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Virtually There: Thoughts on the Weekly Sedra Re'eh

by Erica Brown

At the beginning o of this week's sedra, Re'eh, we find a demand to eliminate pagan worship:

And you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their trees with fire, and you shall cut down the graven images of their gods and you shall destroy their name out of that place. You shall not do so unto the Lord your God.

The Torah concentrates on several expressions of idol worship, concluding with the reminder that we not treat our God in this way. However, this latter piece of information seems self-evident; surely we would not break down our own altars or find means to destroy God's image. Many classical commentators understand the connection between the verses as more significant geographically than methodologically. There are many different ways to worship idols yet this verse concentrates on the many different places that pagan worship can be conducted. Prayer can be held on the top of mountains, beside trees specially dedicated for such a purpose or on altars throughout the land. But this is not the case with Jewish prayer which can only be conducted in "the place God will chose," namely the site of the future Temple. The children of Israel may not arbitrarily construct places of sacrifice. This, no doubt, was a dramatic departure from the polytheistic worship practiced around them which was, in this regard, more convenient than annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Psychologically and spiritually it was more limiting and demanding. The verses, according to these commentators, are presenting a contrast between the relatively more accessible forms of cultic practices which we are mandated to eliminate and our own worship of God which must conform to certain conventions.

The midrash, however, read the connection somewhat differently, concluding that this verse is introducing a new law, that one not obliterate documents or objects containing God's name. This ancient law evolved into the custom of preserving"shemot," items with God's name, in special containers or rooms usually attached to a local synagogue. These places are called genizot meaning concealment or treasury. The latter usage appears in the books of Esther and Ezra referring to treasuries of the king. In the talmud and the midrash, the term genizot came to refer more specifically to the preservation of ritual items or books containing God's name that are either worn down through use, damaged or unwanted. In this sense the multiple meanings of the word come together - we conceal or bury our treasures - books and documents of sacred value. We do not merely throw them out when we are finished with them because the holiness they contain and have promoted in their past merit their preservation. Genizot have also been instrumental in helping us research periods of time captured by the letters and religious objects of the past. One of the best examples is the Cairo Geniza first discovered in the nineteenth century and held in Cambridge University, the contents of which brought decades of Jewish history to new life.

Throughout Jewish history, a premium has been placed on the preservation of such material. Torah scrolls have been saved from pillaging and pogroms, handled like precious children. Scrolls were often buried in times of danger and then dug up again once the danger had passed. This did not diminish from the concern for human life in difficult times because the books themselves flow with the life blood of those who study and teach them. I can vividly recall teaching a class in Moscow in 1987, before the mass emigration out of the former Soviet Union. The class was held in secret and I was handed a volume of the Pentateuch that was over two hundred years old. The corners of each page were rounded through constant use. The owner could barely read Hebrew, and I asked where he obtained such an old volume. Many years earlier he had received a call from Vilna that an old synagogue was to be destroyed along with its many shelves of Hebrew books. He drove the long distance between the cities and buried the works outside of Moscow where they could not be found by any officials who prohibited their study. He kept a few books for his small personal library, and I was privileged to teach from one of these them. There was a certain irony in teaching a room full of people questing for a Judaism they did not know from a book that came from Vilna, one of the great centers of Jewish study. The transmission and preservation of one mottled brown book of Numbers presented a glimpse into the rich history of a people undergoing change.

This book was used, almost buried, put on a shelf hundred of miles away from its place of origin and studied again elsewhere, recycling a tradition under very different circumstances. The same is true for books passed down as a family legacy. We become not only connected with a place or a time but with the people who studied them. Few people think of their own books as one day being held by their own great-grandchildren but perhaps there is no greater reason to establish one's own Jewish library. With it we grow intellectually and spiritually and touch those who we may never meet by connecting to the same words. Preserving books with God's name shows respect for God but also respect for books and teaches us that the printed word carries the weight of generations and ultimately the love of history. The law of not obliterating God's name and the custom of preserving documents containing God's name evolved out of these few but poignant words contained in one line of this week's Torah reading. We preserve books, and they in turn preserve us.

Shabbat Shalom