“The Labor Is Vast, But The Reward Is Great”

From Rabash’s article “Faith”: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say: “The day is short, the labor vast, the toilers are idle, but the reward is great, and the Master of the house is insistent.” (Pirkey Avot 2:20) If one believes that there is no capital without a Ruler and is confident that the Master exists, one feels constrained.

We are unable to wake up on our own unless the Creator awakens us because we are made of material that has no spirit of life spirit. Therefore, we are called creations; that is, we are ruled from above. Only after the Creator awakens us, we see that the labor is vast, the toilers are idle, but the reward is great, and the Master is insistent. Then, we start working.

At this point, our freedom of will turns on. The Creator places one’s hand on the good fate and says: “Take it!” In other words, the Creator’s action comes first; then it is our turn to continue the work, meaning that we take what the Creator gives us. We have to organize our environment and study so that everyday is structured to allow us to make efforts both on one and the other.

Regardless of our usual workload and dissemination responsibilities, we should never break our connection with the original sources. Only if we manage to constantly maintain connection with the sources, will we arrive at the desired and anticipated result. The labor is vast, but the reward is great, so we have to prepare our vessels to receive it.

All this requires us to distribute our time into several segments: a normal life, study, and dissemination. We should consistently attend to all three and never avoid or overlook any of them. If we neglect even one of them, we won’t keep to the middle line. Even if we don’t allot time in equal shares between them, we still have to take care of all three parts.

We should pay particular attention to these issues. Even when one has a very important dissemination assignment, one shouldn’t forget about studying. There is no excuse for missing classes just because one is busy with dissemination. It’s really bad, since it is said: “If you abandon Me for one day, I’ll leave you for two.” It’s dangerous. If you discontinue studying because of dissemination, our gains will eventually turn into losses.
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From the preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/10/13