On Simchas Torah the minhag Yisroel is that we take all of the sifrei Torah out from the aron kodesh and we dance, we make hakafos. We’re celebrating the completion of another cycle of reading the Torah from beginning to end, and we’re starting now again from Bereishis bara Elokim.
Now, one of the features of this day, an aspect that is not spoken about often enough – is that we are dancing with only one sefer. The sefer Torah, that’s the only book we’re holding. And we do that because we’re emphasizing to ourselves and to our chaveirim that this was the plan of Hakadosh Baruch Hu from the beginning: The Am Yisroel should have only one sefer.
Now we’re accustomed already to seforim, to libraries of books, but the strict Torah law is that even divrei Torah are forbidden to write. Even to write a siddur of tefillah was ossur in the ancient times. The Gemara (Shabbos 115b) tells about a man who made siddurim and was selling them, so the chachomim went after him to prevent it. It was a strict Torah policy – no books except one.
It was only later in our history when the Chachomim saw that the Torah would be forgotten otherwise – there were wars and exiles and persecutions, and the generations became much weaker – so they permitted the writing of divrei Torah. And that’s how the Mishna and the Gemara and all other subsequent seforim came to be in writing. But in the olden days of the Tannaim and all the way back to Har Sinai there could be no such thing. In a Jewish home or even a beis medrash or yeshivah, you wouldn’t find any other book except the sefer Torah, the Tanach. We were a one-book nation.
Apion’s Accusation
Now to understand the very great importance of this principle, we have to go to somebody outside of the Torah world who explains it. That’s Josephus. Josephus lived at the time of Churban Bayis Sheini and he wrote a book called Contra Apion. Contra Apion means ‘Against Apion’. Apion was a Greek anti-Semite, and Josephus was defending the Jewish people against his lies and accusations.
Now Apion, among his accusations, he made a point of stating that the Greeks have a very big literature. “But you Jews, you backwards Jews,” he said, “you don't have any books except the Bible.” In Josephus’s time, at the end of bayis sheini, the old prohibition was in full force. No books! And Apion ridiculed that.
Josephus’s Defense
But Josephus responded to that: “That’s no accusation!” he said. “That's our salvation! Among us there’s only one book that’s permitted to be written. We have a Torah from Har Sinai and only a prophet, al pi Hashem, is allowed to write anything else. Nobody is privileged to take their own thoughts and put pen to paper, or feather to scroll.
And he explains what a very big difference that made. Pay attention to the very important contrast Josephus made. The Am Yisroel, he said, have just one set of ideals for the entire nation. Even if it occurs to somebody to be mechadesh something, he could say it, he could tell his friends or his family maybe, but to put it down in writing, to give it that gushpanka, the seal of the written word, was absolutely forbidden. It’s only the dvar Hashem that was in writing.
But among the Greeks, Josephus said, anybody who wishes can write. That’s the policy of the nations of the world; literature is open to anybody who could scribble. If you have the knack for writing – and even if you don’t – go ahead. Every Tom, Dick and Yenta writes a book. And so what do the books express? All the foolishness that enters their minds.
Now if the writers would have just kept their ideas in their own minds, that would be one thing; they would have misguided degraded minds. But the problem is the rest of the world, the readers. By verbalizing, by writing, they're doing a very great harm to humanity.
The writers, the Greeks and those who followed in their footsteps, created a literature that harmed the intellect of mankind. The truth is that even their own philosophers say so. Plato, in one of his works, declares that the writers and the poets and the playwrights have corrupted the people. Every kind of mischievous idea was put into books and thereby into the minds of the people.
Police Brutality
Now, we could give here hundreds of examples, thousands, because the printing presses are operating twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. ֵה אֵין קֵ ץ עֲ שׂוֹת סְ פָרִ ים הַרְ ב – There’s no end to the mischievous ideas that are put into print,ָשָׂ רֵה יְגִעַת בּוְלַהַג הַרְ ב – and the business with reading every person’s foolishness is wearying to mankind (Koheles 12:12). It’s the ruination of man.
I once spoke here about the book, Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. You never read it? You’re lucky. Unfortunately, I did. Now that book doesn’t have in it immorality so you’ll say “what’s so bad?” But it’s very bad because it’s a book full of fabrications, misconceptions, and in that sense it’s a wicked book too.
