Yet choreography is not quite the right metaphor here, since the goal of the rabbis is not to produce a graceful or beautiful life, but a holy one. So, Jewish observance can also be likened to a technology—a series of tools that, if used correctly, will produce the desired result, which is to please God and win his blessing. The Talmud, then, would be a manual of sacred technology, showing how to calibrate every prayer, ritual, and action so that it will be most effective. Fundamental to this idea is that the Jewish God is not content with pious thoughts but demands the necessary sequence of actions—just as an airplane won’t fly unless the pilot turns on the engine, even if everyone on board wishes it up into the air.Interesting metaphor.
Nothing could be more important to the rabbis than to get it right. Yet the Talmud was compiled centuries after the Temple was destroyed, and as every page of Yoma attests, they had no certain knowledge of what went on there, or even of how the building was laid out. They were forced to bring together a rabbinic tradition here and a biblical description there, supplemented by a great deal of logical deduction and simple guesswork. What this means is that even the simplest action of the high priest becomes, in the Talmud, the occasion for extremely complicated debates.Again, some earlier posts on that absent Ark of the Covenant are noted here.
Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.
