When you walk into a house of worship, you might reasonably
expect to find at the front and center of the sanctuary the symbols and
iconography that that particular faith tradition holds most precious.
When you walk into a synagogue, you do, indeed, find at the
center the symbol that the Jewish people holds most dear: the Torah. It’s not a
picture of Abraham and Sarah, or a picture of Moses, Miriam, and Aaron. What
the Jewish people holds most dear is not the image of these great figures of our mythic past, but rather the book that tells their story.
When you look at picture, all you see is the person in the
picture. But when you look in a book, it’s possible to see not only the
characters therein, but also to see yourself.
And this is why the Jewish people holds the Torah most dear:
not because we can find our mythic forebears in it, but because we can find
ourselves in it.
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