A popular idiom may become so universal that people who never encountered the circumstances on which it is based, easily adapt the jargon into their vocabulary. The Talmud often cites popular expressions as support to its own statements. Perhaps this is because there is a spiritual root to such expressions. There is, for example an expression, “Up to Eleven”. We will now explain this expression.
This week’s parasha Devorim says that the Jewish people’s journey through the desert to the Promised Land was to be but eleven days. Why eleven?
Some simple explanations can be found here but on a deeper level (see also Tzemach Tzedek’s Ohr Hatorah Devarim Volume 1 p.16-19 or here ( Devarim, first column): the concept is that the Eleventh’s level is beyond the normative 10 sefiros paradigm of the side of Holiness.
This has many years after the Arizal and the first early Chassidic Rebbes been recently encapsulated by the phrase “Up to Eleven”
One can similarly propose that the reason why the Douglas Adams chose to write in his Hitchhikers Ultimate Guide to the Unverse that the “Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42” is the Divine Name of HaShem whose gematria is 42, which is one of the bases for existence !
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