Riddles of the Week

Riddles of the Week

(For answers see inside)

1. Which two people had X-ray vision in the Midbar [Wilderness]?
2. How is it possible that a person sprinkled the ashes of the parah adumah onto someone who was tamei through contact with a dead body, yet he did not become impure in the process?
3. The Gemara in Yevamos (97a) relates: “R’ Yochanan said in the name of R’ Shimon bar Yochai, that any Talmud Chocham that has something said over in his name in this world, שפתותיו דובבות בקבר – his lips move in the grave”. When one says over a chiddush [novel ruling] that he heard from someone, who in turn heard it from an adam gadol, do the lips of the middle person also speak in the grave, or is it only the lips of the Talmud Chocham himself that move?
4. The Gemara in Shabbos (105b) brought down l’halachah in Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah 340:5) says as follows:רבי שמעון בן אלעזר אומר העומד על המת בשעת יציאת נשמה חייב לקרוע ,הא למה זה דומה לספר תורה שנשרף – “R’ Shimon ben Elozor says: If one is standing by a dead body at the time of his passing, one is obligated to perform kriah [tear his garment]. To what is this compared? To a sefer Torah that was burnt.” If a person works for hatzolah or is a doctor, must he perform kriah numerous times a day, every time he finds himself in front of a person who dies? Or does doing it once suffice?
5. In the stirring kinah of Arzei Levanon, we mention that after Rabbi Shimon was killed, Rabbi Yishmoel Kohen Gadol took his head, ושם פיו על פיו – and placed his mouth on his mouth. How was Rabbi Yishmoel allowed to do this, he was a kohen and a kohen isn’t allowed to become tamei [impure] to dead bodies?