Monday, June 11, 2007

Quick note about attribution

The Talmud, when discussing the story of Purim, says that the salvation in the Purim story came as a result of Queen Esther attributing something to Mordechai that he had said. She could just have told the King that his guards were going to kill him, but instead she specifically said that she had heard this from Mordechai. The resulting gratitude of the King to Mordechai led to a cascading series of events that led to the redemption. The Talmud concludes that anyone that quotes something with correct attribution will bring redemption to the world.

However we exactly understand the generalization that the Talmud makes, it's certainly a good thing for the world for people to give credit where credit is due.

So, with this in mind, I wanted to make a quick comment about my post about the magical wisdom of the magical land: I attributed the idea of the magical wisdom from the land of Israel staying with a person even when he leaves Israel to the Chassidic Rebbe of Boston, since I heard it from him several years ago. But I saw over Shabbat in a book of his that the idea is originally from the Imrei Emes, an early Rebbe from the Gur dynasty.

I hope everyone has a good week!

--Dov

1 comment:

Taco Recipes said...

This is a great poost thanks