We live in a meritocracy.

While name recognition certainly helps in politics, you don’t have to be a Bush or a Kennedy to win an election. In business, you can start out in a firm’s mail room and, through sheer effort and ability, rise to the top. Both science and the arts feature individuals who came up out of obscurity to shine. In virtually every field, what you can do trumps where you came from and which family you happened to be born into.

We hear a lot of praise for a person who pulls himself up “by his own bootstraps.” In other words, getting where you want to go through grit, determination and hard work, rather than having your career path smoothed out for you by some outside party or the help of money or connections.

Of course, pulling strings can be useful. In Israel, the concept of protektzia is built into the very fabric of society. Whatever your line of work or social standing, who you know can be an entrée into any circle you’d like to breach. At the very least, it can get you an interview somewhere.

By and large, however, we get by on our merits. Students are graded according to the amount of knowledge they’ve amassed in a subject and can spit back on a test. Workers are judged by their productivity. Athletes who win the most games get the most accolades. In a merit-based system, that’s just the way it is.

Our own system is largely merit-based, too. You don’t have to be the son of a rosh yeshiva to become a world class talmid chochom. A person from the lowliest background can work his way up to the highest echelons. If an ignorant shepherd can become a R’ Akiva, then there’s hope for all of us. When it comes to spiritual ambition, the sky’s the limit!

An ‘A’ for Effort

Still, there’s more to the picture than just merit. It’s all fine and good to assess people by their abilities, but there’s something else that also needs to be taken into account.

When my daughter was a senior in high school, she and a friend earned the two highest grade point averages in their graduating class and were therefore appointed, respectively, the Hebrew and English valedictorians at their graduation. My daughter, while cognizant of the honor, felt bad about other girls in her class who she felt had put in more effort than she had but, because their grades had not been as dazzling, were passed over for this sort of recognition.

Indeed, every parent who attends a parent-teacher conference wants to hear their child praised for the effort that he or she puts into their schoolwork, even if their grades don’t call for much celebration. A wise rebbi, teacher or parent will compliment a child’s efforts even if they are not yet mirrored by results. Because the first step in getting anywhere is a willingness to put in the work.

Hakadosh Boruch Hu, we are taught, takes intention and application into account even if the results are not stellar. For example, if we intend to do a certain mitzvah and are prevented, we still get the credit for it. In Torah study, we are adjured to pore over the Torah, day and night. We are not commanded to succeed at our learning, but only to put in the effort.

You can always tell what’s important to someone by where he puts his time and energy. Someone who sincerely toils in Torah even when he doesn’t see great success… or perhaps especially when he does not yet see great success… gets a definite ‘A’ for effort!

On the Shoulders of Giants

Hashem is also very kind to us when it comes to the merits of our ancestors. He might so easily let everyone sink or swim completely on their own. Instead, He instituted a system of zechus avos, whereby one generation can benefit from the levels attained by previous ones.

Thus, I can benefit years later from my grandmother’s tefillos. Or, going even further back, you may be enjoying advantages earned by some distant ancestor. Exactly how this works, we don’t know. We’re not privy to the inner workings of Hashem’s system. But we’re told that no tefillah goes to waste and no good deed goes unrewarded. Even if the person who did the davening or the good deed doesn’t personally feel the effects of his efforts, his descendants may, somewhere down the line. We mortals have severely limited vision, but Hashem’s view is long.

Similarly, when a loved one passes away, r”l, we express a hope that he or she will be a meilitz yosher for the family they left behind. This assumes that the departed soul can somehow have an influence on our success down below in this world, quite apart from whatever personal merits we bring to the table.

It seems, therefore, that Judaism is not a strict meritocracy after all. While our own efforts can certainly take us places, there are all sorts of unseen merits that can and do help us, too. Lest we become too puffed up in our own conceit, let’s remember that it’s not all about us. We’re all piggybacking on the spiritual achievements of those who came before us. We’re standing, so to speak, on the shoulders of giants.

Old merits never die. They just keep on giving…

Because Avrohom Avinu sought out Hashem and chose to be His faithful servant, Hashem chose him to be the start of a new, select lineage in the world.

Because Avrohom’s children and grandchildren chose to embrace Avrohom’s path and cling to the Divine covenant, Hashem eventually extended that covenant to the entire nation and named us His Chosen People.

Because our forefathers at Har Sinai accepted Hashem’s Law with love, we have the privilege of living with that Torah all these centuries later.

Because our ancestors all through history were moser nefesh for Torah, we are still around to be proud and G-d-fearing Jews today.

I suppose you can say that we’re a limited meritocracy. We have the certainty of knowing that every effort we make, every action we take, every thought we devote to the right things, will accrue to our credit. At the same time, we’re aware of the many invisible currents of merit that impact us in different ways.

Whether it’s the merit of an effort we made that didn’t bear the kind of fruit we hoped for, or the merit of a fervent prayer sent heavenward sometime in the near or distant past, or the merit of a departed loved one “pulling strings” for us in the next world, Hashem has left the door open for far more than we know. Maybe a better term than “limited meritocracy” would be a “complex meritocracy.” Because nothing, not even the system of merits and demerits that we all live by, is as simple as it seems.

And that should cheer us up to no end. We can work hard to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and we’ll be rewarded accordingly. Yet even when our efforts fall short, there are untapped reservoirs of spiritual assistance waiting for us in vaults we may know nothing about.

But Hashem knows. And, in His love and compassion, He’s willing to pay out the fruits of those merits anytime we need it.