A guide for the perplexed
TRACTATE SHEKIFUT
MISHNAH: R. Brandeis taught, “In sunlight shall thou disinfect best, and thine policeman should stand under electric light.” By this R. Klein explained, “It is best to do one’s business in the light of day, where all can see, and if a corner be darkened, to use electric tools to ensure that is safe to walk there.” And R. Miller (who was somehow an R. despite serving pork extensively in her home, but only the clean kind, not the kind with the cloven hoof and three stomachs) added, “Eight things have been said in connection with the tools one should use, they should be on all the time, they should be in a form that anyone can use, they should be available as soon as needed, they should be paid for by the leavings of the governor on the corner of his fields, they should be kept in a form that is always unlocked, they should be dressed as simply as possible, they should not be incomplete, and they should not be allowed to decay by the roadside.” And R. Sifry, R. Rasiej, R. Johnson, R. Malamud, and R. O’Reilly (who was somehow an R. despite a fondness for books on the Mohicans, the Romans and the Unix), all added their assent.
But R. Lessig asked in a Baraitha, “If the light is too bright, will not the body be burned?” And he explained with a story, “Once I heard about a clock that was not punched by its owner, who was the governor, and that it was not disinfected, nor was the woman who was seeking the clock sure why it needed to be punched. And yet, the people of the land were sure that the clock needed to be punched, or the governor if he would not show them the clock, as sure as they were about invading the lands of the Great River (c.f. between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Ed.), but they were confused.” This perplexed the followers of R. Lessig.
R. Lessig added another story, “When the light is shined on every man in the market, so that each shekel he gives and takes and each stone he turns over, and each ass, and each donkey, is known to all in the market, then that man may be taken for a fool, or worse, for a knave, for the people of the market will not listen to him, they will only see what the light shows at the worst possible angle of the man’s face. And the policeman,” said R. Lessig, “will not see the man but in the angle of what the people see, and the policeman is so in love with his electric light that he will not lower its brightness. And the people will be burned, and the policeman has not listened.”
R. Lessig also said, “If a man has a blemish under his eye, people will think it is because he fought with his wife, and judge him a bad man, even if the blemish may be from a fall, or an encounter with a donkey.” But then, a maymer was found that was attributed to R. Lessig, wherein he calls a man bad for his dalliance with those who had paid for his tents and his camels, and there is word of another missive, attributed to R. Lessig though possibly not actually written by his hand, in which he says a whole city of men are stained by the grease of chickens in the market, which they sold for a higher price than in another market, even though this grease was seen by electric light. And his followers were even more perplexed, even though they too wished for the market to be cleaned of grease stains, to the point of building a new market where no merchant would need grease to open his stall.
R. Weinberger b. R. Allen (who was undoubtedly an R. because he refused to eat meat even when it was made glatt kosher), expounded in a series of short sayings, loosely joined to each other by a miscellaneous set of clues that were made manifest only when held in train. R. Lessig, said R. Weinberger, is saying “The light is not always good.” “The light can take us to falsehood.” But, said R. Weinberger, there is no contradiction. R. Weinberger taught, “There is not enough light to burn the body, there is not enough light to even warm the body. For as it is written in B’Rishit, ‘let there be light.’” (c.f. Genesis 1:1, last week’s Torah portion, ironically enough. Ed.) R. Malamud noted, “The policeman must watch himself under the same light, and others must help. The others are more important than the policeman.” R. Zuckerman agreed, teaching, “One must use the light with care, and make the tools for using the light known to the people and not just the policeman.” And R. Klein and R. Miller and their followers concurred.
GEMARA: Sansei Wu taught differently. “Wherever the light shines, it will fool the eye into thinking that it sees clearly, when instead it will create shadows where corruption and decay may fester. The only way to clean the body is to clean the mind,” he wrote. And R. O’Reilly said, “There’s an app for that.”