We now begin the tenth chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 10, Mishnah 1. Since the seventh chapter, we have enumerated the four forms of capital punishment administered by the court, and we detailed three of them along with the transgressions for which they are given: eighteen transgressions that are punishable by stoning, ten transgressions that are punishable by burning, and two transgressions that are punishable by decapitation by the sword. The second of the two is the people of an ir ha'nidachas (a subverted city) - people who engaged in idol worship as part of a city that was subverted.
Approaching the end of the tractate, with only two chapters remaining before us, the Mishnah addresses three topics that have not yet been explained:
An elaboration on the laws of an ir ha'nidachas and how this law operates.
Since the people of an ir ha'nidachas do not have a portion in the World to Come, the Mishnah seeks to explain incidentally who has a portion in the World to Come and who does not.
An elaboration on the fourth of the court-administered capital punishments - strangulation - and the six transgressions for which one is liable to this death.
The order of the topics:
In the order before us, which is the order in the Jerusalem Talmud: The tenth chapter dedicates three mishnayos to the World to Come, and in its final three mishnayos it deals with the people of an ir ha'nidachas - how this law operates, and that they too do not have a portion in the World to Come. The eleventh chapter concludes the topic of strangulation.
In the order of the Babylonian Talmud: The tenth chapter deals with strangulation and concludes the matter of the four court-administered capital punishments, and the final chapter deals with the World to Come and who does not have a portion in it, and in its second half - an ir ha'nidachas.
Understanding the concept of the 'World to Come':
The first three mishnayos before us deal with the World to Come, which is the realm after a person's passing. Diverse opinions have been stated regarding the question of exactly when it occurs and what it looks like:
The approach of the Rambam (as well as the Meiri and others who follow his path): As soon as a person passes away, he arrives in the World to Come. There will be a temporary resurrection of the dead for the purpose of the final judgment, and ultimately, even though they will live for a prolonged time, they will return to being souls alone and will live in the World to Come for eternity.
The approach of the Ramban and his students, as well as the Ramchal and the Kabbalists: There are several stages. A person passes away, and if there is a need, he undergoes purification in Gehinnom; afterward, he comes to Gan Eden, which is the world of souls, where the souls await the resurrection of the dead that will occur at the end of the Messianic era.
The Messianic era, when the Mashiach is here on earth, takes place within the six thousand years of human history. The Rambam learns that this is a natural process: The Mashiach is a prophet and a leader, a political genius who rebuilds the Beis Hamikdash, restores the sacrifices and the Temple service, and returns the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. Thus, an ideal situation is created in which the Jewish nation expresses a society that reflects Hashem's will and His glory, just as He, so to speak, envisioned it from the outset when giving the Torah.
At the end of all this, the resurrection of the dead occurs: All the dead who are destined to return rise to life, and a final judgment takes place called the Great and Awesome Day of Judgment. There are those who maintain that this may occur even a thousand years after the Messianic era ends, approximately at the beginning of the seventh millennium. Opinions are divided on the details, but at some stage, at the end of the Messianic era or afterward, the great resurrection takes place, and following the final judgment comes the World to Come, which lasts for eternity.
According to almost all those who follow this line of thought, the body and soul remain united and continue to live for eternity, even though the body becomes secondary - like a sort of shell whose sole function is to contain the soul. If so, when we speak here about the World to Come, the intention according to the Rambam's approach is to that part of the World to Come to which a person arrives upon their passing, what we would call Gan Eden; and according to the other approaches - to the eternal life following the resurrection of the dead.
"Kol Yisrael yesh lahem chelek la'Olam Haba" - All of Israel have a portion in the World to Come:
The Mishnah opens with the well-known phrase that also appears at the beginning of Pirkei Avos: "Kol Yisrael yesh lahem chelek laOlam Haba" - every Jew has a portion in the World to Come. We must pay close attention to the wording "laOlam Haba" (to the World to Come) rather than "baOlam Haba" (in the World to Come): a person is already connected to the World to Come now, even though it supposedly does not yet exist, the connection is there. What a person does here below builds his world there. His World to Come, his reward, is the enjoyment of the process he went through in terms of his growth - "according to the effort is the reward" - in terms of his efforts and the connection he built with Hashem while he was here.
