A Seventy-Year Warranty

The Mashgiach once walked with one of his talmidim past a leaking drainpipe, and remarked: "How old is this drainpipe? Probably not more than a decade. It is made of metal, and see how it is already cracked and leaking. The human body is made of soft flesh, not metal, and it carries things worse than water. Our own drains and pipes are soft flesh and they carry hazardous materials, acidic and toxic, like urine and waste, yet they last decades and decades, an entire lifetime. A span of seventy years or more can go by with no mishap. From my flesh I see the Divine." At another time he asked, "How is it that the machine we call man does not break down and need maintenance and repair as often as other machines do? Take a watch, whose mechanisms and gears are all enclosed in a tightly shut metal casing. Still, every few years it must be opened, dusted, cleaned and wound, and it can easily break down. Man is made not of iron, silver or copper, but of flesh, and still he can sometimes live his whole life of seventy years or more with nothing breaking down and no maintenance needed."