Mark Twain: On Olam ha'Ba

This was one of the first blog posts I ever wrote, way back in May 2007.

Mark Twain: On Olam ha'Ba

I can’t help but smile whenever I chance upon a fundamental Torah idea eloquently expressed by a non-Torah thinker. I'd like to share with you an idea from the uncensored collection of Mark Twain's writings entitled Letters from the Earth.

In his essay, The Damned Human Race, Mark Twain cynically portrays man as the most inferior and corrupt creature on earth:

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals” (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Decent of Man from the Higher Animals.

In the last paragraph, after his cynical diatribe against human nature, Mark Twain makes a single concession to Man, which he follows with a related critique of religion:

He has just one stupendous superiority. In his intellect he is supreme. The Higher Animals cannot touch him there. It is curious, it is noteworthy, that no heaven has ever been offered him wherein his one sole superiority was provided with a chance to enjoy itself. Even when he himself has imagined a heaven, he has never made provision in it for intellectual joys. It is a striking omission.

Interestingly enough, the vision of the afterlife of which, according to Mark Twain, has never been envisioned by man is precisely the notion of the afterlife promised by the Torah. The Rambam (Hilchos Teshuvah 8:2) writes:

There are no physical bodies or physical things in Olam ha’Ba (the World to Come), but only the souls of tzadikim (righteous people), without a body – like the ministering angels. Since there are no bodies, there is no eating, drinking, or anything which human bodies require in Olam ha’Zeh (This World). None of the bodily occurrences which happen to bodies in Olam ha’Zeh can happen in Olam ha’Ba – such as sitting, standing, sleeping, death, pain, humor, and other things like that. This is what the Early Sages said: “In Olam ha’Ba there is no eating, no drinking, and no relations – rather, the tzadikim sit, with their crowns on their heads, and derive enjoyment from the radiance of the shechinah (divine presence).” 

It has been made clear to you that there are no bodies there, since there isn’t any eating or drinking there. That which was said, “the tzadikim sit” was said by way of metaphor; it means to say that the tzadikim exist there, without toil and without exertion. Likewise, that which they said, “and their crowns on their heads” means that the knowledge they know, by which they merited life in Olam ha’Ba, exists with them, and is their crown, as Shlomo said, “with a crown that his mother crowned him with” (Shir ha’Shirim 3:11). And it is said, “the eternal joy is upon your head” (Yeshayahu 35:10; 51:11) – and “joy” isn’t a physical object, such that it could rest on a head; thus, the “crown” which the Sages spoke about here is knowledge. 

And what is this which they said, “and derive enjoyment from the radiance of the shechinah”? – this means that they know and apprehend the reality of the Holy One, Blessed is He, in a manner which they could not know while they were in dark and lowly bodies.

According to the Rambam, the ultimate "reward" promised by the Torah is Olam ha'Ba: an entirely non-physical afterlife in which disembodied intellects derive pleasure contemplating the reality of Hashem. Even the Ramban, who argues with the Rambam and maintains that Olam ha'Ba is physical, nevertheless maintains that the essential reward is the intellectual contemplation of knowledge of Hashem (see Shaar ha'Gmul 357).

Mark Twain was right: Religious Man never envisioned an intellectual afterlife. But, as is often the case, Religious Man was wrong.