The last item of the last Mishnah in מסכת אבות, at the end of פרק חמישי, reads as follows: בן הא־הא אומר, לפום צערא אגרא. The Rabbi called Ben Hei-Hei said that “according to the pain is the reward.” This means that in performing a mitzvah, especially the study of Torah, your reward depends upon how much effort and struggle you put into it. If you work hard – so hard that it hurts – you get greater שכר or reward, and if it comes easy, without too much discomfort or suffering, the reward is less. Maybe this is the reason that Moshe tells us in the sidra עקב that Hashem punishes us in the same way that a father punishes his own son: כי כאשר ייסר איש את בנו, ה׳ אלקיך מיסרך – “as a father punishes his son, so does Hashem your God punish you.” When a child is disobedient and the parent disciplines him or her, it is for the child’s good (at least that is what my Dad has been telling me all these years...), and the child later appreciates all the more the reward that comes from leading a good life of Torah and mitzvos. If he were not disciplined, he might still behave well, but not with the same satisfaction. According to Rabbi Saadia Gaon, the principle of our Mishnah holds true for all times and circumstances. Rabbi Saadia Gaon asks, in his אמונות ודעות, why Hashem did not give each of us a completely happy and worry-free life without having to perform the mitzvos and avoid aveiros. He answers that if you don’t work for a thing, you don’t appreciate it. Only if you invest a great deal of effort can you enjoy the reward. So, this is the same idea that we learned in our Mishnah: לפום צערא אגרא. This last Mishnah of אבות ties in with its very beginning, where we are told that Moshe received the Torah from Mt. Sinai and gave it over to Yehoshua and Yehoshua to the Elders, and so forth: משה קבל תורה מסיני ומסרה ליהושע ויהושע לזקנים. Some of the מפרשים say that this whole list refers not to the Written Torah, תורה שבכתב, but to the Oral Torah, תורה שבעל פה, which contains muc…