Roll It Forward

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History is filled with monuments to victory, tall and large, marble and granite, friezes flat to their walls and grand statues of men on horseback with the infinite sky as their backdrop, all built to make permanent the memory of strength and force, of destroying an enemy, all these monuments to triumph and victory…

And when in Rome, and I’ve been to Rome, one cannot avoid the display of strength and military prestige that long ago was once ancient Rome, in the carefully preserved relics monuments and buildings, those treasured ruins we tourists visit as a rite the Roman Holiday.  The forum, built in 500 bce, the pantheon built in 25 bce and of course the coliseum built in 70, of they all held interest for me, but there was one site I will remember always: The Victory Arch of Titus built to celebrate the burning and pillage of Jewish Jerusalem and the destruction of her temple and its holy of holies also in the year 70 of our common era, 1950 years ago.

There carved into the arch in meticulous relief, sculpted into the walls of the Arch, there on the shoulders of Roman soldiers, in teams that looked like moving men, Jerusalem’s most sacred treasures of the are hauled off to Rome, the Menorah, our seven branch golden candelabrum, an array of golden trumpets and temple furniture, ritual objects, oh, and one last thing, also pillaged from the temple, our Torah scroll, all those years ago, the Torah scroll pillaged from the Temple was nearly identical to the scrolls we read from today, just like TRT’s Torah scrolls and likely also stolen away for the ages, the Ark of the Covenant containing the two tablets, as tradition has it, inscribed by God’s hand.  And whether written by the hand of God or the hands of people, the words of the Torah were the singular literary focal point of Jewish life.

Then I saw something that seemed out of place, something scratched into the wall, it looked like someone quickly etched it in with a penknife, it was recent and new, it was fresh graffiti …I looked closely, and there, in coarse Hebrew block letters, someone carved into that Roman Victory Arch, in block Hebrew letters: The People of Israel Are Still Here, in Hebrew, Am Yisrael Chai, We Are Still Here…The People of Israel Lives…and now these two thousand years later, the Roman Empire is no more, Titus and his arch are part of a museum display…and We are still here…Am Yisrael Chai…We are still here…

I’ve been thinking a lot about that Torah taken out of the Temple those 2000 years ago, that Torah hauled off to Rome from Jerusalem as plunder, as proof of victory and subjugation of rebellious Jews…

And I think of our Torah scrolls, of TRT’s Torah scrolls, of the TRT’s three scrolls…the first of the three originated in Iraq and was written by no fewer than 16 separate scribes, all with different calligraphic styles and the second of the three is being read today in London, that Torah was passed forward to you by one congregation and you have passed the scroll forward on an amazing journey, as a first starter Torah, from one congregation to the next to the next.   And the third scroll, the one we will read from tomorrow morning, you wrote yourselves…

Not only do all three scrolls tell the stories they hold within, the stories of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and Miriam, written on their parchment leaves, not only do they tell the stories of how they came to be a part of TRT’s story, they also tell another story of how the Torah came to be at all, it’s 304,805 letters and it’s 79,447 words.

The Torah makes up the first 5 books of the Hebrew Bible’s 24 books, all 24 of those books taken together is what Christian’s call the Old Testament.  We know, for a fact, that the Hebrew Bible we read today is largely the same Bible that the Jews were reading when the Temple was destroyed in the year 70, about 2000 years ago.

How do we know?  We know because of 950 tightly wound parchments that are roughly 2300 years old, they were discovered in 11 dry caves on the Northwestern shore of the Dead sea…written on both papyrus and parchment they are known as The Dead Sea Scrolls beginning in 1947the Dead Sea Scrolls…since their discovery in beginning in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have changed the very way we Jews see ourselves.  The Dead Sea Scrolls confirm without question, that the Hebrew Bible, that the Torah that the Romans hauled out of the Temple the year 70 is nearly identical to the Torah we will read from Tomorrow morning.  Each Torah scroll tells the stories written on its parchment, but tells its own story, a personal story as well.

Temple Rodeph Torah’s very first Torah came with the help of Rabbi Danny Freelander who told our Rabbi Emeritus, Rabbi Don Weber that Temple Beth Am of Middletown NY was sadly closing and that their Torah needed a home.  Before that Torah moved to Mohawk Drive, that Torah lived in Rabbi Weber’s home when both his children and TRT were much younger.  Eventually TRT had three scrolls and with Rabbi Weber, you sent this first Torah on a journey, passing the scroll forward as a starter Torah for young and small congregations without a scroll, from Marlboro to Kehilat Gesher in Paris, and then to Congregation Shir HaTzafon in Copenhagen and now the Crouch End Chavurah in London.  All of this courtesy of Ellen Finkelstein’s efforts to write it down as a beautifully written narrative and Rabbi Weber’s conviction to roll the scroll forward from synagogue to synagogue.

And by rolling the Torah forward, you and Rabbi Weber joined in our Jewish drive not only to learn and to study and to read and to read aloud…but to make sure the Torah is living in us, breathing through us and cherished by us.  But we come by that drive very naturally indeed…

About 100 years after the destruction of the Temple, a six volume anthology of Jewish practice and lore emerge, known as the Mishna, and three centuries after that, in the 5th century, that great encyclopedia of Jewish living and practice and civilization, the Talmud emerges…and fully five hundred years after that, a Jewish scribe schooled in the same calligraphic arts as the scribes of the Dead Sea scrolls transcribes the entire Bible, but now with vowels and annotations to give the reader access.  We have this Bible and you can see this Bible.

