„Any pleasure in which there is not found even the slightest admixture…”

The Gemara in Tractate Bava Batra relates that in the future, each righteous person will have a canopy of fire—a kind of canopy (that shelters over him, like a chuppah at a wedding) that stands above him and shows, according to its size, his honor, his attainments, and his level.

The Gemara there explains that when the righteous see the various canopies, each righteous person is scorched by the canopy of his fellow—because he sees the attainments of his fellow and grieves that he did not manage to reach the attainments that his fellow reached.

The Ramchal in Mesillat Yesharim explains this: 'For this is not on account of envy... but because he sees himself lacking the perfection of a level that he could have attained, as his fellow attained it...'

The humanity in each and every one of us creates within us a virtue that does not exist in the angels. Every angel has a defined role. By the very fact that it has no evil inclination, it has no ability to move a hair's breadth from its role. In a human being there is the ability to fall and to crash, but alongside this there is the ability to reach heights that cannot be imagined at all.

The pleasure, the immense height to which we can reach, the success without limits, goes hand in hand with the sorrow—with the ability to fail and to fall, with the constant will to be more and to try more.

***

For the elevation of the soul of the beloved youth who was murdered by a man of iniquity—Dvir Yehuda ben Rachel.