Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta was famously poor. One Friday afternoon, as the Sabbath was closing in, his wife came to him with the familiar announcement: there was no food in the house for the Sabbath meal. No wine, no bread, no fish. Nothing.
Rabbi Shimon went out to a quiet place and prayed. He asked God for help.
A hand appeared from heaven, the story says, and placed in his palm a single precious stone. A ruby of extraordinary value. He brought it home and gave it to his wife. She would sell it in the market and they would have everything they needed, not just for that Sabbath but for many Sabbaths to come.
His wife held the stone and thought about it.
Where did this come from? she asked.
From heaven, he said. I prayed.
She put the stone back in his hand. Take it back, she said. Pray that it be returned.
He looked at her in astonishment. Why?
Because, she said, there is only a fixed quantity of reward set aside for each righteous person in the World to Come. If we consume this reward now, in olam ha-zeh, we will be short of it in olam ha-ba. Our companions will have a larger portion in the life eternal, and we will have a smaller one. I would rather we be hungry in this life than diminished in the next.
Rabbi Shimon was moved. He went back and prayed again, and the ruby was taken back.
This story from Ta'anit 25a, preserved in The Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924), features one of the quietly towering women of the Talmud. She understood a principle her husband, the sage, had momentarily forgotten: a Jew invests in the next world, not in this one.