[Avodah] length of the aron

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Alan Rubin suggested:
> Can we try a thought experiment here? Someone takes a 20
> Amah length ruler into the KhK clearly marked in half amah
> divisions and lies it against the Aron. What do they see?
> What numbers are adjacent to the edges of the aron?

I've done this thought experiment a few times already. Came up with at least two half-answers:

One idea is that "Bracha exists only in that which is hidden." (Source, anyone? Or is it another phantom Chazal?) By the way, I consider that statement to be not-too-different from "Quantum physics miracles stop as soon as someone looks at the system." Anyway, what I'm suggesting is that introduction of a ruler would cause catastrophic results not too different from those shown in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Another idea stems from a story I once heard about someone who was in the tunnels below Har Habayis and actually saw some of the Keilim of the Beis Hamikdash. On his return, they asked him, "Did it look like this perush or that perush?" He answered, "It did look like this, and it did look like that. I know the perushim are contradictory, but it did look like both." So too, there is a real possibility that the ruler would show exactly what it is supposed to show, even though we cannot imagine how that might be.

Akiva Miller

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