FOCUS
BURIED
A tomb
at Machpelah Cemetery
contains the last
remnants of tallitot,
tefillin and holy books.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Assistant Editor
he holy words are deep
in the earth, buried in
a white tomb with a
rusty ladder. They rest beside
pictures of Moshe Dayan,
tefillin and miniature Ibrahs
for children.
About six times a year the
tomb is opened and more
prayer books and religious
articles are placed inside,
where they will eventually
disintegrate and blend in
with the soil. The Jewish
books are buried, not thrown
away, when they become
unusable because they con-
numerous genizah sites from
throughout Jewish history,
including under the stone
foundations of synagogues,
in cemeteries and in caves.
Probably the most famous
genizah was the Cairo
Genizah, first discovered in
1753 and rediscovered in the
20th century by Conser-
vative Judaism leader
Solomon Schechter, who
made the collection public.
Earlier discoverers did not
study the contents of the
genizah because of a
superstition that those who
touched the holy pages
would meet with adversity.
Numerous historical and
cultural documents and an-
Photos by Glen n Triest
T
tain the name of God.
Halachah, Jewish law, for- .
bids destroying any item in
which God's name has been
written.
The tomb where the ar-
ticles and books are placed is
called a genizah. Detroit is
home to two such tombs —
one at Chesed Shel Emes fu-
neral home, the other at
Machpelah Cemetery, built
with a donation from
cemetery developer David
Oppenheim.
The genizah, originally a
room attached to the syn-
agogue, derives its name
from the Persian word gin-
zakh, or treasury. Archae-
ologists have discovered
The genizah at Machpelah Cemetery.
Old Siddurim with sentimental inscriptions, teffilin and some quaint treasures.
cient writings were found in
Cairo Genizah, which is
located at the Ezra Syn-
agogue where Maimonides
and other famous scholars
taught.
It's unlikely any ancient
treasures could be found at
the Machpelah Cemetery
genizah, but the tomb is
about one-quarter filled with
books and religious objects
from the early 1900s, when
the cemetery was incor-
porated.
The genizah is found to the
left on the grounds, just past
a young man's grave dec-
orated with flowers and a
balloon that says "I love
you" and old tombstones of
sandstone that show only
traces of names of men and
women once beloved.
The genizah is white and
reaches 8 feet into the
ground. The walls are ce-
ment; the bottom is dirt.
A small, rusty ladder leads
down into the genizah, which
is rank with the smell of
must, mold and damp earth.
Even with the door open, it's
decidedly dark inside the
tomb.
Just under the ladder
begins the mountain of ob-
jects. At first glance the
items appear mundane. At
the top: tefillin in a plastic
bag, issues of The Jerusalem
Quarterly and tallitot stain-
ed with large red and brown
spots.
But dig deeper into the
pile, and a new world is
revealed. There are books
with sentimental messages
and curious treasures most
would generously describe
as quaint, but which some-
one clearly thought were
sacred enough to be buried.
One of those quaint
treasures is an aluminum
tray with Moshe Dayan's
picture in the middle. Also
in the genizah is a white,
plastic plaque of the Kotel, a
painting of an elderly man
playing a fiddle and old
United Synagogue of
America calendars.
The most popular items in
the tomb are prayer books —
Reform, Conservative and
Orthodox. Often, they reveal
One Daily Prayer
Book, a gift,
reveals this
message: "I hope
this gives you as
much pleasure as
it gives me."
years of good use and many
attempts at repair: their
pages are taped again and
again; their dark covers are
worn.
One small, red prayer book
was published in 1899 in
Wien, Austria, which means
it escaped the deprivation of
World War I and the an-
guish of the Holocaust,
unlike the many souls who
may have used it. There's a
copy of the Union Prayer
Book, long since replaced by
a new version, printed in
1959, and a Siddur publish-
ed in the Soviet Union.
Also in the mountain of
holy words lies a prayer book
for Rosh Hashanah, printed
on Delancey Street in New
York's Lower East Side;
numerous old "Learn to Read
Hebrew" books; a selection
of mishnayot printed in
Poland and a 1948 publica-
tion by Israeli author
Aharon Megged.
Many of these bear on the
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
51