Right in your own backyard.
This particular page could just as readily be an update from last month's column as an example from this month's. One reader, commenting on our tendency to continually fall behind quoted what seemed to be a Talmudic source:
You will leave me a day, and I will leave you
for two days.
I'm not the most versed in these sources, but I do know my way around in them, and this particular quote was totally unknown to me. So I turned to a reliable source, my brother. He wasn't able to place it either, but he posted a query on a list he subscribes to, and within 48 hours I had an answer:
One of the early sources of the quotation may be found in Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 5:14d:
Rabbi Shimon b. Lakish said it was found written in Megillat Hasidim: 'If you leave me one day, I shall leave you two days'.
The Talmud goes on to explain that this is analogous to two people who meet, separate and continue to walk in the opposite direction. After each has walked for one day, they are separated by two days' journey.
The Maharam Rothenburg explained this saying in a responsum:
If you leave the study of Torah for one day, the Torah is also kept aloof from you one day's distance; hence the Torah is separated from you by two days' distance. (Responsa of the Maharam of Rothenburg, Part 4, Responsum 387, Prague Edition)
The point to all rabbis, is that if, after ordination, we do not continue our studies, we are not at the same level of Torah as when we were graduated. Every day that goes by without study, we are geometrically distanced from any previous insight and understanding of our Jewish tradition.
That was a rather definitive answer to my question. The answer, however, definitely linked to this column, and not only the previous column, because it was sent from Israel, meaning that I had to send a query halfway around the world in order to have my brother ask the question to whomever might know, and then have the answer come from (figuratively) around the block.
Almost everyone knows of someone who when travelling in, let's say, India, meets and ultimately connects with someone who grew up in the same neighborhood. The original source probably shows up in a film, but countless examples from "real life" have proven that life imitates art. Now I've got an example of virtuality imitating real life imitating art.
Go to: Only six clicks away.