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CASE STUDY TWO: THE HOLOCAUST TORAH C H A P T E R 7 M N early every faith has standard rituals of purification or reconsecration that restore holiness to sacred objects that have been desecrated or compromised. In Judaism, there is a ritual practice for holy books that contain the name of God but can no longer be used because they are damaged. These traditionally have been stored in a repository called a genizah. When an object such as a Torah scroll cannot be repaired and made “kosher,” so to speak, it will be accorded a burial. But in the case of the Holocaust, the desecration of Torah scrolls was so extreme and atrocious that familiar methods of restoring holiness were insufficient. “Rescuing” or “Adopting” a Torah Scroll In response, a new practice has slowly emerged: “rescuing” or “adopting ” Torah scrolls that were pillaged from communities annihilated in the Holocaust, and giving them a place of honor in living congre- gations. This memorial ritual—often initiated by an individual member of an American synagogue—points to the possibility that order and dignity can be restored to such Torahs. It honors, as well, those who perished in the Holocaust and memorializes those towns where Jewish life once flourished. Because many of these scrolls are beyond repair, with parchment torn and letters effaced, they cannot be read from in a synagogue . Through the new ritual of rescue and rededication, they receive a distinctive holy status as they become designated “Holocaust Torahs.” Each synagogue that acquires one of these Torahs becomes—by virtue of housing this inanimate yet highly personal relic—a small scale and distinctly local Holocaust memorial, recalling the destruction of European Jewry and affirming the intention to remember. Most new rituals and ritual objects raise concerns, and the Holocaust Torah is no exception. It is a sacred cultural object that is decontextualized —taken out of its natural environment—and is put to a different use from the one originally intended for it. Many will be familiar with the dilemma of the decontextualized object in the case of sacred African or Native American objects taken from their communities and placed in art or cultural museums where they serve new functions and acquire new meanings. Holocaust scholar Oren Baruch Stier writes that displacing an object linked to the Holocaust raises distinct ethical issues “… about the meaning of property and its propriety , the treatment of sacred objects, fetishization … mystification, and mythologization.”1 As we shall see, those who wrestle with the very idea of the Holocaust Torah ask if the desire to remember those who perished in the Holocaust through various memorializing activities (such as creating museums, monuments, and artworks), however praiseworthy such initiatives might be, justifies turning material objects—such as defaced Torah scrolls, yellow stars, or Holocaust-era railway cars—into symbols that are exhibited so that they may serve as testimonies. Does the desire for effective Holocaust education justify depriving a Torah scroll of a traditional burial so that it might become the memorial shrine we need? If we cannot keep the survivors among us alive so we can keep hearing their stories, does that permit us to enshrine a rescued Torah scroll within a lively synagogue, with the hope that its presence alone will be sufficiently eloquent to tell the story of the Holocaust for generations to come? 188 INVENTING JEWISH RITUAL Rescuing Jewish Sacred Objects When the violent forces of nature or inhumanity destroy or uproot a sacred object from the place in which it belongs, some interpret this as a sign of God’s absence. Jewish books scorched in a fire, synagogues defaced or shattered by bombings, lead some to ask, “Where is God now?” But when sacred objects are rescued and restored and are returned to use once again, they can point toward divine presence and the survival of faith. Hearing the story of Torah scrolls being rescued can restore hope and strengthen faith. We will go on, some will conclude. We can move on from here and be sustained , just as we have been sustained in the past. The rescued sacred object—even if compromised beyond repair—becomes doubly sacred. It has become a repository of the community’s memory, telling a story of trials and endurance.2 A recent example of the function of the rescued sacred object as a repository of memory and faith was made poignantly clear in the days after Hurricane Katrina, when Jews from across the United States and...

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