It's done because Jews consider that anything with the name of God written on it is holy. Prayer books are meant to be kept on the top shelf, above all the other books, and generally treated with respect. So when they get too tatty to use, they're meant to be buried rather than normal book disposal, which means waiting until the next funeral and putting them in then. Bear in mind that not everyone owns their own prayer books, so synagogues usually have a largeish collection. I do love the idea of being buried with books. It doesn't happen for every funeral, though, just when there's a load of prayerbooks to dispose of at the synagogue, and if your own prayer books are in good shape when you die, they'll probably go to a family member or the synagogue.
When my Jewish community here held its first High Holy Days services a few years ago, we didn't have our own prayer books and didn't want to buy them yet because we were in the process of going independent (we started off as a satellite community for Glasgow Reform) and hadn't yet chosen whether to affiliate to Reform or Liberal. I was ringing my old synagogue to ask about borrowing some choir music, and they turned out to have some spare draft prayer books for the High Holies, which we nabbed and which were dead useful despite being slightly different from the current edition. (Yom Kippur is the day when all the non-synagogue-goers crawl out of the woodwork, you need loads of copies for then.) Inspired by this, I rang around every Reform shul in the UK, uncovering a second cousin in Bournemouth in the process. None of the others had any spare prayer books, and one shul said they'd only just buried a batch. Grrr.
Embalming's something I've only really thought about in the context of Egyptology. Is it that common? Such a strange idea, and as you said really not clever environmentally.
no subject
Date: Sunday, 3 June 2007 04:21 pm (UTC)From:When my Jewish community here held its first High Holy Days services a few years ago, we didn't have our own prayer books and didn't want to buy them yet because we were in the process of going independent (we started off as a satellite community for Glasgow Reform) and hadn't yet chosen whether to affiliate to Reform or Liberal. I was ringing my old synagogue to ask about borrowing some choir music, and they turned out to have some spare draft prayer books for the High Holies, which we nabbed and which were dead useful despite being slightly different from the current edition. (Yom Kippur is the day when all the non-synagogue-goers crawl out of the woodwork, you need loads of copies for then.) Inspired by this, I rang around every Reform shul in the UK, uncovering a second cousin in Bournemouth in the process. None of the others had any spare prayer books, and one shul said they'd only just buried a batch. Grrr.
Embalming's something I've only really thought about in the context of Egyptology. Is it that common? Such a strange idea, and as you said really not clever environmentally.