Yankel, a poor man, is walking home one day and passes a coat store offering coats at half price. Though he can't afford it, Yankel also can't pass up a bargain, so he goes in and buys a coat.
When he gets home, his wife, who has a better sense of finances, gives it to him over the head and tells him to go back and return the coat. “On what pretext?” asks Yankel. “Tell them,” says she, “that you inspected it when you got home and the coat is flawed.”
The man returns to the merchant and says, “I want my money back, this garment is flawed.” When the merchant refunds the purchase, his friends wonder aloud, “Why did you give a refund so fast? Why didn’t you offer him an exchange for another, unflawed coat?”
The merchant replies: “I've been in this business for a long time. You think he was was interested in another coat? Such a person would say, ‘This garment is flawed; I need a new one.’ But this shmendrik comes in here and announces, ‘I want my money back’ and only then does he say ‘this garment is flawed.’ Obviously, the flaw is not the issue—it’s the gelt!”
***
Some questions are not questions but answers. They are used to answer and excuse the questioner’s choices. In Yiddish/Hebrew, the word for answer, terutz, is also the word for excuse. A question can sometimes be a terutz. One can answer a question; one cannot answer an answer.
It takes wisdom to recognize when our questions are sincere quests for knowledge, or pretexts to deny or ignore what it is we need to do.