Tefillah - 033 The Final Judgment

The Middas HaDin\Attribute of Judgment

אתה גיבור לעולם – “You, Hashem, are eternally mighty.”

[As we brought in the previous chapter], When Hashem first created the world, He wanted to create it with middas hadin (attribute of judgment); Hashem saw that the world wouldn’t survive, therefore, He included in it the middas harachamim, the attribute of mercy. The “might” of Hashem in this blessing is referring to His middas hadin.

What is the middas hadin? There are different judgments we go through. One opinion in our Sages is that we are judged every day. We are also judged once a year on Rosh HaShanah. After a person dies and his soul returns to Heaven, he is judged again, and in the future, there will be a final day of reckoning, which is called the Yom HaDin HaGadol HaGibbor V’haNora – the “great, mighty and awesome day of judgment”.

The Final Day of Judgment

What is the day of reckoning in the future? We will be judged for all our previous lifetimes, from the start of Creation all the way until our last lifetime. We will be judged from the first day of Creation, in which Adam lived, for all souls were once part of Adam’s soul, as Chazal revealed. This will not just be a judgment for various details we know of from our life, but it will be an all-inclusive judgment that includes every single detail from all our lifetimes together. This is described in the possuk in the end of sefer Koheles,

"סוף דבר הכל נשמע את האלוקים ירא, ואת מצוותיו שמור, כי זה כל האדם" – “In the end of things, all will be heard; fear Hashem, and guard His commandments, for this is all there is to man.”

Another factor of the future judgment is that each person will also be judged along with all of Creations. It will not just be a judgment on our “private” kind of existence – all the actions we did since we began to exist – but it will be a judgment of the entire Creation in its totality.

This begins to help us gain a new picture of our actions. Our actions are not just our private actions per se, but they will be affected by all other actions from everyone else in Creation.

In the future, when Moshiach comes, there will be a great new revelation. Hashem will judge the entire world, all at once. The future Yom HaDin will be a judgment on the entire Creation, every last detail – all at once. This is the depth of judgment, which only Hashem can do Himself. We will all one day have to give an accounting before Hashem Himself. This will differ from the judgment of the Heavenly Court; it will be a judgment coming from the ultimate Judge – Hashem Himself.

As a person matures, his sense of fear of judgment gets deeper. He fears the judgment of Rosh HaShanah, and he begins to fear how one day he will have to give an accounting to Hashem.

A person might know a lot intellectually about these concepts, and he can know many sayings of Chazal about it, yet, his understanding of this concept can still be superficial. He knows about the  future day of judgment, but he doesn’t connect to it, and thus he doesn’t fear it.

The Depth of Learning Torah

Thus, it is not enough to learn Torah – a person has to live a life of Torah, in which Torah is his very life. A child can learn Torah, but it is not yet his life. “Hashem looked into the Torah and created the world”. The Torah is the source of Creation which Hashem used to create the universe with. The Torah is the source of life.

Hashem is exacting with tzaddikim, and the depth of this is because tzaddikim are found on a higher plane. They are immersed in the holy thoughts of Torah. A true Torah scholar, when he learns Torah, scrutinizes every word. He lives in a realm where every word of Torah is scrutinized and endlessly analyzed, a world of constant refinement. That is the difference between a Torah scholar, whose Torah is his life, than someone who just sits and learns Torah. (A superficial person can’t tell this difference. He looks at a Torah scholar and thinks, “What’s the difference between him and someone else sitting and learning? Both people are sitting and learning…”)

This helps us conceptualize the future day of reckoning, which will analyze every detail in Creation together. “Hashem looked into the Torah and created the world” – in other words, from the Torah, which includes all of Creation, Hashem will judge the entire Creation. The Torah is really all “one piece”, and Hashem will also see the entire Creation as all one piece in the future, seeing every detail at once.

However, it is very possible that a person is learning Torah, day and night, yet he doesn’t realize how all of the Torah is all one piece. He doesn’t enter it deeply; he doesn’t see how the Torah is the source for all of Creation, thus, he doesn’t analyze properly every detail in what he learns.

When we hear about the concept of the future day of reckoning, in order for it to affect us, we need to be deeply connected to the Torah. When we are deeply connected to Torah, we analyze its every detail, and that helps us conceptualize what the future judgment will be like – a very detailed kind of judgment. If a person isn’t deeply connected to the Torah – if he doesn’t seek to analyze his learning – he won’t be able to connect to the fear of the future day of judgment.

The Future Judgment Will Be On The Level of Torah We Reached

Until now, we explained how a person can connect himself to the future day of judgment. On a more subtle understanding, there are several kinds of judgment – there is a judgment on the actions we do, which we are judged for on Rosh HaShanah, and there is a higher kind of judgment, which will be the judgment of the future. It will be a whole different kind of concept of judgment than our current time.

In the first blessing of Shemoneh Esrei, we describe the middos of Hashem as "הגדול, הגיבור והנורא", and we explained how each of these middos is referring to the middos that our three Avos personified. The future day of judgment, however, will incorporate all of these middos together. Therefore, it will be the day that is the Yom HaDin HaGadol HaGibbor V’haNorah, because it will incorporate all of the aspects of all our Avos, since the start of Creation. It will not just be a judgment on our actions, but on our level of Torah that we reached.

These days if a person goes to a Beis Din, he sees dayanim (judges) giving a judgment. This is nothing compared to the din\judgment of the future. The judgment will be on everything, just like the Torah is all-inclusive.

Therefore, in order to merit a good judgment in the future, we need to deeply connect ourselves to the Torah. It is not enough to do teshuvah on our deeds. In the future, there will be no more deeds - just Torah. The entire question then will be about “How much Torah did I reach…?”

We need to really connect ourselves to the Torah, to understand that the Torah is really the source of the entire Creation, that it is all-inclusive. The ultimate judgment of the future will be on our level of Torah that we reached.

The Higher Kind of Yirah\Fear

This is a whole new yirah\fear that we need to acquire. It is the inner kind of yirah. We are used to the concept of being afraid of punishment for sin, and to fear perfection, as the Mesillas Yesharim describes; but there is a higher kind of fear, the fear of the Torah, which we also need to acquire.

We can only get this fear if we really connect ourselves to the Torah – “Fear of Hashem is wisdom.” If we really connect to the Torah’s wisdom, we will attain the true fear of Hashem.