"Shene'emar" - as it is stated. The Mishnah brings a verse from Yeshayahu by way of derash, since the verse essentially speaks about the days of the Mashiach: "Ve'amech kulam tzaddikim le'olam yirshu aretz netzer mata'ai ma'aseh yadai lehispa'er" - and your people are all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of My planting, the work of My hands in which to glory. "Ve'amech kulam tzaddikim" - all of Israel are righteous; "le'olam yirshu aretz" - and the word "aretz" (land) is understood here as the land of the World to Come; "netzer mata'ai" - like a branch from the planting, returning to the concept of connection: the branch growing here below absorbs the nutrients, while up there the flowers and fruits grow; "ma'aseh yadai lehispa'er" - the work of My hands in which to glory, says Hashem, meaning that the World to Come is a place that is entirely the handiwork of Hashem.
This world is different: although Hashem created it, He created in it a creature capable of destroying and ruining - namely, man. Therefore, this world, in its success and failure, stems in part from the choices of humanity, as opposed to the World to Come which is entirely the handiwork of Hashem.
The fundamental point here is that every Jew has a portion in the World to Come: even one who is punished by a beis din with one of the death penalties for a crime he indeed committed and for which he incurred execution, if he repented and confessed before his death - the suffering of the beis din's death penalty atones for him, and afterward he merits to live in the World to Come even though he committed this transgression. The crime and the punishment are a punishment, but they are not enough to forfeit the World to Come, and this is the main intent of the matter.
There are those who say, and the Maharshal among them, that this sentence was originally not part of the Mishnah, but rather the original Mishnah opened with the following words: "And these are the ones who do not have a portion in the World to Come," as a direct continuation of the topic of those who commit transgressions and are punished. The first sentence was added before it, according to these opinions, in order to open on a positive note.
"Ve'elu she'ein lahem chelek laOlam Haba" - And these are the ones who do not have a portion in the World to Come:
Even though it is ingrained in the very essence of a Jew that he has a portion in the World to Come, since he is connected to the world beyond and his actions here build there, a person can commit transgressions that destroy his soul to the point that he is incapable of maintaining the connection. The fundamental reason for this is that the person rejects, shakes off, denies, and destroys his connection with Hashem. And since the World to Come is nothing but a reflection of the connection that a person nurtured and created while he had free will, if he rejected this connection completely, he has no place up there.
It must be emphasized: although it says "all of Israel," one should not conclude from this that non-Jews do not have a portion in the World to Come. In the following mishnayos, even non-Jews will be listed - such as Bilaam, the Generation of the Flood, the Generation of the Dispersion, and the people of Sedom - who do not have a portion in the World to Come. But other non-Jews certainly have a portion in the World to Come if they are of the pious of the nations of the world, the righteous non-Jews of whom the Rambam speaks in the eighth chapter of Hilchos Melachim: a non-Jew who fulfills the Seven Mitzvos of Bnei Noach because Hashem commanded so, is one of the pious of the nations of the world and has a portion in the World to Come.
The Mishnah continues and lists those who, through their choices, destroy their connection with Hashem:
"Ha'omer ein techiyas hameisim min haTorah" - one who says that the resurrection of the dead is not from the Torah. One who says that this resurrection, which is destined to bring us to the World to Come, is not mentioned in the Torah. Rashi focuses on the words "min haTorah" (from the Torah): that person might believe in the World to Come and in the resurrection of the dead, but he claims that the Torah does not say this.
"Ve'ein Torah min HaShamayim" - and there is no Torah from Heaven. One who says that the Torah is not from Heaven, meaning that Moshe Rabbeinu fabricated part or all of it from his own mind, even one mitzvah or one law.
"Apikoros" - an apikoros. As the Bartenura learns, and this is the consensus of the poskim and commentators, this refers to one who degrades, disparages, mocks, or does not show respect to Torah scholars, to the rabbis who have preserved our tradition since the days of Moshe Rabbeinu. And all the more so if he degrades, humiliates, or condemns the Torah itself.
