Synagogue's old books get decent burial

Rabbi Fabian Werbin climbed into an open grave to bury some of Beth Israel Synagogue’s past.

His head barely rose above ground level as a congregant handed him books from above. Werbin kissed the top volume, then gently set the stack down. He repeated the act many times, as he prepared more than 200 sacred texts to be covered with dirt and buried forever.

“We Jews do not throw books away in a trash can,” Werbin had explained earlier to a crowd of 20 synagogue members who had gathered on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon at the Beth Israel Cemetery on Orange Avenue.

In fact, the book burial is a Jewish tradition that spans millennia. According to the Talmud, which spells out rabbinical law, Jews are instructed not to throw away any document that mentions the name of God. Damaged or older religious texts, regardless of whether they are ancient scrolls or simply photocopies of Jewish services, are saved and stored until they can be given a proper burial. The traditional name for such a storage space is a genizah. In Beth Israel’s case, the genizah was a bunch of cardboard boxes tucked away in the synagogue’s basement.

Many of the discarded books were 40-year-old copies of the mazhor, the prayer books used during the High Holy Days from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur. When the synagogue received new mazhors this year, the old books were stashed away, along with other damaged or old books.

Sunday’s burial ceremony was held in the midst of High Holy Days, which began at sundown on Wednesday with Rosh Hashanah. The timing was appropriate, because many Jews visit cemeteries between the two holidays to honor the deceased and to ask for blessings.

“It is a special meaning to this season,” Werbin said of Sunday’s ceremony. “We are happy to have new books, but we need to have respect for the old books.”

Before the burial, the service had the look of a used-book giveaway, as Beth Israel members picked over the discarded volumes and were allowed to take any old books they wanted.

About 25 boxes, which were hauled to the cemetery in the back of a GMC Sierra pickup truck, were filled with prayer books, scrolls, religious stories for children, encyclopedias and other texts.

Simon Glaser of Roanoke picked out a Hebrew-English dictionary for his personal collection.

“It’s beautifully bound and I didn’t have one,” Glaser said.

The Jewish cemetery is more than 100 years old, according to Steven Solomon, chairman of Beth Israel’s cemetery committee. Roanoke’s earliest Jewish families established the burial ground as the Orthodox Emanuel Cemetery in the railroad town’s boom years, when immigrants flooded the valley to work and start their own businesses. The cemetery’s location about 3 miles from the heart of the city was probably no accident, Solomon said.

“It is very telling that the founding fathers chose to locate the cemetery a long way from the haters,” Solomon said, adding that the secluded site, which is hidden from the streets by a vine-covered stone wall, is still “prone to acts of vandalism.” The cemetery is also used by Roanoke’s Reform Jewish congregation, Temple Emanuel.

A noisy stream of automobile traffic poured down Orange Avenue when the service began shortly after noon. The Argentinian-born Werbin read in Hebrew and English, and synagogue members read passages from Deuteronomy, Genesis and other texts that comprise the Torah.

Men wore yarmulkes and women shaded their heads from the sun with paper copies of the service, as Werbin climbed down a stepladder and began placing books in the grave. After all the books had been placed, Werbin began shoveling dirt onto them. Other members took their turns shoveling.

People also tossed in their paper copies of the service, which included the passage: “We commit the boxes to the earth to enrich the soil, in which we grow trees from which we create more books!”

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