Olive Oil, Torah and the World to Come

You are to command the Israelites to bring you pure oil from crushed olives for the light, in order to keep the lamp burning continually.                         Exodus 27:20

“To bring you pure oil from crushed olives” – Why was olive oil chosen from among all the oils? Because, just as olives oil comes only from crushing olives, so too man cannot inherit the World to Come except through pain, nor can Torah be fulfilled except through pain, therefore Israel is compared to olives, as scripture says: “The Lord named you a flourishing olive tree, beautiful with well-formed fruit.” [Jeremiah 11:16]            Midrash Aggada 

According to the Midrash, olive oil symbolizes the pain which is necessary in order to inherit the World to Come and in order to fulfill Torah, and thus hints at the statement of Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai:

The Holy One, blessed be He, gave Israel three precious gifts, and all of them were given only through suffering. These are: Torah, the Land of Israel and the World to Come.                          Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 5a

Our Midrash mentions two of the three precious gifts given by God to His people.

The simplest explanation of bar Yoḥai’s teaching (and that of Midrash Aggada) is that whatever is truly worthwhile having is worthwhile even at the cost of suffering and pain, and if it is not worth suffering and pain, it is not truly worthwhile.

Rabbi Kook [Ein Aya, Berachot 1:34], as is his custom, explains a much deeper meaning of bar Yoḥai’s statement. Whatever exists in the natural world can be achieved by natural means, without the need of suffering and pain. However, achieving that which is above nature is beyond the limits of our physical selves and can be done only through suffering. Thus, when a prophet received prophecy, his limbs were torn apart, as described by Maimonides [Laws of the Fundamentals of Torah 7:5], since prophecy is an exalted level, outside of nature, it can be reached only by suffering.

Each of the three precious gifts has a super-natural aspect:

- The World to Come, by definition stands above our natural world, and therefore suffering is necessary to reach it.

- True connection to Torah, on some level, is to connect with the Divine intellect, thus Torah too requires suffering.

 - While the Land of Israel is a physical land, it is the only land on our planet which has an inherent spiritual dimension; therefore the Land too can be realized only through suffering.

Seder haYom (Rabbi Moshe ben Rabbi Yehuda ibn Machir [c. 1540-1610]) writes:

The point is that it is proper to give a precious and exalted gift only to one who will appreciate it and who is justly worthy of receiving it. Thus, before receiving the gift, one suffers to test if he will accept the gift gladly as an expression of love for the donor. Rejecting the suffering is tantamount to rejecting the gift, and such a recipient is not worthy of the gift, since he fails to appreciate its value.

            Thus, we have an additional dimension: suffering is the test of whether we sincerely accept the three precious gifts as being God-given and whether we appreciate their value.

            It is clear that the three precious gifts are reciprocally related, as Shela states: “the Land of Israel incorporates Torah and the World to Come, and the World to Come includes Torah and the Land.”

Observance of Torah and mitzvot is the condition for Israel’s survival within its Land, [Mechilta, Yitro 2] as the Torah makes in clear in numerous verses. Conversely, the Land of Israel is the place most suited for fulfilling mitzvot (approximately forty percent of the 613 mitzvot can be fulfilled only within the Land –those which depend upon the Land, all matters of monarchy, of the Sanhedrin, etc.) and for Torah study, as our Sages taught: “There is no Torah comparable to the Torah of the Land of Israel” [vaYikra Rabba 13:5]; and, “The climate of the Land of Israel makes one wise.” [Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 158b]

It is self-evident that Torah is the “admission ticket” to the World to Come, as my father noted: “Even though the Mishna [Sanhedrin, 90a] states ‘All Israel has a portion in the World to Come,’ every individual Jew must work on fulfilling mitzvot in order to realize his portion.”

            Concerning the relationship between the Land of Israel and the World to Come, our Sages taught: “One who walks four cubits in the Land is guaranteed that he is a son of the World to Come.” [Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 111a] Shela adds that our Sages taught that the earthly Land of Israel is located opposite the Heavenly Land, which is the World to Come.