Behar- Hechukothai: irrelevant

The first Rashi of Behar, this weeks first parsha, has become  cliche: Ma inyan shmitah eitzel har Sinai: what is the  relationship between  the Sabbatical laws  and  Mount Sinai?  This  phrase has become a way to express irrelevance in modern Hebrew.  

Rashi  says that the mention of Sinai comes to validate the Sabbatical laws  that are stated here because they are not repeated by Moshe on the plains of Moav.  The mention of Sinai imputes the divine origin of these counter intuitive , self sacrificial rules. In our times, validation by textual claim is limited to the believer and, perhaps, the accepting doubter.  

The phrase, Ma inyan shmitah eitzel har Sinai, is still used in modern Hebrew to imply non sequitur, irrelevancy.  It takes some of its flavor form the continued study, by students of Torah and Talmud, of subjects  that have no reality in the modern world: the Red Hefer, theTalmudic  methods of capital punishment. etc.  The phrase evokes this ongoing activity, it questions the value of such esoteric study and, at the same time, validates it ...by its very use. 

The study of the irrelevant is the origin of much fundamental science,  The random motion of microscopic particles was one of the first phenomena explained by Albert Einstein.  The acceleration of falling bodies, previously described by Aristotle ( the Medieval  science equivalent of Sinai) was challenged by Galileo in one of the birth pangs of the science that gives us our modern world.   Prior to their  completely impractical exploration, these phenomena were irrelevancies. 

In a democracy and in science, this ironic question sometimes has an answer.  Sometimes the questioning  of obvious relevancy dissuades the depth of study needed  to realize important connections.  The study of  the planet Venus led to a vision of how the gases in Earth's atmosphere could lead to disastrous global warming. The study of leeches and snake venoms  taught us how the blood coagulation system works, 

I would not reject the question of relevance out of hand,  The answer could be a discovery