Jews looking to get in the mood for Shabbat services this week found help in an unlikely place on Friday: the front page of The Wall Street Journal, which featured an article on every synagogue-goer’s greatest fear: dropping the Torah scroll during hagbah, the Torah-lifting ritual.
But some of the paper’s more religious readers may have spent Friday worrying about another problem.
The story ran with a photo of a Torah scroll open to the Ten Commandments in the Book of Exodus, and if you look closely at the blurry text, you can make out God’s name.
Throwing God’s name in the trash is a no-no, so does that mean religious Jews must keep Friday’s WSJ forever, bury it, or place it in a genizah?
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The most incredible part of this story is that they found two Rabbis who agreed on something.
In fairness, lots of Christians feel pretty righteous about spending their time cooking up stuff like this.
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