i don’t know how to explain to my non-jewish audience what it means that two torah scrolls were destroyed in an arson attack but what i can tell you is that during the los angeles wildfires, three staff at the synagogue in pasadena made 4+ trips each back into the building to rescue torah scrolls while the fire was close enough that ashes were falling in the parking lot.
what i can tell you is that we have a holiday once a year where we hold the scrolls and hug them and dance around them. what i can tell you is that they are written with love by hand by trained scribes who take exquisite care to make sure each word, each letter, is perfect. when we read from them we do not touch the parchment directly so that it won’t be harmed by the oils from our fingers.
we make beautiful clothing for our torah scrolls, embroidered cloth coverings and shining worked metal crowns to sit atop them or carved wood cases plated with gold and silver. the torah is to us the words of the living God, the tree of life, the record of who are and where we’re going, and the torah scroll is our most holy ritual object.
the torah scroll never touches the floor. if it is dropped accidentally, everyone in the room must fast for forty days in mourning. the desecration of a torah scroll is the utmost level of desecration that can be done to a jewish community, short of killing its members. nazis burnt and destroyed torah scrolls as part of their campaign of terror against the us even before widescale mass deportations began. in ancient times, the romans wrapped the rabbis who led our community in torah scrolls when they burnt them at the stake.
this past shabbat, in the middle of the night, a synagogue in jackson, mississippi was intentionally set on fire. the library was burnt to ashes and five torah scrolls were damaged, with two of completely destroyed.
i don’t know how many books were burnt, how many jewish holy texts and how many stories of jewish life and philosophy and love and resilience flew up with the smoke. i do know that the library was where the congregation had shabbat services and torah study. it was a sacred space. this is not the first time that people who hate us have destroyed our sacred spaces and our holy texts and our torah scrolls in order to terrorize us. i dearly wish it was the last.
@rosesonkittens They tend to last a long time because of how carefully they are stored and used. Also, scribes will touch up the lettering on old Torah scrolls to keep them kosher (ie, intact enough to be used for ritual readings). There are Torah scrolls that are hundreds of years old.
Often, very old or historic ones are not used or are used only for special occasions, and many synagogues have Torah scrolls that were rescued from the Holocaust. The synagogue in Mississippi that was set on fire had one of these; thankfully it was unharmed because it was in a glass case. There’s a painful irony to that too, though.
But to actually answer your question — when a Torah scroll is worn or damaged beyond repair, it is ceremonially buried in a cemetery, like a deceased person. Old and worn printed holy books are also buried, sometimes in a grave with a deceased person.
Thank you. That's fascinating and sad. The painful irony article made it even sadder.
I'm sorry for their loss even more than I was when my brain was seeing it like if my childhood church, a historical building since 1812, was burnt down by people against protestants suddenly... And feeling sad at the loss of all that history and a beloved building.
But the way the scrolls are talked about it seems almost like whatever monster did this did succeed in killing something living even if they killed no one alive.
I'm sorry for Jackson, Mississippi's loss.