Hugo, after all, wanted to write a book with some punch to it. To write merely about the humdrum daily events of life, that’s not interesting enough. So he had to concoct a tale of somebody who suffered very great injustice over a long time. How a person in Paris was suffering the most abject poverty and finally he went into crime – you understand already; it wasn’t his fault he became a criminal, it was society’s fault. And finally he was arrested and he suffered in prison; ay yah yay, the poor criminals suffering in prison.
And of course when he came out, a whole story about how he wanted to avenge himself on society. Oh, but of course! It’s only fair that a criminal who was locked up should avenge himself on those who had to lock him up.
The whole story is a depiction of things that are actually not so, about the pitiful wretched lives of the poor and how they’re persecuted by the wicked police. It’s a style of writing, to magnify the small unhappy things that take place during life, to make the world seem more black, more miserable than it actually is. So all the ‘cultured’’ people who read Les Miserables become miserable and confused.
Dickens, Marx and False Reformers
The same is Dickens' books and all the great reformers, the liars, who wanted to fight against social injustice. They always depict society not as it actually is. Lies, exaggerations, magnified problems, and of course fabricated and untenable solutions.
And so Karl Marx, that great rasha, because he was able to write books, he ‘mis’educated all the youth with lies, with ideas built on false premises. He taught people to admire only the proletariat, the workers, and to hate self-employed people. The capitalists who had shops and businesses of their own, anybody who was intelligent or active enough to set up his own business, was decried as an exploiter of the poor workmen.
And so his writings, especially the Communist Manifesto, created a tremendous falsehood, a cloud of lies, and it encouraged the Anarchists and the Socialists and the Bolsheviks and the Communists to rise up and overthrow the established governments.
Now the rabbanim warned! They said to the youth, “Forget about the ideas you’re reading about. Turn back to the Torah! Don’t organize a revolt against the Czar! What’s going to happen subsequently will be worse!” But the Jewish youth were misled by the false literature; they forgot that the foundation of our nation is one book. And so they read the Communist Manifesto and they read themselves straight into disaster. The last chapter of the book of real life wasn’t how Marx described it in his book. Nobody is happy in the Communist lands. Millions and millions are dead. Millions of people suffered and are still suffering because of dumbbells who wrote poisonous books.
Wasted Forests
Now, we could talk much more about the literature of the gentiles because it doesn’t end; every day trees are being chopped down to keep the printing presses going, to supply paper for books. Today especially there’s a new branch of literature corrupting the world. One of the mainstays of modern literature, which requires entire forests to keep it going, is romance.
Now when you look for the subject of romantic love in ancient literature you won't find it. It didn’t exist because the whole thing doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing, It’s a dream, a fantasy. It’s א נִבְרָ א א הָיָה וְל ל. Romantic love as portrayed in the books is something that doesn’t exist in real life.
True Love and True Literature
Of course there’s such a thing as married love but it’s something that has to be fostered – it’s like a plant. You have to water it with a lot of patience, a lot of kindliness, one to the other – and yiras Shamayim helps a lot too – and as years pass by, it grows into a true plant, a true tree that has peiros, they give forth produce.
Our Book says וְ דָ בַ ק בְ אִ שׁ ְ תוֹ – a man must be loyal to his wife (Bereishis 2:24). Our Book says וַ יֶאֱ הָ בֶ הָ וַ תְ הִ י לוֹ לְ אִ שָּה – And Rivkah became his wife and then, after he was married, he loved her (Bereishis 24:67). But it’s an entirely different thing from romantic love!
And so the world is being corrupted from every corner. The libraries and the newspapers and magazines are teaching the world about every type of falsehood. Romance, adventure, entertainment, psychology, pity on criminals, false history, immorality, all types of corrupt ideals. And so the world, as it becomes filled with more books, it’s filled with more filth. The stench grows and grows.
But we, the Am Yisroel, we are the stubborn ones. We have only one Book and from there comes everything, all of our attitudes. And on Simchas Torah, that’s an integral part of our happiness. We’re jumping up and down with our sefer Torah! This is our book! But not only that it’s ‘ours’ – it’s the only one as far as we’re concerned! We have only one great Book and this Book speaks about things that are worth talking about and it vocalizes the greatest aspirations of mankind.
