THE SECRET OF THE SCROLL

“At Horev [Mt Sinai] you provoked the Lord, and the Lord was incensed with you to destroy you when I had ascended to the mountaintop to take the tablets of stone, the Tablets of the Covenant that the Lord made with you; I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights; bread I did not eat and water I did not drink. The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone inscribed with the finger of God and on them corresponding to all the words that the Lord spoke with you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. It was at the end of forty days and forty nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the Tablets of the Covenant.” (Devarim 9:8-11)

The medium that God used for the Ten Commandments was stone. This was true for the original set that was smashed by Moshe and for the replacement set. Compare this to the medium that Moshe used when he presented the Torah to the Israelites at the end of his life (Devarim 31:24-25), “It was, as Moshe finished writing the words of this Torah in a book, until their conclusion. Moshe commanded the Levites, bearers of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying: Take this book of the Torah, and place it at the side of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God and it will be there as a witness to you.” Moshe wrote the Torah “in a book” where the word book (sefer) refers to a scroll of parchment. There are many differences between engraving words in stone and writing them on a parchment but the main one is this: in the case of stone, the medium and the script are one and the same. One hews out part of the stone and the letters are formed. The medium and the script are indivisible and if the stone breaks, the letters break. In the case of a parchment, the medium and the script are separate entities. One takes ink and a quill and writes upon the parchment. If the letters are scraped off, the parchment remains intact. Moreover, if the scribe makes a mistake, he can erase the relevant letters and rewrite them. Why were the Ten Commandments presented as engraved stones whereas the Torah was presented as a scroll?

The first reason could be entirely practical. The Torah is meant to be studied. Consequently, it should be accessible and easy-to-use. Stone tablets may be striking and hardy but they are not particularly conducive for regular study. In our times, we associate a Torah scroll with those that remain in the Ark and which are only removed when they are read in public. But this was not always the case. Before the advent of the printing press in 1440, Jewish texts were only available on parchment or papyrus. Jews studied directly from scrolls, whether they were a book of the Bible or a tract of Oral Law, such as the Mishna or Talmud.   The Tablets of the Covenant, however, were never intended to serve as a text for study. They were placed in the Golden Ark in the Tabernacle (see Devarim 10:1-5), and later in the Temple, as a “testament” of the great revelation at Sinai. They were more symbolic in nature. They were a tangible expression of God’s awesome power and the centrality of the Torah in the life of the Jewish people.

The second reason is related to the authorship of the Tablets and the Torah. In both cases God provided the content, but in respect of the Tablets, He Himself inscribed the words of the Decalogue. Not so the Torah – there God dictated the words to Moshe but it was Moshe who wrote them on the scroll. Moshe was a scribe in the ancient sense of the word, that is, he was “a person who served as a professional copyist.” Moshe was the one who took the “ethereal” wisdom of the Torah and made it concrete. He put it into a form that would be legible for the Israelites. There is a fascinating teaching of our Sages (Midrash Tanchuma, Bereishit 1) that before it came into the realm of man, the Torah “was black fire upon white fire.” The Torah predated the creation of the world but at that stage, it was not in a format that a human being could access. Moshe transferred it from fire-on-fire to ink-on-parchment.

The significance of the second reason is as follows: The Tablets are the work of God, they are somewhat beyond the realm of this world. But a Sefer Torah is the work of a man. True, the content cannot be tampered with but the scribe imbues the scroll with his own style. I have seen dozens, maybe hundreds, of Sifrei Torah in my life and they are all unique, even though there are strict laws regarding how the paragraphs must be spaced and how the letters must be formed. This indicates that Hashem wants the Torah to become ours. We are tasked with bringing the Torah from heaven to earth. In our daily prayers, we say, “May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, that the Temple be speedily rebuilt in our days, and grant us our share in Your Torah.”

The third reason has to do with permanence. Stone is very hardy and durable. Archaeologists have found inscriptions on stones going back thousands of years and often these inscriptions are remarkably legible.  Parchments do not fare as well. The Dead Sea Scrolls were an exception because they had been stored in clay pots and kept in a very dry environment. Even then, many of the scrolls were very worn and had to be examined with special equipment that would not damage them further. It would seem that Hashem did not want Sifrei Torah to last indefinitely. He wanted them to wear out and be replaced. Indeed the Sefer HaChinuch (mitzvah #613) offers a similar reason for why one is requited to write a Sefer Torah even if one inherited a perfectly kosher scroll from one’s forebears. He writes that if one did not write (or commission) a new Sefer Torah, there would be fewer scrolls in circulation and therefore less opportunity to study. If scrolls were impervious to wear and tear, as stone tablets are, there would be fewer Sifrei Torah.

One cannot comment on this topic without referencing a moving passage in the Talmud (Avoda Zara 18a) about the martyrdom of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon: “They (the Romans) found Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon, who was sitting and engaging in Torah study and convening assemblies in public, with a Torah scroll placed in his lap. They brought him to be sentenced, and wrapped him in the Torah scroll, and encircled him with bundles of branches, and they set fire to it. And they brought tufts of wool and soaked them in water, and placed them on his heart, so that his soul should not leave his body quickly, but he would die slowly and painfully. His daughter said to him: Father, must I see you like this? He said to her: If I alone were being burned, it would be difficult for me, but now that I am burning along with a Torah scroll, He who will seek retribution for the insult accorded to the Torah scroll will also seek retribution for the insult accorded to me. His students said to him: Our teacher, what do you see? Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon said to them: I see the parchment burning, but its letters are flying to the heavens.” As stated earlier, a scroll and the script upon it are separate entities. They are like the body and the soul that exist together but can be separated. The story of Rabbi Chanina and his Sefer Torah is a powerful lesson about Jewish survival: they may burn our bodies, or destroy our shuls and cast us into exile, but the Torah will survive because it is not a physical thing. It exists independently of the scrolls or books that hold it. As long as the Jewish people survive, the Torah will survive with them. Indeed, it is the soul of the Jewish people.

Lee, Chani Merryl and Naomi join me in wishing you Shabbat Shalom!    

Rabbi Liebenberg

Link to Rabbi’s YouTube message for Shabbat: https://youtu.be/k513m8DkrcA?si=V5qYsfOCvMwZL6AE