The Torah of St Filippo?
The whole point of a Genizah is to avoid God's Holy Name being desecrated.In a traditional Jewish context, you will often hear about a stash of Jewish texts that are put into store, and/or waiting for burial called Shemos (to use the Ashkenazi form, usually pronounced Seamus, as in the Irish name).Obviously, in the Cairo Genizah this was expanded to many documents, including secular ones, and even some not in Hebrew characters that were thrown into the hole of the chamber in the Ben Ezra Synagogue, used as the storeroom.That said even in some of the most secular documents, God's Name might be used.The prohibition of erasing the written Name of God is derived from a reading of Deut 12:1-7, the key phrases being - --- - - - - ('and you shall shatter their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their asherim with fire, and cut down the statues of their gods, and destroy their name from that place.You shall not do thus to the Lord your God', Deut.12:3-4).This is very serious, as Qeset ha-Sofer 11:2, a primary halakhic guide for scribes, explains, ... ('everyone who damages one letter from the Names ... transgresses a negative Torah commandment and deserves lashes').I know that no-one is actually around to administer a beating, but the principle still holds, so you do want to get this right.Relating to this, is the instruction to buy any STa"M articles found in the possession of a non-Jew.Commenting on this, Qeset ha-Sofer 1:6 further explains, '' ('and one does not seek from a non-Jew that they should give to him too cheap a price lest he get angry and he sends them [the texts] to a place of destruction' [my emphasis]).This is derived from a practical example concerning Abaye, a 4th-century sage, recorded in b.Gittin 45b, ('an Arab woman brought a sack of tefillin before Abaye.He said to her, "let me have them for a couple of dates for each pair".She became angry, and took the tefillin and threw
Authors
- Marc Michaels
Publication Details
- Journal
- Apollo (University of Cambridge)
- Published
- 2025-06-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.17863/cam.128723
- Primary Topic
- Medieval and Classical Philosophy
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00