The words of Chazal are even more beloved and sweeter than the ‘wine’ of Torah”
Close to 40 years ago, I was witness to what seemed at the time an insignificant conversation between one of the yungeleit in the kollel in which I was learning and an attendee at his beginners’ Gemara shiur.
They were learning about the melachos of Shabbos and were studying the details of meleches koseiv, writing. The halachah is that writing two letters in order on Shabbos makes one liable min haTorah for writing. However, if one writes only one letter, and that letter is the final one in a book of Tanach, he is liable min haTorah all the same. The reason for this is that the writing of a letter that concludes an entire sefer of Tanach is significant enough to qualify it as meleches machsheves, which constitutes chillul Shabbos.
The novice student, an intelligent gentleman, asked the rebbi why the ending of a sefer of Tanach is different from the ending of any secular book. The yungerman, a very sharp talmid chacham, explained that the holy sifrei Tanach are the word of Hashem, written with precision and without a solitary extra word or letter. When it is over, it is absolutely over.
The ending of a secular book, on the other hand, is arbitrary. If the author of Moby Dick, for example, had decided to write another chapter, there was nothing to stop him from doing so. Therefore, writing the concluding letter to Iyov, Shmuel, or any other sefer Tanach, has a special significance and qualifies as a melachah. Moby Dick is not Torah min haShamayim and there is nothing legislating its end. I was impressed with this talmid chacham’s quick wit and how he applied his bekius in the divrei chol of his youth to help him teach fundamentals of the Torah Hakedoshah.
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