
There is famous brief Hebrew poem composed by one of the Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages that runs as follows, ?העבר אין והעתיד עדיין וההוה כהרף עין דאגה מנין—The past is gone already; the future is not yet here; the present is merely the span of the blink of an eye; so there is no room to worry about anything.” Rav Soloveitchik, in several of his published essays (see Divrei Hagus Veha’aracha p. 237, and Lonely Man of Faith pp. 69-73), wrote that the idea expressed in the poem is not in accordance with Jewish thought. Our lives are so short; how long does one live? If we don’t live in the past as well as in the future, in addition to living in the brief moment of the present, then we have not lived. A religious Jew lives along with many of the tzaddikim of the past: Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov; Moshe Rabbeinu; Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai; Abayei and Rava; the Shach and the Vilna Gaon, etc., and we live with Eliyahu HaNavi.
One of the anti-religious Israeli “thinkers” was widely quoted as having expressed the sentiment, “Enough living in the past, and always speaking of the Avos, yetzias Mitzrayim, ma’amad Har Sinai etc.; and enough speaking about the future—the coming of Mashiach etc. I want to live in the present and enjoy myself!”
This is the attitude of a rasha who is only interested in the present moment. This is why even during his lifetime the rasha is considered as though he were dead. A religious Jew who connects with the tzaddikim of the former generations, and thereby joins Klal Yisrael, lives, in addition to the split second of the present, in the past and future as well, since Klal Yisrael includes the Jews of all the generations, past, present and future.
In the parasha we read (Bereishis 30:1) that Rachel was upset that she had not yet had any children. She cried out to her husband that if she does not have any children, she will consider herself as though she were dead and as though she had accomplished nothing in her lifetime. Even though such an individual identifies with the past, that is not sufficient; one must have children to be able to link up with the future as well. A rasha has a very brief life indeed, considering that he lives only in the very brief moment of the present.
Rabbi Hershel Schachter joined the faculty of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in 1967, at the age of 26, the youngest Rosh Yeshiva at RIETS. Since 1971, Rabbi Schachter has been Rosh Kollel in RIETS’ Marcos and Adina Katz Kollel (Institute for Advanced Research in Rabbinics) and also holds the institution’s Nathan and Vivian Fink Distinguished Professorial Chair in Talmud. In addition to his teaching duties, Rabbi Schachter lectures, writes, and serves as a world renowned decisor of Jewish Law.
