1. OUT OF THE CLOSET

I grew up in a Reform congregation. On Shabbat mornings, a Torah scroll would be taken out of Ark and placed on the reader's table. One person (or occasionally as many as three) would be invited to stand next to the table and recite the appropriate blessings over the reading. The rabbi or Bar/Bat Mitzvah would read (never chant), and then often repeat the reading in English. The scroll would be dressed, and generally placed in a holder. Haftarah was read, and then the Torah would be returned to the Ark.

At my first Rosh Hashanah service at Vassar Temple, I carried the scroll in a procession (hakafah) through the congregation prior to its reading, but then took the Torah back to the Ark at the end of that portion of the service. More than one congregant let me know how disappointed they were that the scroll was carried through the sanctuary a second time after its reading. I readjusted for Yom Kippur, and no High Holy Day service since has neglected to have two hakafot.

Within the Reform Movement, there has been a profound change in the attitude toward the Torah. Torah was always respected, but some things were held in much higher regard: reason and scientific truth. So, we honored the Torah in the breach, and mostly kept it away from the congregation. Reason and scientific truth continue, of course, to be important to us as modern Jews, but we have come to learn that their relationship to Torah is not a zero-sum game.

Actually, Torah has two meanings. There are the words of Torah, a body of literature that begins with the first five books of the Bible, but extends to all classic Jewish tradition. And then there is the scroll. The former, we can study and discover that its contents not only need not be treated as a challenge to modern scientific thought, but provides a rich vein of insight and truth. That latter, we can embrace and feel a connection with our past, our heritage, and our community, and our souls.

This year — the Hebrew year of 5770 — is going to be Vassar Temple's Year of the Torah. In the coming Bulletin's I will write more about the extraordinary set of scrolls that so attract and intrigue us.

2. A VERY UNUSUAL BOOK

Today's books are marvelous technical achievements. Even though they may be a few hundred pages in length, they are light, portable, and — with digital printing — easily copied. Indeed, they may no longer be made with paper, but rather down-loaded texts on an electronic screen.

The publishing improvements of the 21st century are just a step ahead of the developments of the last few centuries. 19th century lithography allowed for relatively easy reprinting of published works, while the steady progress in the printing press insured a wider and wider distribution of literary materials.

Prior to Gutenberg, books had to be produced in the slow and labor-intensive method of hand written manuscripts, but at least the technique of book binding, essentially perfected in the early centuries of the Common Era, allowed for easy portability of many pages of material.

Perhaps the very earliest writing was etched into stone or pressed into clay, but ink and paper is quite ancient, and it always had the advantage of providing a medium for considerably more literary information than could be transmitted on stone or clay. But, there were the drawbacks. Paper is flimsy and could only reliably last a few generations. And, while very lengthy documents could be made portable in the form of a scroll, access to specific information could be unwieldy. It is not easy to go from the beginning to the middle of a long scroll.

With this brief history of the book in mind, we can appreciate just how unusual a Torah scroll is. In a synagogue filled with computer screens and many volumes of conventional printed books (the technical term for such bound literature is 'codex' or 'codices'), we insist on maintaining a book that is hand-written and kept in a scroll, essentially in the same fashion as when it was first committed to writing nearly 3000 years ago!

At the same time, it is ink on paper. Not clay or stone. The text, millennia old, could only come to us by a process of careful and loving transcription. And it can only be preserved by our careful and loving care. What an unusual marvelous book, indeed!

3. IS BEAUTY TRUTH?

The classic TV game show, “Let's Make a Deal,” was known for — among other things — contestants choosing to see what was behind a curtain. It was a deceptively simple device for building up suspense, and over the long run of the program, it pretty much always worked. The fundamental rule that “Let's Make a Deal” employed was, revealing something hidden is dramatic.

Synagogues employ this technique as well. Walk into a sanctuary and you see that everything is on display, except for one item. There is an Ark (basically a closet) that is closed. Let me note as an aside that in many synagogues, the Ark actually has a curtain (it is called a parokhet) in addition to doors. Thus, a newcomer can wonder what's behind the curtain. At an appropriate moment in the service, the Ark doors are opened — or the curtain is pulled back — and with the drama of the game show, the Torah scrolls are revealed.

All of this is done for effect, adding to the awe and majesty of the worship experience. It works, however, because when the Ark is opened, we do not see simply a number of strips of paper rolled into scrolls, but rather an array of decorated cloth and silver. Opening an Ark is supposed to be an impressive act, and so the Torah scrolls inside must look impressive. The Jewish tradition calls this concept of dressing up a scroll Hidur Torah, displaying the beauty of the Torah.

