Abaye, one of the greatest sages of the Babylonian Talmud, had a vision of the world to come. He learned who his neighbor in Gan Eden would be, and the neighbor turned out to be a local barber. Abaye was stunned. He had devoted his life to Torah. The barber had spent his days cutting hair and letting blood with a lancet, an ordinary trade. How could they be placed side by side in the Garden?
The sage begged Heaven for an explanation. The answer came back that the barber had performed many good actions in secret, and Abaye only needed to hear them listed.
First, when women came to him for bloodletting, a treatment that required rolling back the sleeve or loosening clothing, the barber had built a separate room in his shop for female patients. He kept a full-length mantle hanging there, which every woman could drape over herself so that no more of her body was exposed than the specific vein he needed. He protected their modesty in an age that rarely thought about it.
Second, outside his shop he kept a wooden box with a slot in the top. Every customer was told that he could put the fee into the box himself, without anyone watching. Poor customers who could not pay simply walked in, received their haircut or bloodletting, and walked out. No one ever knew who had paid and who had not. No one was ever embarrassed.
Third, every evening he opened the box, took out the day's collection, fed his own family from it, and distributed whatever was left among the poor of the town. The system ran on trust, modesty, and anonymous charity.
Abaye, hearing the list, no longer protested. He rejoiced. He said later that if the Garden of Eden is being arranged by these criteria, he would be honored to sit next to this barber for eternity (Gaster, Exempla No. 413b; R. Nissim, Hibbur Yafeh).
The sages tell this story to teach that a learned man is not automatically closer to Olam Haba than a tradesman. The box outside the shop, unwatched, is sometimes a more exacting scale than the bench in the study hall.