רבי יעקב אומר, העולם הזה דומה לפרוזדור בפני העולם הבא.
התקן עצמך בפרוזדור, כדי שתכנס לטרקלין
Rabbi Ya’aqob used to say that this life is like a lobby compared to the world to come. Prepare yourself in the lobby before entering into the main lounge!
When someone goes to visit an important person who is waiting, for example, in the VIP lounge of a Hotel on the seventh floor, most probably upon entering the Hotel one you will surely fix his tie, make sure his shirt is inside its pants, or if is a woman she would probably check her makeup in the mirror of the elevator and look at herself again and again to make sure she looks as presentable as possible.
This is the metaphor that rabbi Ya’aqob has chosen to visualize the relationship between this life and the next. This metaphor is a bit “tough”, mainly because it makes us think more realistically about the (desperate) brevity of our lives, which we usually realize after living for more than a few years …. Our lives are as brief as the moment that passes from the hotel lobby to the VIP lounge … But beyond this existential reflection, the essence of this metaphor is to help us understand the reason of our existence in this world: we are here to prepare ourselves for our life after death.
I’ll try to paraphrase the words of Rabbi Ya’aqob with my own words.
We live three lives.
Life 1: in the womb.
Life 2: this life.
Life 3: life after life.
* In this progression, each life is more meaningful and richer than the other. Life 2 is richer than life 1, and life 3 richer than life 2.
* There is an insurmountable problem: from the previous life we cannot know anything about the life to come. The next life is “unimaginable”. Can you imagine a baby visualizing his or her next life, our world? All she can imagine is that the next life is a much larger placenta!
* And now let’s see what rabbi Ya’aqob says: Each of these lives is a preparation for the life to come. Life in the womb is only a preparation for our present life. We are conceived and our bodies are formed in life 1 only to be used in this life. Our nose, our eyes and our mouths have no meaning, nor practical use in the womb. These organs and virtually all of our body can only be understood and justified in terms of the next life, life 2. Similarly, our “spiritual” growth in life 2, the lobby of Yaaqob, is fully understood only in terms of our arrival to the VIP lounge, life 3.
Now, there is a fundamental difference between life 1 vis-à-vis life 2, and life 2 vis-à-vis life 3. And this is the message of Rabbi Ya’aqob. While in Life 1 our body automatically prepares itself for life 2, in life 2 our preparation is not automatic or natural: it depends completely on ourselves, on our moral decisions and on the investment we do or fail to do in our spiritual life. That is why Rabbi Ya’aqob uses the imperative: “Prepare yourself” to enter into the lounge!!! Because what is potentially tragic is that one can live life 2 without doing absolutely nothing for life 3.
(To be continued …)
