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THE EXPERT
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Rituals For Burying
Worn, Sacred Items
Q: What is the protocol for
burying damaged Jewish prayer
books and shawls? Should they
be wrapped? Can they be buried
in my yard? Are there special
prayers to be recited?
- Linda, Randolph, Mass.
A: It sounds like you're talking about
burying the contents of a genizah,
Linda. Genizah means "reserved" or
"hidden" in Hebrew, and is tradition-
ally a place where Jews store sacred
documents when they fall out of use.
The Talmud (Shabbat 115a) stipu-
lates that all sacred writings (scrolls
of Torah, Prophets, and Writings),
should be preserved in a place where
they cannot be destroyed. Though
this idea originally was closely tied
to a prohibition from ever erasing
God's name, Maimonides ruled that
holy books, such as the Talmud and
midrash, should be retired to the
genizah as well, even though they do
not contain God's name (Mishneh
Torah, Hilhot Yesodei HaTorah 6:8).
For a long time, Jewish communi-
ties set aside a room in each syna-
gogue exclusively for this purpose
and called that space the genizah.
Anything from a worn-out siddur to
a contract written in Hebrew would
be put in the genizah when it was no
longer useful, and often ritual objects
such as a tallit or a lulav were added
as well.
Most synagogues now have a
closet or a box where they collect
used papers and ritual objects that
are considered sacred. The general
rule is that anything dealing with
sacred subjects should be placed in a
genizah rather than thrown out. An
Israeli newspaper, though written in
Hebrew, would not need to go in a
genizah, but a Megillah that had been
damaged would.
Most synagogues clean out their
genizot every few years by burying
the contents in a Jewish cemetery as
a sign of reverence and respect. Some
communities even have cemetery
plots that have been donated express-
ly for the purpose of burying the
genizah. It is considered a great sign
of respect to bury a Torah scroll or
other sacred work near a prestigious
Torah scholar. However, you are wel-
come to bury your household genizah
in your back yard as long as it is done
respectfully.
Before burial the items should be
put in a shroud (a white pillowcase
will do) and any Torah scrolls should
be cut off from their wooden spools.
There is no set liturgy for a
genizah burial, but many congrega-
tions have created their own ceremo-
nies. I particularly like the one from
Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, which
contains passages from the Torah
and Mishnah as well as the rabbis'
Kaddish and contemporary poetry.
You can adapt the liturgy to make
it more appropriate or meaningful
for your family or community, but it
is customary to include the rabbis'
Kaddish.
The most famous genizah, by far,
is the Cairo genizah, a room attached
to the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old
Cairo. The room contained more than
200,000 documents and ritual objects
from as far back as the 10th century,
including commentaries and letters
written by Maimonides and Rabbi
Judah Halevi. In the 1890s, Solomon
Schechter, a lecturer at Cambridge
University, convinced synagogue
officials to allow him to ship most
of the contents of the Cairo genizah
to Cambridge; since then, thousands
of documents from the genizah have
been restored, translated, and stud-
ied.
Today, most of the works from
the genizah can be found at the
Cambridge University Library and
at the Jewish Theological Seminary
in New York; the entire corpus of
manuscripts is being digitized by the
Friedberg Genizah Project so that
it can be studied and searched by
scholars all over the world.
Before you bury your own genizah,
take a look through it. You probably
won't find scraps of business contracts
from the 13th century, but you might
come across some valuable lessons
and stories that you hadn't thought
about in years. Good luck! 1 I
D
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