AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME

The profound message of
Shavuot is that if we don't
stay up one night a year now,
our children will not be fooled
by hyperboles, and we end up
staying awake far more
nights than we bargained for
wondering what happened to
our future.
In Leningrad during the
early 1970s, I met an elderly
rabbi who'd been imprisoned
under the communist regime
in its war against Judaism.
Finally freed, Rabbi Lub-
anov's face couldn't hide a
lifetime of suffering. Among
the rabbis I would meet in the
Soviet Union, he stood out as
the most patriarchal and the
most haunted, eyes perma-
nently etched with pain. His
grandchildren (who had man-
aged to emigrate to Israel)
had asked me to take along
photos of their new life in the
Promised Land.
Even though Rabbi Luba-
nov knew I was visiting from
New York, all Friday night at
the synagogue he avoided me.
When he continued to avoid
me the following morning, I
decided I had to be forthright,
and in Yiddish I whispered
that I had photos for him.
"There are those who are
looking," he answered, and
then indicated how I should
move the photos, using his
prayer shawl as a cover. After-
ward, when we had a moment
alone, he hinted that to
understand the situation in
Russia, we should look at
Tractate Moed Katan 26a,
where Rabbi Chelbo says in
the name of Rabbi Huna that
we are required to rend our
garments twice if we are pres-
ent when a Sefer Torah is
destroyed — once for the de-
struction of parchment and
once for the destruction of the
letters.
Rabbi Lubanov then turned
to me. In Tractate Avoda Zara
18a, we learn of Rabbi
Chanaya ben Taradyon's mar-
tyrdom, how a Torah scroll is
wrapped around his body and
together, he and the Torah are
thrown into a living fire. As
the flames grow hotter, his
students ask what he sees,
and he answers that the par-
chment is falling to the
ground. But the letters rise
and live forever, testifying to
their eternity and ultimate
indestructibility.
Isn't it strange, Rabbi
Lubanov pointed out, that if
the letters are not destroyed,
we must still rend our gar-
ments over them? Are not the
two talmudic passages contra-
dictory? It all depends on who
is doing the destroying, he ex-

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