Sacred Texts and Respectful Burial

Editor's note: In Judaism, there are certain rules governing how to deal with sacred texts that can no longer be used. In 2022, Dan Stuhlman wrote about how, under his guidance, a large number of prayer books and other religious writings were buried in a community in Chicago in his blog Kol Safran. We are publishing his article here with his kind permission (with minor editorial changes for the benefit of our readers).

Hebrew texts, such as Torah scrolls, prayer books and other religious writings that contain the name of God, are considered sacred. Even if they can no longer be used, for example because they have been damaged and are no longer ritually usable, they must still be treated with respect. They must not be burned or deliberately destroyed. They should be collected in a protected place so that they can be buried at some point.

For this purpose many synagogues in the Near East had a storeroom called in Hebrew “genizah,” meaning hidden. The most famous genizah was the one from Old Cairo that Solomon Schechter brought to the scholarly world. For hundreds of years members of that synagogue dumped documents and holy books there. Schechter discovered the Hebrew original version of the book, Ben Sira there.

The Talmud in Shabbat 115a discusses what sacred books may be saved from a fire even on Shabbat. From that discussion we extrapolate what kinds of texts need to be respectfully buried. The Talmud page says that any text of the Hebrew Bible even without God’s name written on it cannot be destroyed. This idea is connected to the prohibition against erasing God’s name. Books and documents with God’s name are called Shemot (literally “names”). In his work Mishneh Torah, the great Jewish scholar Rambam (Maimonides) rules in the volume Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah (“Laws Concerning the Principles of the Torah”) 6:8, that all holy books should be retired to the genizah, even if God’s name is not on the pages.

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Solomon Schechter studying the fragments of the Cairo Genizah (© Wiki Commons)

Objects that have stories attached to them are hard to part with. Some library items and siddurim (prayer books for everyday life and Shabbat) have the names of donors on the book plate. In your home collections things could have a story (a biography) of how they came into your possession. The items could remind you of an occasion or the person gave you the item. Without the story or context, the item is just a thing. Museums put context to objects so that a story is told.

The Temple Sholom Genizah Project

The synagogue (Temple Sholom of Chicago) where I am the librarian has been working for more than three years on a genizah project. The last time they buried materials was nine years ago and none of the current staff remembered what they did. This project was a three-year logistical challenge. It was not a project with a project director or hard deadline. No one would care if the project was completed today or in a year. At first it was not even a project with someone in charge. Not that it took all of three years to do the tasks, but we had several challenges with defining the task and time frame, and then COVID closed the building for most of two years. In August 2021 we had a building-wide clean-up project. We had books that were left by former rabbis and many other donations that had unclear provenance. My part was to identify what should be done with the books. Some books should be added to the library collections, some could be sold or given away, and some items needed to be buried. As a librarian I hate to throw out books in good condition because I always think someone will want them. This is hardest when the books are in good physical condition, but they have existed beyond their useful life. The non-holy books i.e., books without the name of God were recycled, donated or given away.

The building had more than 2,000 old siddurim and mahzorim (prayer books for holidays) of several editions sitting in boxes on shelves in storage areas. Most of them were in good or excellent physical condition. The only reason to get rid of them was because the congregation started to use a new siddur. Some of the siddurim were two or three versions before the current versions. None of the above were sellable because no one wanted them, but a few were given away. I didn’t find any treasures from another time period like were found in the Cairo genizah.

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The Five Books of the Torah, translated and annotated by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Part 1: Bereshit, Basel, with reference to disposal in accordance with Jewish custom (© Germania Judaica Cologne)

In honor of the congregation’s 150^th anniversary I suggested offering members a historical package of siddurim dating from the Union Prayerbook from 1940 to the Gates of Prayer series from the 1980’s and 1990’s. We had no takers. I was able to give away some Humashim (Book editions of the Torah, the five books of Moses) edited by Rabbi Joseph Hertz to individuals and a synagogue.

Many staff members in the congregation helped with the gathering of the books and placing them in boxes. A few books came from members, but this was not a communal gathering of texts for burial. Staff who helped included the executive director, manager of facilities, maintenance staff, rabbis, educators, and others. I had to compute the number of cubic feet needed for the grave to communicate this to cemetery staff. The facilities manager needed to bring the pieces together and order a truck to transport the boxes.

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Public Genisa in Jerusalem (© Wiki Commons)

Buried Books

The congregation owns its own cemetery, and the burial was scheduled for a time when the board was planning to meet at the cemetery. The rabbis were kept in the loop, and they were in charge of the ceremony. There is no traditional liturgy or ritual for the event.

While many synagogues clean out the papers and documents that require burial on a periodic basis, I never heard of any Chicago area synagogue who planned such a massive burial that included so many boxes of old siddurim. There were 84 boxes occupying about 90 cubic feet that were buried. There was a cost for this project above and beyond normal salaries. The cemetery had to dig a grave and pay staff overtime wages to open and cover the grave. A truck needed to be rented and staff paid to load and unload the boxes.

The burial pit has straight sides. The boxes of books were placed carefully and respectfully in grave. The hole occupies the space of two graves. The cemetery manager planned the opening so that if we have more books to bury in a year or two, a small part can be opened rather than a full grave.

Before you bury your own genizah books, examine them thoroughly. You probably won’t find scraps of business contracts from the 13th century, but you might learn some valuable historical lessons.

Daniel D. Stuhlman is a librarian at Temple Sholom of Chicago. 

Titel image: Books collected for the burying (© Daniel D. Stuhlman)