Our Sages taught, ‘If you learned much Torah, don’t feel entitled, for this is what you were created for’. We see from this that man was not created to have pleasure in the next world, because Hashem could give us the pleasure without going through this world. Clearly man was created to learn Torah in this material, mundane world, not in heaven, as the verse says, ‘[The Torah] is not in heaven’. Learning Torah and acquiring it is greater than the pleasure of the next world. By learning and supporting Torah a person acquires a valuable possession that one cannot acquire in the next world, despite all the pleasure one may receive from doing other mitzvas.
