טוב שברופאים לגיהנום (קידושין פ"ב.)

What does this mean?

There’s a saying “Someone who never did anything wrong, never did anything”. In other words, we could perhaps be a tzadik by not doing anything for fear of messing up, or we can go out there and try to change the world for the better, knowing that we will inevitably mess up sometimes along the way.

So even though טוב שברופאים are tzadikim who help hundreds of people, they should know that they will still have to undergo gehinom at some point, for the inevitable mistakes they will make throughout their career.

But if so, what hope do we have? It is impossible to live life and do anything without sin and mistakes!

The only hope we have is if, at the end of our life, Hashem comes to us and says “My son, I know you messed up many times. But really it was Me all along. I knew you would mess up, and this was all part of the learning process”.

But why would Hashem let us off the hook like that?

Only if we too, see everything we have and everything we’ve ever done, and even what we are doing right now, as really Hashem doing it. As it says

אֲנִי מַאֲמִין בֶּאֱמוּנָה שְׁלֵמָה. שֶׁהַבּוֹרֵא יִתְבָּרַךְ שְׁמוֹ… לְבַדּוֹ עָשָׂה וְעוֹשֶׂה וְיַעֲשֶׂה לְכָל הַמַּעֲשִׂים:

It doesn’t say that He did and does all deeds in the world besides for what I did, do and will do. It says he does ALL DEEDS, including what I did and do and will do!

When a person gives it all away to Hashem and believes that everything he has and does is all Hashem, then midah kineged midah Hashem will take responsibility too (in some sense) for all the mistakes that we made during our life as well.

A parable to this would be a master artist who is teaching his pupil how to paint. The student will make many mistakes over the course of the apprenticeship, but the teacher takes responsibility for the mistakes and understands that he hasn’t yet taught the student enough for him to have avoided those mistakes.

Perhaps that is why Talmidei Chachamim are called as such; “Students of the Chacham”, the Chacham being Hashem Himself. The Tzadikim see themselves as students, for all they have is from their “Teacher”. And therefore, in spite of אין צדיק בארץ אשר יעשה טוב ולא יחטא - they are able to be confident that Hashem will judge them favorably in the end.