400 Years or The World To Come?
On Patience and Intangibles
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The below is a teaching from the Talmud about two things: distraction and patience.
Rabbi Perida had a certain student whom he would have to teach four hundred times, and only then would he learn the material, as he was incapable of understanding it otherwise. One day they requested Rabbi Perida’s presence for a practical matter after the lesson. Rabbi Perida taught his student four hundred times as usual, but this time the student did not successfully learn the material. Rabbi Perida said to him: What is different now that you are unable to grasp the lesson? He said to him: From the time that they said to the Master that there is a mitzva matter for which he is needed, my mind was distracted from the lesson and every moment I said: Now the Master will get up, now the Master will get up to go and perform the commandment and he will not complete the lesson. Rabbi Perida said to him: Pay attention this time and I will teach you, and know that I will not leave until you have fully mastered the lesson. He taught him again an additional four hundred times.
Due to the merit of Rabbi Perida’s great devotion to his students, a Divine Voice emerged and said to him: Is it preferable to you that four hundred years be added to your life, or that you and the rest of your generation will merit the World-to-Come? He said: I prefer that I and my generation merit the World-to-Come. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to the angels: Give him both; he shall live a very long life and he and the rest of his generation will merit the World-to-Come. (Eruvin 54b)
Note that the student who needs to learn the same lesson 400 times is anxious not just that his teacher will leave, but that his teacher (whose name means “Rabbi Separation”) will leave to go do something practical. Not just something practical, but a commandment, presumably connected to the material at hand. As if learning about giving alms might lead to almsgiving. The student worries not just about the call to action but worries about the potential for a call to action. Whether this is good or bad the text doesn’t say, but the student is unnamed. He’s a challenged student. Practicality threatens his ability to absorb and retain the principle.
Rabbi Perida is offered 400 years worth of life in exchange for his patience—teaching the same lesson over and over 400x. In one way of thinking, it’s as though the sage annulled his own life to be so devoted to his student and God is paying him back for the self-sacrifice. But he doesn’t take the offer. He sacrifices himself again, preferring a reward for his entire generation, rather than just for himself, and preferring the intangible reward of “the World to Come” to the tangible one of measurable years. We get a glimpse into his character from these two “trades.” This is someone who delays gratification on a scale most of us cannot. And consider the parallel: a teacher who gets a student to learn the lesson after 399 failures is likened to one who trades 400 years of his own life for a share in “The World to Come.” The parallel between these two vignettes is patience—a teacher’s patience and a devotee’s patience. And in both cases what needs to be deferred is the call to action, the take-away, the practical conclusion, the bottom line. This is very hard. It’s what separates apprentice from Master.
In the end, though, the story offers a hopeful resolution: by sacrificing the tangible present for the intangible future, we get to have our cake and eat it. But the reverse is not the case. What is your World to Come? What future would you trade 400 years of your personal life years for?
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