Separating the Sacred from the Mundane

October 31, 2018 Rafael Alvarez

Situated in “Old Cairo,” the historic Ben Ezra Synagogue was the longtime home of the famed “Cairo Genizah,” a storeroom discovered in the 19th century containing Hebrew, Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic secular and sacred manuscripts. (File photo)

“All holy writings and their commentaries and explanations, it is forbidden to either burn or destroy them.” —Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Yesodei Torah 6:8)

My father – raised on the eastern edge of Highlandtown during the Great Depression and World War II, when the grounds of Baltimore City Hospitals were used by residents for ‘victory gardens’ – cannot bear to waste food. When Pop has no choice (“How long has that been in the fridge?” one of us will ask on the way to the trash), it pains him to toss food.

I feel the same way about books, and only twice have deliberately thrown one away: the parasite Albert Goldman’s “The Lives of John Lennon” (how dare he!) and a personal journal from 1976, my senior year of high school, my first summer at sea and the autumn I met the young woman who would become the mother of my children.

I am not (quite) deluded enough to believe that my journal was sacred but it was precious, and I’d give just about anything to have it back. Exuberant juvenilia, the book was thick with notes about the last year of my Italian grandmother’s life; my first experience working on a ship (a clueless, “ordinary seaman,” I borrowed the chief steward’s typewriter to make stories while my shipmates were making overtime); and Baltimore adventures (Memorial Stadium, Pratt Street wharves, a pre-gentrified Fells Point) in the city’s last gasps as a major manufacturing center.

Had I followed the Jewish custom of genizah, however, I could go and dig up my accounts of the year Jimmy Carter was improbably elected president, brush away the dirt and quote from it right now. Instead, ashamed of some of the things the journal contained, I watched a filthy garbage truck haul it away when the young woman mentioned above asked for a divorce.

I’ve long known that Jewish law calls for the burial of holy texts (broadly defined as anything imprinted Shemot – the names of God) once they’d become torn and tattered, unfit for use. But I was mistaken in thinking – despite the books being placed in a “shroud” (typically a white pillowcase) – that it was an extravagant religious ritual.

“No major performance [or prescribed liturgy],” said an Orthodox rabbi friend of mine who always reminds his congregation that people are more important than religious paraphernalia. “It’s just a respectful burial unless a Torah scroll has been damaged by fire. Then, there is more of a procession.”

Most synagogues have a room or designated closet called genizot, from the Hebrew “to hide” or “put away,” now defined as “storage.” In older shuls, it might have been the attic or basement. Once that space is filled – and the rabbi gets around to it – the material (which often includes old prayer shawls) is taken to a cemetery and put in the ground. So casual (or perhaps intimate) is the act that you can even do it in your own backyard.

Like anything else, however, some folks get carried away. Certain people are overly scrupulous (newsletters from your shul need not be saved) while others are careless, failing to take the time to separate the holy from the mundane and putting a burden on the rabbi. Not everything is worthy of the venerated “Cairo Genizah.”

“Older people remember it as a family custom and bring anything and everything,” said Jonathan Gross, a former rabbi at Pikesville’s Beth Tfiloh Synagogue, now a law student at the University of Baltimore. “When I was a rabbi in Nebraska, there was only one depository for old Jewish texts in the whole state. I would say that 90 percent of what people brought to us could have been thrown away.”

My favorite story concerning genizot comes from Rabbi Miriam Cotzin Burg, founder of The Kibbutz: A Jewish Overnight Camp for Families. Miriam’s grandparents – Dr. Samuel Sunshine (1914-1992) and his wife, Eleanor Bernstein Sunshine (1921-1988) – are buried in the cemetery of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac. The grave plots chosen by the family for their departed beloved were decidedly very close to a genizah on the burying grounds.

“Since then,” said Miriam, “my mother and my uncle have joked that they picked those spots so their parents would always have something to read!”

Rafael Alvarez can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com.