By Stanley Elkin
We don’t tell you this stuff, the cruel, arcane orthodoxics that would scare you off and keep you out of Paradisethat it’s forbidden to dip your right eye in an eyecup, that you can’t be buried in your jewelry, no, not your wedding or engagement rings, not your locket with the picture of your kids, not even so much as a red paper Poppy Day flower or a tin button on your lapel from the Red Cross. That you mustn’t look at an X ray or handle the vital organs of a woman taken in adultery. That you shouldn’t wear contact lenses or shoes with lifts. That, strictly speaking-all of this is strictly speaking, of course-it goes against God’s law to walk with a cane more beautiful than the leg it’s intended to support or to use any prosthesis that improves upon the original body part. (Iews may place no hearing aid in their ears that corrects hearing acuity beyond what is considered normal in the population as a whole.) Lefthandedness in an unmarried woman is a sin and, according to some interpretations of Talmud, a man may be denied his place with God if he can lift three times his own body weight.
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