Fits like a glove

I just don't get it - Third in a series of God knows how many.



Maybe you heard this one before but that's not the point. Read on.

Shloimeh went to Pinchas the tailor to be fitted for a new suit of clothes. After Pinchas altered the suit, he stood in front of the mirror to check the fit. At first glance he noticed that the suit jacket's right arm sleeve was way too short, and too much of his wrist was showing. "Say, R' Pinchas," Shloime said, "this sleeve looks a little short. Would you please lengthen it?". "The sleeve is not too short," replied the tailor. "Your arm is too long... Just pull your arm back a few inches and you will see that the sleeve fits perfectly." Shloimeh withdrew his arm a bit, and the sleeve was matched with his wrist. But this movement rumpled the upper portion of the jacket."Now the nape of the collar is several inches above my neck," he protested. "There's nothing wrong with the collar," Pinchas insisted. "Your neck is too low. Lift the back of your neck and the jacket will fit well." Shloimeh raised his neck a few inches, and sure enough the collar rounded it where it was supposed to. But now there was another problem: the bottom of the jacket rested high above his seat. "Now my whole rear end is sticking out!" Shloimeh complained. "No problem," Pinchas returned. "Just lift up your rear end so it fits under the jacket." Again Shloimeh meekly complied, which left his body in a very contorted posture. But Pinchas had convinced him that the problem was not with the suit, but him. So he paid the tailor for the suit and walked out of the shop in a most awkward position, struggling to keep all parts of the suit in their right places.

On the street he encountered two men walking in the opposite direction. After they passed, one man turned to the other and commented, "That poor man is really crippled!" "He sure is," the other replied. "But that suit looks fabulous on him. He must have a great tailor."

When I was a yunger mahn learning in Yeshiva, I thought wow, how great Torah is. Layer upon layer, built on the Torah created an unbreakable chain. Chumash, Medrash, Mishna, Gemorah, Geonim, Rishonim, etc. I marveled at the long rows of sefarim.

And I felt it was amazing it all fit together so well. All this wonderful wisdom wrapped up, there for the picking. I would never master most of if but it was all there. And the fact that this was built up generation upon generation was a testament to it's being divinely inspired. After all, this ancient wisdom was still relevant and being studied and still growing. But now I find the sad truth to be that much of the complexity truly is man-made because it's not a cohesive system that can stand on it's own. Sure, I still get this great geshmack when I untangle a puzzle, a stirah that just sitting there under 3 layers of Tosfos. But that doesn't make it true. It just means you had the seichel to create another artifical distinction between two facts. A distinction that most likely had nothing to do with the original authors intention.

I can't begin to estimate how many lines of Talmud, Rishonim, Shaalos & Teshuvos, etc and it is all a colossal & magnificent work.

Lately I have begun to compare it to other man made scholarly works.

It is stated that the new version of Windows, VISTA, has 50,000,000 lines of code.

Sure, an Operating System may be loaded with defects, but assuming the OS stayed around for hundreds of years, I'm reasonably certain most of the defects would get fixed. And sometimes, the fix is a poor patch. But it is acknowledged to be a defect. (I know, some vendors will claim it's a feature not a bug). But even in thirty years from now, if a defect is discovered, the original code is not treated as Torah M'sinai. It's analyzed and determined to be in error and an attempt is made to correct it.

Yet in the Yam Shel Talmud, everything from prior generations is considered sacred and untouchable. So complicated threads of logic are woven to explain something that may be a typo or simply a mistake.

Sayings such as Ikkar Chassar Min Hasefer and Eilu V'eilu Divrei Elokim Chaim somehow seem to ring hollow.

So the next time you marvel at the complexity of the Talmud and related literature, ask yourself this:

Which human creation would you prefer to power the engines of your airplane, a thoroughly tested Operating System or Gemara, Rashi & Tosfos?