Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, a third-century sage famous in the Talmud for his conversations with the prophet Elijah and with the Angel of Death, once asked a question only a very confident man would ask. He wanted to know who his companion would be in the World to Come. Not whether he would make it. Who he would sit next to.

He received an answer he was not expecting. A certain butcher, in a certain town. A tradesman, not a scholar.

Joshua ben Levi went to find him. He traveled to the town, located the butcher, and watched him — and saw nothing unusual. The man sold meat. He cut joints. He handled money. He did his work and went home. There was no secret piety, no hidden learning, no mystical practice. By every outward measure he was an ordinary butcher.

Joshua ben Levi eventually asked him directly what he did. The butcher was puzzled. He described his days. He named the hours he worked. Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned something he did not consider important. Every day, in secret, out of sight of anyone, he cared for his elderly parents. He bathed them when they could not bathe themselves. He fed them when their hands shook too much to hold a spoon. He did it quietly, because he did not want them to feel the shame of being cared for in public. No one in the town knew.

The exemplum, preserved as no. 323 in Moses Gaster's 1924 The Exempla of the Rabbis, is one of the most tender passages in the whole collection. A famous rabbi, a student of Torah since his youth, looked at a butcher who had never opened a tractate, and saw the man who would share his portion in Gan Eden. The Rabbis are being deliberate. The commandments that matter most — the ones that actually weigh the most on the eternal scale — are often not the ones that draw a crowd. Honor your father and your mother is the fifth of the Ten Commandments. It is also the one commandment that says, explicitly, it is connected to long life in the land (Exodus 20:12). The butcher knew this. He lived it with his hands.

Joshua ben Levi went home and did not grumble about his companion.