When our Rabbis inquired as to the reason we recite the blessings over the Torah when we are called up to it in the synagogue, Rabbi Ishmael replied as follows (Berachot 48b): kal va’chomer, al chayei shaah mevarech, al chayei olam lo kol shekein. If we make a blessing over food which is only chayei shaah, only temporal, mundane living, then we certainly ought to bless G-d for Torah, which is chayei olam, eternal life. And with this, our Rabbis presented us with a distinction that governs all of life and which calls upon each of us to decide how we shall conduct our lives. For every activity of life can be regarded as either chayei shaah, which means the “life of the hour,” that which must be done but which has no lasting significance, or chayei olam, the “life of eternity,” that which may not seem pressing, but which is of eternal and permanent significance. It is between the life of the hour and the life of eternity that the Jew must choose. And our Rabbis leave us little doubt as to which they considered more valuable.
Chayei olam and chayei shaah – eternal life and temporal life, the life of the hour and the life of ever. Perhaps we can reduce those terms to two simpler English words: the urgent and the important. Chayei shaah is the urgent. It includes all those matters which press us day in and day out, problems that have to be solved in a hurry, within the hour, desires to be fulfilled, personal wishes to be satisfied. The Life of the Hour is the life of the Urgent. Chayei olam is the important. Eternity is never in a hurry. There is no urgency about matters of the spirit. But ultimately, in the long view of man’s life, they are what really counts – they are the important issues. The urgent requires of us to make it fast; the important – to make it deep. It is urgent that a businessman sometimes be clever. It is important that he be wise. It is urgent for the housewife to be a good hostess; it is important that she be a loving wife and mother. It is urgent that our children get good grades; it is important that they learn how to live. This is to say that the urgent is significant and certainly ought to occupy our attention. But we ought to certainly give equal time and even greater attention and weight to that which is important, to that which outlasts the temporary chayei shaah for it is chayei olam – eternal and everlasting. Certainly, as our Rabbis taught, the chayei olam ought to elicit from us more blessing, more thankfulness, than the chayei shaah.
Look at our modern civilization and you will discover soon enough if it has struck the proper balance between the important and the urgent, the hour and eternity, the holy and the profane. In a recent article (SR), Dr. Glen Olds, the new president of Springfield College, has drawn our attention to this problem in a well-phrased question that is most disturbing. He asks: We are on the verge of conquering outer space – but what about inner space? We have girdled the earth with satellites, we plan trips to the Moon and to Mars. We have utilized mathematics and engineering to reduce the vast reaches of outer space to manageable proportions. The task was indeed urgent, and we have achieved a victory in chayei shaah. But what of inner space, which may not be as urgent as matching Russian progress, but is far more important in the long run? What about the vast hollowness inside men’s hearts and minds? What about the gaping emptiness that afflicts their souls with meaninglessness, with a lack of direction? And what of the inner space in the society of men – what about shrinking the distances that separate man from man and nation from nation, distances that evoke man’s basest cruelty and hatreds? Shall this inner vacuum and inner emptiness remain unshrunk while we divert ourselves with the urgent but relatively unimportant problem of observing the other side of the moon? To learn the art of morality and fill man’s inner space is to win chayei olam – eternity. Certainly, this bigger prize ought not be completely neglected in favor of the lesser, though more urgent prize of winning chayei shaah.
One of the blessings we make over the Torah – the real essence of chayei olam – expresses our faith that G-d nassan lanu toras emess – He gave us a Torah of truth – vechayei olam nata besocheinu, and He implanted in us chayei olam – eternal life. So chayei olam, the capacity for being big and acting big and living big is not external to us, but implanted within us.
For if we shall neglect chayei olam, no amount of success in chayei shaah will make us happy. One recalls the recent strike of elevator operators in N.Y.C., when a group of workers climbed up to their office on the 18th floor – and discovered that they forgot the keys on the street level. The key to simcha is chayei olam. No heights scaled on chayei shaah will get it for us.
