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Friday was decidedly interesting. There was a Torah on the Lower East Side which needed to get to Virginia via Mount Vernon, and my job Friday morning was to take it from the LES to MV. On public transport. So there's me with a Torah wrapped in black plastic bags, tootling along the road towards the subway, and I'm passing the pickle shop. Will loves pickles, I love Will. I figure the Torah can probably deal with standing in line for a few minutes in the interests of pickles, if I don't put it down anywhere degrading.
Me, the Torah, and the pickles make it to the subway, and once on the train, a chap sits down next to me and says conversationally "Well, it's not every day you see a sefer Torah on the subway."*
We chatted for a bit about where it was from, and where it was going, and such. At 42nd St, he was getting off, and kissed the Torah as he left. This completely threw me - it's an absolutely commonplace action in shul, but somehow seemed so entirely incongruous on the subway.
In shul, kissing the Torah usually freaks me a bit. If it was a statue instead of a sefer, it would be obviously horrid and Not Jewish, but since it's a sefer, that apparently makes it okay, even though the object itself was created by people, and even though the sefer itself is clearly the object of veneration rather than the contents. People jockey for position to kiss the sefer, and then talk loudly all through the reading, raising the suspicion that the kissing is more a display of mob-inspired piety than anything.** But on the subway, completely out of a ritual context, it was unexpected, and without all the pageantry it was much easier to see this chap's kissing my Torah as an expression of respect for the aspects of Judaism to which we aspire. No-one was going to see him being pious, and there was no crowd for him to follow, and no pretty adornments - only the garbage bags - just a Torah on the subway, and in kissing it before leaving, he was taking some of it with him.
Later in the day, a colleague (experienced, more so than me) was trimming its edges, which involves a knife and a long ruler, which has to be held completely still because otherwise you slice all over the place. I usually hold the ruler with my free hand, or get someone to hold it down for me. But this chap held it down by sitting on it.
Now, a Torah in the workshop gets slightly more roughly handled than a Torah on the bimah - like if you need to turn it upside down, you turn it upside down, and if you need to take sandpaper to it, that's what you do - but I thought that was a bit much. Can spreading one's arse over an open Torah ever be necessary? Colleague must have seen my expression of "You have your arse on the Torah," because he explained that this was the most effective way of repairing the sefer, and he figured God would want the best treatment available for his Torahs.
I suppose this is another way of expressing one's respect for the sefer and all it conveys, but I think I prefer the kissing, and you never thought you'd hear me say that, did you?
* further proof, if proof were needed, that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
baraita is right - nothing like schlepping a Torah for getting complete strangers to talk to you.
** If you're one of those to whom this does not apply, don't worry, I know you exist.
Me, the Torah, and the pickles make it to the subway, and once on the train, a chap sits down next to me and says conversationally "Well, it's not every day you see a sefer Torah on the subway."*
We chatted for a bit about where it was from, and where it was going, and such. At 42nd St, he was getting off, and kissed the Torah as he left. This completely threw me - it's an absolutely commonplace action in shul, but somehow seemed so entirely incongruous on the subway.
In shul, kissing the Torah usually freaks me a bit. If it was a statue instead of a sefer, it would be obviously horrid and Not Jewish, but since it's a sefer, that apparently makes it okay, even though the object itself was created by people, and even though the sefer itself is clearly the object of veneration rather than the contents. People jockey for position to kiss the sefer, and then talk loudly all through the reading, raising the suspicion that the kissing is more a display of mob-inspired piety than anything.** But on the subway, completely out of a ritual context, it was unexpected, and without all the pageantry it was much easier to see this chap's kissing my Torah as an expression of respect for the aspects of Judaism to which we aspire. No-one was going to see him being pious, and there was no crowd for him to follow, and no pretty adornments - only the garbage bags - just a Torah on the subway, and in kissing it before leaving, he was taking some of it with him.
Later in the day, a colleague (experienced, more so than me) was trimming its edges, which involves a knife and a long ruler, which has to be held completely still because otherwise you slice all over the place. I usually hold the ruler with my free hand, or get someone to hold it down for me. But this chap held it down by sitting on it.
Now, a Torah in the workshop gets slightly more roughly handled than a Torah on the bimah - like if you need to turn it upside down, you turn it upside down, and if you need to take sandpaper to it, that's what you do - but I thought that was a bit much. Can spreading one's arse over an open Torah ever be necessary? Colleague must have seen my expression of "You have your arse on the Torah," because he explained that this was the most effective way of repairing the sefer, and he figured God would want the best treatment available for his Torahs.
I suppose this is another way of expressing one's respect for the sefer and all it conveys, but I think I prefer the kissing, and you never thought you'd hear me say that, did you?
* further proof, if proof were needed, that
baraita is right - nothing like schlepping a Torah for getting complete strangers to talk to you.** If you're one of those to whom this does not apply, don't worry, I know you exist.
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