Brookwrite

The great discovery

by Doug Brook
Deep South Jewish Voice Columnist

For years in this space, both of you have periodically read excerpts from the fascinating teachings revealed in the long lost Mishnah tractate Baba Gump. Today you will learn (well, at least read) the epic tale of its great and unlikely discovery.

First, I'll remind you of a few facts so you're a little less lost. We're on page 46. Also, the Mishnah is a set of six books that include many tractates (pronounced "tractates"). These tractates offer rabbinic commentary on the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, available everywhere in parchment as well as a handsome, leather-bound collector's set.

The Mishnah supplements and extrapolates on the content of the Torah, providing us with the long-standing basis of most of the Jewish laws and practices that we still preserve and violate today.

The Mishnah was codified several thousand years B.N. (Before Now). Being codified, nothing in the Mishnah can be altered, except in the exceedingly unlikely event of absolute agreement on a subject by two or more Rabbis. Obviously, there have been no changes to date.

The tractate Baba Gump, a long lost text discovered only a few years ago, has gone through a tremendous amount of classified research to confirm its authenticity as a tractate in the fine tradition of the best-selling tractates Baba Metziah, Baba Batra, and Baba Kama, and the lesser-selling but still commonly referenced Baba Period and Baba Semi-Colon.

Of course, over the years there have been many fakers false tractates put forth fraudulent attention-seekers trying to get a cut of future book sales. A few examples include Baba Reno, popularized by John Travolta in the late 1970s (the failure of which drove him to embrace Scientology), and Baba Streisand (remember the marketing slogan, "Baba, can you hear me?").

The tractate Baba Gump was discovered by our former investigative mole, whom you might recall was lanced a couple years ago to avoid extensive proceedings after an unfortunate episode in a sensitive area was uncovered. (Don't confuse our former mole with our current investigative mole who has asked me to remind you, our reader, that he's tired of being mistaken for a ferret.)

As one of you might know, the Dead Sea Scrolls (tm) were discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea (tm) in the middle of the twentieth century after being secreted in clay receptacles for centuries.

The mysterious writer of Baba Gump, whom textual analysis has already shown us was far ahead of his time, feared for the preservation of the parchments in such primitive casings. Therefore, he secreted his tractate in an hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar, which he had the foresight to invent hundreds of years before the invention of mayonnaise, and threw it into (pronounced "onto" it is the Dead Sea, after all) the salty waters of the Dead Sea in the last recorded original use for non-artificial preservatives.

Our investigate mole, while luxuriating in (pronounced "on") the salty sea trying to read The Jerusalem Post from left to right, had a sudden epiphany when the location of the 'til-then-unknown tractate hit her right between the eyes.

With one hand clinging to the mayonnaise jar, and the other to that day's Hebrew translation of Garfield, she was dragged out of the water by two lifeguards who had been fixing their makeup while Mr. Hasselhoff was shooting a scene nearby for the upcoming television reunion special, "Baywatch Bubbes, the Later Years."

Our mole returned with the jar secreted in her swimsuit, to avoid suspicion, to the one place in the world where most ancient Jewish scholars reside: South Florida. Here, concealed in a basement, our mole was charged with leading a decade-long recovery of the ancient text.

Unfortunately, upon arrival, our mole learned that there are no basements in south Florida. After a good chastising from this columnist for lack of foresight, and a few hands of bridge in Boca, our mole went west, young man (woman, actually), to Beholder headquarters with the sacred document.

Many Mishnah tractates provide interpretation and extrapolation on biblical texts that can seem uncannily relevant to modern life to the few who actually read them. However, unlike those other tractates, Baba Gump exhibits an unswerving insight into the more esoteric aspects of the future (pronounced: "our present") including the highly publicized and debated chapter on shrimp being kosher.

In fact, our marketing staff asked us to inform you that clinical studies show Baba Gump contains over 50% more insight than other leading tractates, not to mention markedly better penmanship.

Also, our legal department directed us to debunk some common myths running rampant through the media regarding the nature of Baba Gump's predictions of the future. As I'm sure you both are aware, the media has suggested that Baba Gump rivals Nostradamus for predicting everything from the dot.com rise to the dot.com fall. Unfortunately, that part was not translated until after I bought a house this year.

In truth, Baba Gump makes no direct predictions. However, empirical evidence does indicate that this tractate knows something of certain modern miracles including, but not limited to, the 1969 and 1986 Mets, and Barry Manilow's extended episode of laryngitis (though we still eagerly await this final prediction to come true).

Now you know why it's taking so long to analyze this sacred text. Only the finest, most objective and scrupulous (pronounced "scruple-less") minds on earth could come up with such conclusions from something written thousands of years before the invention of tabloid media.

It will be several years before our decade-long effort is completed, having started less than four years ago. Being a government-funded project, we expect completion in or near the year 2018 (2023, when adjusted to government years), unless a later time is announced in this space in the future.

Until then, this space will continue to provide new insights into the text as they are declassified, reclassified, printed in the classifieds, or translated during class.

Doug Brook is a technical writer in Silicon Valley. His play Retrograde is in the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival anthology, available everywhere. For more information, online ordering, an archive of past columns and other writings, and some cool record icons, visit his website at http://brookwrite.com/.