Worship is a form of drama; this much is true. But the beautifying of the Torah scroll seems to go further than mere drama. Torah (the text) is special. As modern liberal Jews, we might find its assertions and ideas challenging and occasionally difficult, but we also consider the challenge itself worthwhile. Confronting the words of Torah is always an exercise in confronting Truth (sometimes truth in the words themselves, sometimes the truth we discover within ourselves).

Truth, we are told, is supposed to be unadorned; “just give me the plain truth!” The words of Torah might just be that. The revelation of Truth, however, is majestic. It is uplifting; in a word, it is a form of beauty. The dressing of a Torah scroll may be viewed as an indication that what is found within is Truth. I think it is more the reverse: because Torah leads to a better of understanding of what is true, the scroll is worthy of being made beautiful.

4. CLOTHES FIT FOR A KING?

Torah scrolls are essentially the hand-written manuscript of the first five books of the Bible, set down on a long sheet of paper that is rolled up on two wooden staves. When the Ark is opened, however, this is not what the congregation sees. The scrolls are rather presented to us a cloth covers bedecked with silver. While there are artistic differences in these decorative items, virtually all scrolls have them. They are the dressing of the Torah, and follow the traditional concept that the scroll should be made to look pretty: hidur Torah.

Scrolls are thus covered first by a heavy cloth tunic. (The proper term is a kapporet.) Its purpose is fundamentally protective. Among the silver objects attached to the scroll, the slender pointer (yad), most often depicting a hand with the index finger outstretched, is also practical. The inked letters of the Torah are best preserved when they are not touched by one's own hand. Natural oils on the skin lead to smudging the print. The yad permits one to point to the words as they are recited with being concerned about marring the text.

The other silver objects are purely ornamental, but are hardly arbitrary. A shield, or breastplace (hoshen) is draped over the cloth cover, and tall finials (rimonim) are placed on the wooden staves. The items are profoundly symbolic. A careful inspection of both the hoshen and the rimonim will reveal that they are almost always decorated with a crown. (And sometimes the rimonim are replaced with a crown [keter]!) The significance of the crown is rather obvious — authority — but not necessarily the authority of a king.

Far less obvious is that the breastplate and the finials have little bells on them. Why bells? Children will often say, so that we know when the Torah is coming. Not bad! Because of the bells, whenever the scroll is carried through the congregation, we can indeed hear it. The Torah is speaking; not just the reader.

The origin of the bells, however, is found in a section of the book of Exodus. The formal garments of the ancient priests — Aaron and his sons — are described. They include a tunic that is to decorated with “bells and pomegranates.” The Hebrew word for pomegranates is rimonim! In addition, the High Priest wore a hoshen, strung by a chain around his neck. The crowns on a Torah scroll seem to imply a king, but actually the Torah is made to dress like a priest.

The priest in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, were the individuals invested with the responsibility of drawing the people closer to God. In Temple days, they did so by administering to the sacrificial rites. Today, it is the Torah itself that has the role of ancient priest. In its decorative covering, we symbolically perceive that which draws us closer to God.

5. OLDEST and NEWEST

I have noted in this space that the Torah scroll is anachronistically old. Two thousand years ago, all books looked more or less like the Torah. Indeed, most where not quite as long, and therefore could be wrapped comfortably around a single stave. Starting at the beginning of the Christian Era, the new technology of bound books began to replace scrolls, and within a few centuries represented the conventional shape of a book.

All these books, however, continued to be produced in manuscript form for another 1500 years. With the popularity of Gutenberg's printing press, the concept of a hand-written book substantially disappeared by the sixteenth century. Today, a “book” is a piece of machine-printed material bound between covers. Perhaps a few decades from now, even this description will be obsolete, as digital readers, like the Kindle, become more prevalent. I would guess, however, that even centuries from now, the Torah will remain in hand-written scroll form, a stubborn reminder of what books used to be in an age long past.

Torah is deliberately produced in a very old-fashioned way. But, is it old? There is an interesting story told in the Talmud (Tractate Menahot 29b). Moses, after his death, ascends to the heavenly court and finds God carefully adding decorative flairs (crowns) to some of the letters of the Torah. He asks why bother. God shows him by transporting him into the future, where he finds himself standing in the back of Rabbi Akiba's class. Akiba is explaining the Torah with concepts that Moses had never heard before, and could barely understand. As he was getting more and more agitated, Akiba concluded by stating that all this is as taught by Moses at Sinai! Moses was placated.