Rashi explains: since our approach to Hashem is through His Torah, and the foundation through which we connect to Him is based on beliefs, on tradition, and on the Oral Torah - the tradition in our hands of how to understand things - and Chazal have handed down to us that certain matters in the Torah indeed refer to the resurrection of the dead, and it is one of the principles of faith built into the tradition of the Torah since Mount Sinai, thus one who denies this denies the tradition and thereby severs the connection. Others focus on the concept of the resurrection of the dead itself and not on the words "from the Torah": one who denies the concept of the resurrection of the dead - will not merit it and will not rise at the resurrection.
The same applies to one who says that the Torah is not from Heaven: since our approach to Hashem and the connection we have with Him are built through the way He revealed His will to us, and primarily through the Torah, therefore without the Torah we have no access to Him and His will. One who says that the Torah is not from Him, may He be blessed, rejects the connecting link, and therefore he has no connection in eternity and has no portion in the World to Come. And so too with an apikoros: the way we have access to Hashem is through His Torah and through our reliance on the Sages, and one who rejects this gives up his connection with Hashem - and this is the essential point.
It is worth noting that the word "apikorus", according to most opinions, is derived from the halachic term hefker, and not from the word "Epicurean" as is often thought.
Rabbi Akiva's addition:
"Af hakorei besefarim hachitzonim" - literally, this means books outside the canon, such as what is known today as the Apocrypha: the Book of Maccabees, Ben Sira, and the like. But the more general point is heretical books, books that go against tradition and contradict the Torah, because they teach things that stand in contradiction to Torah values and its foundational principles.
The Bartenura gives specific examples: books of heretics, such as the books of Aristotle and his fellow Greek philosophers, and in addition, other types of fiction, poetry, and history books that have no substance - "which have neither wisdom nor benefit, but are merely a waste of time", which are only for entertainment and passing the time.
The way to understand this, as the Kovetz Shiurim says, is that reading these books is not an aveirah that in itself is so severe that a person will automatically lose his World to Come. Rather, studying them will distance him from the Torah and from Hashem, until its ultimate result will be a denial of the relationship - and for that reason he has no share in the World to Come.
"Vehallocheish al hamakkah":
The Gemara explains, and the Bartenura brings this as well, that this refers to someone who first spits on his wound and then says incantations over it, such as a pasuk that serves him as a kind of prayer to heal the wound. As the Mishnah says: "Ve'omer: Kol hamachalah asher samti beMitzrayim lo asim alecha ki Ani Hashem rofecha" - the pasuk in the Book of Shemos.
He therefore uses a pasuk over the saliva and mentions the name of Hashem, and this is a degradation toward Heaven to the point of losing the World to Come, according to Rabbi Akiva. The focus, according to the Bartenura and others, is the very uttering of the name of Hashem over the saliva, which is the degradation. The Rambam expands on this in Hilchos Avodah Zarah (Chapter 11, Halachah 12) based on the Gemara, writing "lo dayyan" - it is not enough that those who do this are included among sorcerers and diviners who engage in occult practices, but even worse: they are among those who deny the entire Torah, because they turn the Torah into something else, for "one does not make words of Torah into a physical cure, but rather they are a cure for the soul." They make the Torah a means for physical healing, and that is not its purpose at all - the Torah is a guide for the soul and not for the body, and through this a person degrades the Torah with such severity that it is as if he lost his World to Come, for he completely denies that relationship.
Abba Shaul's addition:
"Af hahogeh es haShem be'osiosav" - a person who pronounces the name of Hakadosh Baruch Hu exactly as it is written in its letters. According to the Bartenura and most commentators, this means saying yud followed by hei, vav, and hei, exactly as it is written. This too is such a severe affront to the honor of Heaven that it costs a person his World to Come, according to Abba Shaul. Rashi learns that this does not refer to the four-letter name, but rather to the forty-two-letter name, which was used in the Beis Hamikdash on certain occasions - and that is the name that must not be pronounced.
With Hashem's help, we are not to pronounce any of these names. According to many, one may not even spell out the name in the exact order of its letters, and therefore the custom is to say "yud hei vav hei" or "Havayah", depending on the context; and certainly we never pronounce it as it is written, but rather we always say Adnus - aleph, daled, nun, yud.