This is the oldest very nearly complete Hebrew Bible in the world and it also has a story of its own to tell.  It is known as the Aleppo Codex, Codex means ancient manuscript from the Latin word for the trunk of a tree…Aleppo because it lived in in the Syria in the Central synagogue of Aleppo for five centuries, one book in one synagogue for five centuries…it lived there until anti Jewish riots there in 1947.  The Aleppo Codex was transcribed thirteen-hundred years after the oldest of the Dead Sea scrolls were transcribed and was written in Israel’s north, in a city called Tiberias. 

The Aleppo Codex comes to us from the 10th century, around the year 1000, and anyone who can read Hebrew can read the Aleppo Codex, you would recognize all the vowels, all the letters and all the cantillation signs, it’s journey from Tiberias, to Jerusalem then to Egypt where Maimonides himself used the very text to write his commentaries and then to Aleppo Syria, where it nearly burned along with the synagogue that housed it for generations, it now lives in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The journey of the Aleppo Codex, that 1000 year old Biblical text that went from home to home to home, reads like an Indiana Jones story, complete with shady characters and some secret smuggling and lots of danger, and two or three of 26 folios that are still missing and shrouded in mystery. 

Now, the original Dead Sea Scrolls and the original Aleppo Codex sit side by side in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in what is known as the Shrine of the Book.  We Jews keep our texts alive and healthy…to be studied and read and cherished and we come by this naturally…

Soon after coming to TRT, in the midst of this COVID time, not only did our building come down with a bad case of mold, so did one of our Torah scrolls.  Our congregation’s president Tmima Grinvald and I immediately made taking care of our Torah scroll our number one priority.  We had it evaluated and treated by an expert in Jewish scribal arts, known as a Sofer, our Sofer, Neal Yerman had some years ago done some repair on our Torah so the two were already acquainted, he created an airtight tent and let the Torah and its garments sit in a cloud of the very pungent antimicrobial gas of tea tree oil – and then to get scrubbed down so the dead mold could be removed.

Then, with quill and ink he repaired damaged parts of the text.  The quill and ink were virtually the same quill and ink used two thousand three hundred years ago to write those oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a thousand years ago to write the Aleppo Codex…and it didn’t start there.

Our Hebrew language got its start in a sea of ancient languages and cultures in the fertile crescent, Northern Africa and beyond, Sumerian, Egyptian Babylonian, Hurrian, Assyrian, Canaanite Hittite, Aramean, and Ugaritic just to name a few…all have their own origins, their distinct languages and cultures in a sea of religious beliefs, all influenced and borrowed from one another, some were good neighbors, others oppressors and aggressors, some were settled, others were nomads, some were farmers others hunters, all had their own creation stories and songs and poems and currencies…and understanding the Torah also means understanding the soil from which it grew…it is a tree of life to those who hold fast to her and her soil, the soil of the tree is so very rich…and goes back well over two thousand five hundred years ago…

I think of all of those ancient cultures and people, and how they are, each and every one of them, gone for the ages, and I wonder what distinguishes us, how is it that we are still here?  Ancient Egypt came and went, Rome has come and gone but the People of Israel, How is it that we are still here.

Is it because we found a way to bring the rituals of the Temple in Jerusalem which knew destruction twice, into our homes, because we turned our dinner tables into our Shabbat tables, because our tables became a small and sacred altar to praise God?

Is it because we insisted that our people learn this book, read this book, read it out loud to others, is it because we insisted on literacy, because we said that to and for and with our God, study is a Sacred act, because we said that to God, learning is a sacred act, that with learning comes growth, because with learning we become better and more moral and more ethical, because with learning we reach for something better within, something sacred?  That education is Sacred and teaching a sacred act?

Is it because when we study we learn together about a God who wants us to be ethical in the way we treat the vulnerable?  Because we insisted that God wants us to be ethical in the way we treat the widow and the orphan and the hungry and the stranger?  Because we see these as ways to get closer to God?  Because we remember that we were slaves and ours is a God that yells aloud that human liberation is sacred and human oppression is a sin against that Sacred and that we are created to reach and to aspire.  You shall be a kingdom of priests, you shall be a holy people and holy means to reach to stretch to become a higher self?  Holiness is not conferred, it is earned…every day, every hour, holiness is earned by how we are in the world…

Each place we lived and the stories and languages of those we lived around became a part of our Jewish story: from Egypt we learn the lessons of freedom, from Assyria and Greece we learn Chanukah the power of dedication, and from Rome we learn the ultimate fate of oppressors…our story of course goes on through North Africa and Europe, from the Far East, through Western Europe and to America and to the State of Israel, Our People have lived and thrived, suffered and flourished virtually everywhere…not because we are innately exceptional, but because of what is sacred to us.  Our most Sacred covenant, that God wants us to stretch higher and beyond where we can even imagine ourselves to stretch and reach and because we are duty bound to pass this Torah, this very Torah forward, to write a scroll and pass it into young hands, that is what makes for our covenant.

A Jewish folktale, a Midrash, teaches that God put two Torahs into Moses’ hands, the first one was completely written, just like us, Moses knew exactly what to do with that scroll, study it, learn it, pass it forward.

But the second scroll was blank, it was empty.  And Moses asked, what am I to do with this scroll?  And God answered, the future, your future is in your hands.