The story first implies that Akiba was interpreting the very crowns written onto the letters of the scroll. We then glean a deeper and more enduring lesson. The crowns — seemingly innocuous flourishes of a scribe — symbolize the ever-developing nature of Torah. An unbroken chain links Moses to Akiba, but Akiba can discern insights in the text that Moses could never dream of. Of course, we today, as removed in time from Akiba as he was from Moses, can do just the same. And if the great classic Sage stood at the back of the classroom in a contemporary synagogue, he would probably be just as confused and lost.

The French philosopher and critic Edmund Fleg wrote: I am a Jew because the word of Israel is the oldest and the newest. The oldest of books — the handwritten scroll of Torah — can also be the newest, when we are attentive to where those little flourishes on each of the letters can take us.

6. BLESSING THE WORD

Jewish observance is filled with blessings: for engaging in rituals like lighting Shabbat candles, for everyday activities like eating and drinking, and for occasions in life both happy and sad. In virtually every instance, one blessing is enough. When reading from the Torah, however, one is not enough. We recite a blessing before the reading, and then add one more when we are finished. (This practice of blessing before and after is also done for the Haftarah (prophetic reading) and for eating a meal. I leave it to you to determine the connection.)

The two blessings over the Torah are an interesting pair. At heart, the prayer that is said is identical: We praise You, Eternal God, Giver of Torah. In the first blessing we state that God “chose us from the peoples and gave us the Torah.” It is a parochial assertion. To this day, many liberal Jews are uncomfortable with the concept of chosenness. Reconstructionists have even eliminated the expression from the blessing. Yet, the assertion is more descriptive than prescriptive. Just who was it standing at the base of Mt. Sinai? “Chosen People” is indeed a problematic term, but the blessing proclaims an unassailable theo-historical truth. Torah began with the people Israel.

If the first blessing was all that is recited, Jews would have good reason to be troubled. But, we do not stop there. When the passage from the scroll is read, we then praise God “Who has given a truthful instruction that contains within it the spark of eternity.” Nothing parochial here! Before the reading, we proclaim a historic relation between God and the Jews, but after the reading, we acknowledge the eternal relation between God and humankind.

The pair of blessings taken together make two claims: that the Jews are the first recipients of the Torah, and that the content of the Torah is fundamentally true. The former is asserted, as I said, as a matter of history. What about the latter?

We insist on reciting the blessings whenever the Torah is read. Assuming that we are not engaging in empty ritual, a challenge has been laid down: what is so special, enduring, truthful, about the words we read.

7. WHAT IS TRUTH?

We praise You, Eternal God, who gives us a Torah of truth.

After each section ('aliyah) of a synagogue reading of the Torah is finished, one recites this blessing asserting that the Torah is true. The first question that might come to your mind is, how can we say such a thing about a text that claims that the world was created in six days, a serpent could convince a woman to eat some fruit, a plague occurred that only affected Egyptian first-born, and a sea could split in two revealing dry land? These are all good discussion starters, but I have a more basic question: what is truth?

Let me ask this question a differently. We do we mean when we claim something is true (or not true, for that matter)? I would suggest two types of answers. First, we evaluate the veracity of an assertion by means of first-hand knowledge. We know something is true (or false) because we have witnessed it; i.e. we heard it, saw it, read it — experienced it in one way or another. The second path is through stating a logical equivalence. “There are puddles in the street after the rain shower;” or “Leviticus is the third book of the Torah.”

Both paths are not fool-proof. Our perceptions can be wrong; illusionists prove that to us all the time. Or, think about an occasion where you waved to friend you spied at a distance, and then realized it was somebody else. As for logical truth, trust me, logic can sometimes be quite dodgy. In the final analysis, truth is pretty illusive.

Finding truth is rarely easy. It usually takes care, some trial-and-error, patience, and effort. Moreover, when you find it you know it! You say to yourself (and occasionally quite out loud) “Aha, that's right!” Truth is at the end of a process. And at the end of that process is revelation.

When the Torah is read in the synagogue, one recites a blessing before and after the reading. Both blessings assert that the Torah is true. The first one prepares us for a search for that truth. The second one, however, is the revelation. If we attend to the reading correctly, we will indeed find truth; comforting, disturbing, embracing, challenging truth.

Thus, the classic rabbis urged us to “turn it over, and turn it over.” Mull the words and that which is found behind them. There is truth to be found there.