Have you ever wondered what to do with your child’s consecration Torah from thirty years ago? It is too sacred to throw away. Do you question what to do with your broken Judaica or the tattered tefillin and torn prayer books you inherited from your grandparent? We have an answer. Bring your worn-out Judaic items to Temple Beth El and ask to put them in our geniza.
What is a geniza? Our rabbis teach that we cannot destroy anything with God’s name on it so we store our worn-out items in a temporary storage place called a geniza until we can take them out to the Hebrew Cemetery to give them a proper burial. That is what we did this past Sunday as part of Mitzvah Day.
Most of the time I spend at the Hebrew Cemetery is filled with sorrow – at funerals, unveilings, and community memorial services. But this past Sunday, my time at the Cemetery was uplifting and fun. With a great mix of elementary school-aged kids, families, singles, couples and conversion students, we buried sacred texts and objects from our community. While we covered with earth the words of the sacred texts, we committed to living the values they taught in much the same way that at a funeral we commit to trying to keep alive the values of those we love who have died. We taught the kids the proper way to shovel earth for a burial and together we filled in the plot.
On Mitzvah Day, as we cleaned gravestones, we honored the people who built up our Charlotte community. As we buried sacred texts, we honored the books from which our community once learned. As we laughed and listened to each other’s stories and lives, we strengthened our relationships as most of us engaged in a brand new mitzvah of burying the items in our community’s geniza. We unearthed an ancient Jewish ritual of having a geniza and found deep meaning and beauty in it for today. We linked ourselves to generations of Jews who honor holy texts and objects even when they no longer can serve us.
