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7.17.2006

SCHAR V'ONESH-----onesh


G-d does punish, but you kind of bring it on yourself. As Shlomo HaMelch says, “B’rshoso yipol rashah”, “The evil man falls into his own evil”.

Just read the Tochachah, or the Chazal known as Mesechta Gehinnom. It's clear. You do Mitzvos, you get "schar"; you do aveiros, you get "onesh".

But you need to understand what that means. There are two parts to this: Punishment in this world, and punishment in the next. Here, we’ll deal with the next.

Jews are made out of three distinct parts.

(1) There's your personality, the part you would call "you". We'll call this the Ruach. The Ruach is made out of that very personal stuff inside you that makes you you. When you say "me", you really mean "My Ruach".

(2) Then there's your body - which is not “you”; it is a part of you, in the same sense that your hand is part of you, it is a possession of yours but it is not "you". Even though your body is made of dirt, physical stuff, your body also has a spiritual element to it, a kind of “spiritual dirt”. This spiritual part of the body is what passes for the "soul" of animals. There is nothing G-dly about this “animal soul”, that people, too, possess. In fact, it hungers for all the physical things in the world. We will call these components the Guf and the Nefesh Habahamis, or simply as Nefesh, for short.

(3) Part three is called Neshoma. It is made out of G-d. Really. It is a piece of Hashem Himself, that He connected to each and every one of us.

So you and I are composed of (a) Guf-Nefesh HaBehamis, (b) Ruach, (c) Neshoma.

Now there’s a problem here. You have a person who is comprised of two opposite spiritual forces: G-d, the Highest of the high, and dirt, the lowest of the low. How do they get along connected in the same person? The answer is they don’t. These are two conflicting forces within a person, each one wanting to escape from the other and rejoin its original source – the Neshoma wanting to connect back to Hashem, and the Nefesh wanting to connect to everything physical. You, your Ruach, is stuck in the middle. It’s like a tug of war, with the Neshoma pitted against the Nefesh. And the Ruach? The “you”? Heh heh – you’re the rope!

The Neshoma and the Nefesh HaBehamis pull you in opposite directions.

The Nefesh HaBehamis is also known as the Yetzer Horah; the Neshomah is the Yetzer Tov.

The Neshoma is the underdog in this tug of war because he’s fighting on foreign territory – he’s a G-dly entity in a physical world. The whole environment is stacked against him. But to even things out, in this tug of war, the rope itself can help either side to pull harder. That’s your free Will. You can help the Neshoma win the tug of war, giving it the strength to pull you AND your Nefesh all the way over the “line” into the world of Holiness. If the Neshoma can do this, you, your Neshoma, your Guf and your Nefesh experience Paradise on that “other side of the line”. You all get pulled into Hashem’s realm. The body itself, together with the Nefesh, is sanctified, and eventually enjoys the infinite delights of Olam Habbah.

If however, you don’t put in the effort to help the Neshoma beat the Nefesh, or worse, you help the Nefesh win, then the Neshoma loses the tug of war. But the Neshoma never crosses over into the physical world. You can’t corrupt a piece of G-d. Instead, it simply sees that it cannot hold the rope any longer without getting pulled in, and simply lets go. If that happens, you lose your Neshoma. You become no better than an animal.

The word “chet”, sin, literally means “missing”. One explanation given is that with every sin, we lose a little piece of our Neshoma. With each Mitzvah, we gain a piece. And the Neshoma becomes that much closer to overpowering the Nefesh.

Eventually, we die. At that time, if the Neshoma won the tug of war, all four of you – Neshoma, Ruach, Nefesh and Guf – together enjoy the infinite pleasure of connecting to Hashem. Hashem is Perfect, and there’s no greater pleasure than having EVERYTHING perfect with you. At first, the body gets buried and the spiritual parts of you go into “storage” (Olam HaNeshomos or “Gan Eden”) until Moshiach comes, at which time you’re all united and able to enjoy the Infinite pleasure together.

If, however, the Nefesh and the Guf won the tug of war, and the Neshoma let go of the rope, when you die, you find yourself in Hashem’s world as an entity comprised of animalism without a Neshoma. That is very, very, very painful. Beyond belief painful. Talk about not fitting in . . . ! Of course, most of us are not perfectly spiritual or perfectly animalistic when we die, but somewhere in between. And to the extent that the Neshoma was able to sanctify the body, we connect with Hashem and draw pleasure; to the extent that the physical aspects of us were victorious, we are out of place ,and in pain.

Now the question is, what does G-d do with the “soul in pain” after death? The answer is that after the physical/animal aspects of the person are “burnt up” by the spiritual world in which it finds itself (that “burning” is Hell-Gehinnom), G-d may allow what is left of that person to attach itself to Him on whatever level it can, or He may decide to send him back to this world with another body for another shot at conquering the Nefesh. Going back to the world for another shot is called “Gilgul Haneshomos”.

Gilgul Haneshomos is even more painful even then Gehinnim. At least in Gehinnom, it’s in a spiritual realm, and no matter how painful it is, it’s better than sending a soul back to the physical realm of dirt, having to live and fight in an environment that is anathema to its nature.

Either way, it’s no picnic.

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