One can hardly ask for a better teacher than Yom Kippur in righting our imbalance, in impressing upon us the great importance of the important, of chayei olam. For Yom Kippur is a day of deprivation, of inuy, when we deny ourselves five specific physical or material pleasures, indicating thereby that we can, if necessary, get along without chayei shaah, without the mundane and worldly and urgent – but never without chayei olam, without the spiritual. We refrain from achilah ushetiah, from food and drink. By not eating, we acknowledge that, as necessary as food is for human life, it is merely urgent that we eat, but the indulgence of our appetites has no lasting value. We can do without it for a day. But we cannot do with a hungry soul, we cannot do with a starved spirit, with an emaciated neshamah. It challenges us to worry not only about the recession in our economy, but also about the recession in our spirits, chayei olam as well as chayei shaah. But we dare not neglect the natural thirst of the human mind and heart and soul for learning and understanding and insight. We refrain from rechitzah, from washing ourselves on Yom Kippur, thus acknowledging that, necessary as it is to keep clean, it is more important to keep pure – for cleanliness is ultimately only chayei shaah, whilst purity is chayei olam; we need spiritual detergents, a religious hygiene. We do not practice sichah, rubbing oils into the skin. For on Yom Kippur, we recognize that one’s appearance, his cosmetic self, is merely urgent, for that determines how he impresses other people. But one’s inner self is important, of cosmic significance, for that is how he impresses G-d. On Yom Kippur we are forbidden to practice neilas hasandal, the wearing of comfortable shoes, teaching us that good clothing and fine possessions and comfort are all permissible, but they ought not to be the sum and substance of our lives – for they are only chayei shaah and we can well do without them as we do on Yom Kippur. On this day, we feel the cold, hard ground, and the ache of the feet induces compassion in the heart as we remember all those whose ill fortune prevents them from enjoying the comforts of shoes and good clothing all year. This kind of sympathy and love for our less fortunate brothers – that is the chayei olam to which Yom Kippur introduces us. It reminds us that what we have is only chayei shaah – passing, ephemeral, impermanent; what we are is chayei olam – of enduring, lasting, eternal importance. Yom Kippur forbids tashmish hamitah, any marital intimacies, reminding us that the desires of the flesh are ultimately only chayei shaah, passing whim, and without lasting value. What is important, rather than merely urgent, is the profound love that binds husband and wife, the element of spirituality, the awareness of the shekhinah, that lends dignity and worthiness to their home. Chayei olam, Yom Kippur tells us, is not the begetting of the family but the raising of decent children, the cherishing of Jewish values in the home, the development of young souls who will not be ignorant of the word of G-d, the growth of family unity and harmony and love. When we deprive ourselves of all these five inuyyim, of eating and drinking, of washing and rubbing with oils and wearing shoes and physical intimacies, we demonstrate thereby that we can go a full day without chayei shaah, but not without chayei olam. We live not for the hour – but for eternity.
As we prepare this morning for the Yizkor service, standing, as it were, at the crossroads between life and death, we are faced with the fact that life must cease. And at a time of this sort, we become aware of the fact that with the end of life, all chayei shaah disappears forever and sinks into permanent oblivion. Who will be interested in how much we enjoyed our material lives, in how much success we achieved in pampering ourselves? What remains after life is done is only chayei olam, only that which man contributed to eternity, only the creations of the spirit, only his maasim tovim, his charity and compassion, his nobility of soul and generosity of heart, his cleaving with his G-d in heaven above. At a time of Yizkor when we call to mind beloved relatives and implore Almighty G-d to remember them in mercy – is it the picture of their chayei shaah that we seek to perpetuate – their possessions, their financial skill, their excellence in games – or is it their chayei olam, their loveliness of character, their pity and mercy, their essential humanity, the spark of G-d within them? We say: yizkor Elokim es nishmas ploni ben ploni – may G-d remember the soul of so-and-so – it is that, the soul, the spirit, the chayei olam, the striving for eternity and eternal values, that deserves to be memorialized by us and eternalized by G-d.
At this time, when we think of others only in terms of their chayei olam, we must rethink our own lives. Torah does not ask of us to surrender all mundane values, to give up our earthly pleasures if they are legitimate. It reminds us that chayei shaah is not enough. It reminds us that man must have too chayei olam. It reminds us that in the long view of life, the chayei shaah, the Life of the Hour, is merely urgent; it is chayei olam, the Life of Eternity, which is of true importance. On this holy day, we set aside the life of the hour, the hour which passes and once it is gone, never returns. Today, we dedicate ourselves to the Life of Eternity. For only through a Life of Torah can we gain eternity. And only Eternity is Life.
