CORR 114-117

POSUL TORAH IN THE ARK

QUESTION:

A Torah scroll had been in a fire and was declared by a scribe (sopher) to be posul and beyond repair. The scroll has sentimental and historical significance to the congregation. May it be kept in the Ark with the useable Sepher Torahs? (Question by Rabbi Samuel Weingart, Champaign, Illinois)

ANSWER:

THERE IS A GREAT DEAL of material in the Law with regard to the status and the disposal of a posul Sepher Torah. Some of the statements in the law seem at first glance to contradict other statements and, therefore, the legal situation of the posul Torah needs to be analyzed.

The Talmud in Ketuboth 19b (in Rashi) says that Sepher Torahs and other books that are unfit may not be kept. This appears as a fixed law in the Shulchan Aruch, 279:1, which says that every Sepher Torah must be proofread (mugah) every thirty days. It must either be corrected if erroneous or put away (yigonez). And the question is, what does “put away” mean? It is, of course, an established custom that a Sepher Torah that is posul is buried in an earthen jar in the grave of a scholar (Orah Hayyim 154:5). This seems clear enough. So on the face of these laws, all unfit Sepher Torahs should not be kept in the Ark but should be buried.

Yet actually this is not the law because of variations in the definition of the word “posul, ” “unfit.” For example, a Torah may be unfit for reading, yet can easily be repaired. If when it was being read, the Reader found an error, another Torah is taken out, and this posul one is put back into the Ark. Or the Torah may be unrepairable and yet one of its five books is in perfect shape and, therefore, retains its holiness (cf. Isserles to Orah Hayyim 143:4). As a matter of fact, a Sepher Torah is considered holy if even less than that is still good. So Rashi to Sabbath 1 15b indicates that if there are eighty-five consecutive letters, it is holy. So there is still holiness to a posul Sepher Torah. If that is the case, there are strong objections to burying and thus destroying a sacred book with God’s name in it.

Thus it has happened that the custom arose to keep the posul Sepher Torahs in the Ark. The first justifi cation was from the Talmud in Baba Basra 14b, namely, that in the ancient Ark of the Tabernacle and the Temple there were not only the two tablets of stone, but also the broken fragments of the tablets that Moses smashed. Sepher Chassidim (perhaps the earliest source on this matter) in section 934 (Margolis edition) says that the custom is on that basis of the broken tablets to keep posul Sepher Torahs in the ark. But the passage in Sepher Chassidim seems to indicate that separate sheets (yeriot) were buried.

Upon this basis a continued chain of authorities permit keeping the posul Sepher Torah in the Ark. The classic authority, Ezekiel Landau, in his Nodeh b. Yehudah, Vol. I, Orah Hayyim 9, says that there is no objection on the ground of holiness of the Ark to keeping a posul Sepher Torah in it. But he is inclined not to permit it for a practical reason: The people might forget and take that Torah out to read in the service. This objection, however, is put aside by Elazar Spiro (the Hungarian Chassidic authority, “Der Muncaczer”). In his Minchas Elazar, Vol. III, #52, he agrees with Landau that the posul Torah may be kept in the Ark but he brushes aside the danger of the Torah being taken out by mistake by saying that the wrapper tied around the Torah can indicate which is which. So, also, the great German authority, Jacob Ettlinger, in his Binyan Zion, 1:97, likewise permits. In fact, the Mogen Avraham to Orah Hayyim 154:8 simply says that it is the custom to put posul Sepher Torahs in the Ark.

Some useful references on this matter are to be found in the footnotes of Margolis to the Sepher Chassidim, passage mentioned above, and a full treatment of the subject is provided by Gedaliah Felder in his fine handbook Yesodeh Jeshurun, 11:142 ff.

In general it may be said that it is a well-established custom based on a continuous permissive line in the law that posul Sepher Torahs may be kept in the Ark.