Basketball fans are still debating Jordan vs. Lebron—which was the GOAT (the Greatest of All Time). New Yorkers of a certain age used to argue passionately about the relative merits of Mantle, Mays and Snider, who were contemporaneous and competing Hall of Fame center fielders.
Centuries ago, rabbis engaged in spirited debates about which mitzvot (commandments) would remain relevant in the future world. While these discussions may seem theoretical, the rabbis were preparing for a future they anticipated with great hope and conviction, despite its practical implications being yet unknown.
Purim, our sages say, will be the only holiday still celebrated when the Messiah comes.
When it comes to sacrifices, the topic of this week’s Parashat Tzav, the midrash says that in the world to come, all of the sacrifices will be eliminated, except for the thanksgiving offering (Leviticus Rabbah 9:7). (If you’re curious, there are a couple of possible textual bases for this interpretation, rooted in details of the wordings of Leviticus 8:11-12.)
Other (individual) sacrifices will be eliminated, hypothesize commentators, because they are offered in response to sins, whether purposeful or by accidental, known or unknown. But in the world to come, we will all be sinless, they speculate, so there will be no need for sin offerings.
But thanksgiving offerings will still be offered, because the circumstances, according to the Talmud (Brachot 54a) in which a person should bring a thanksgiving sacrifice will mostly still be possible. Those who survive a dangerous sea voyage, a long trek or wandering in the desert, and recovering from an illness are all the kinds of things that our sages imagine could still occur in the world to come. (The fourth instance the Talmud mentions, being released from prison, presumably would not be relevant in the world to come, when there would be no sins.)
From these mostly fanciful speculations, I find two profound lessons.
First, the world to come will not be a world that is perfectly safe or healthy; nature itself will follow its normal course. Rather, human nature will be changed—we will each have conquered our yetzer ha-ra, our evil inclination, and will have no sins for which to atone.
A perfectly physically safe world where people are still cruel and evil does not sound like the world to come. But a world where people are make every effort to avoid sin and to do good—that sounds like heaven on earth.
Second, we learn that feeling grateful should never get old. There will always be forces that we cannot control, and gratitude at safe passage, through a storm, through the wilderness, through an illness, are eternal reasons for gratitude.
Gratitude, thus, becomes a hallmark of the world to come.
Through our own efforts to rid ourselves of sin and to cultivate gratitude, maybe we can bring at least taste of the world to come.
