How Much Is A Single Mitzvah Worth? (7 Minutes)

1:00From the minute you wake up to the minute you go to sleep, you have something to do that involves Hashem. In the morning, you say the morning blessings. Thank you, Hashem, for bringing my soul back. Thank you for not making me poor. Thank you for not making me this, and thank you for all these different things that we have. Thank you for giving me food and for returning my neshama. All these different blessings are in a siddur, plus certain things that you could add. But the key is that right away in the morning... You have the first thing, you have to wash your hands and do everything to already remind yourself that there is a Boss in Shamayim. After that, you go and do tefilah. After that, you're going to eat something. So before you eat something, you remind yourself, okay, this is an apple, this is a donut, whatever you're going to eat, you make the brachah on that. After that, you go to your job and shortly after, you want to eat something again, you have your lunch or you have to go to the bathroom. or anything that you do, there's always going to be some type of blessing involved. So much so, to the point where Chazal tell us that if someone benefits in this world in any way, without a blessing, he should consider it as if he stole from Hashem. Meaning there's no such thing as you benefiting in this world, enjoying yourself in this world, without there being a blessing for what you're enjoying.

2:26There should not be anything like this. There should not be in our minds anything like that where this benefit doesn't involve Hashem. Because everything that we do has to come from Hashem. And what's the reward? There was one time, a righteous person, but he was very poor, who went to the Chafetz Chaim, one of the great sages, and he said, "Listen, I'm having trouble with parnasah, but I know that Hashem watches over us." So I was wondering if you could do some extra prayers for me, and say maybe if Hashem could take my zechut for doing tefillin every day, maybe He could take the zechut of the tefillin for this week and give me parnassah. Give me enough parnassah so that, instead of that zechut being rewarded in Olam Haba, it could be rewarded in this world so I can at least get enough parnassah to eat. So the Chafetz Chaim says, I'm going to answer you with a story. What's the story? The Chafetz Chaim says, one time there was a man and he was a very big saver. Very big saver. And every day he would collect these coins and he would hide these coins, and eventually, he got to a point where after all these years...

3:54He collected a few gold Napoleon coins. So he had a handful of them. And he said, okay, this is my retirement money. He took these coins and put them on top of his dresser. Of course, the man has children. The children play around, and one day one of his kids plays around. The child starts climbing the dresser, sees something on top of it, and feels it. There's a coin over there. The child takes one of the coins, gets really, really excited about it, and runs to the store. So he tells the store clerk, you know, how much candy can I buy with this one? It's a gold coin. This is enough. Each one of these gold coins is like a year's salary for this store owner. The store owner says, ah, as much as you want. Take whatever you want. The kid gets really excited, takes a bunch of candy, and runs back home. So his family sees all this candy.

4:56He goes, "Oh, I got it from the store." "Okay, you got it from the store, but how did you get it from the store?" He goes, "I bought it." Obviously, everybody got suspicious. "What do you mean you bought it?" He goes, "Oh, I bought it. I had some money." "Where did you get this money?" He goes, "Oh, I had it in the dresser. I found it." Immediately, the father almost had a heart attack. He's thinking, "Oh, maybe I have to go check my coins." He goes and checks his coins, and he realizes that one of the coins he saved over the last 30 years is missing. He runs to the store. tells the clerk, "You liar, you cheater. You took the coin, you cheated my little boy. He's a little boy, how could you take advantage of him? You know who he is, you know who I am. It's not like you don't know. How could you do this?" And of course, the person is right. He's right. You know, listen, the clerk knows who the boy's father is. He's not supposed to take a gold coin that's equivalent to a year's salary for just a few pieces of candy. It's not fair. So the Chofetz Chaim... tells the man who came to him asking for help with the tefillin. He says, "See, it's the same thing with you. Right now, you're asking me to take your gold coin that's going to give you enough for countless years' worth of reward in the Olam Haba, and you're asking me to tell Hashem to give you a lollipop for it, just so you have some parnasah for this month. I'm not a thief."

6:22he tells him, "I can't be part of something like that. So, no, I can't help you." So the man understood that not only is that the right answer, but the next time he did tefillin, he valued it much, much more. And on Rosh Hashanah, he got parnassah in another way. So for us, it's very, very important to know that each one of our mitzvot is going to bring a reward. Sometimes the reward is is going to have a partial benefit in this world, but the vast majority of the reward that we have is in Olam HaBa (the World to Come).