Reflecting on his years as director of a Chicago bookstore, and on the reverence with which Jews traditionally treat sacred books, Jeff Deutsch writes:
One of my favorite Hebrew blessings is Oseh Ma’aseh Breshit, “that the world is,” [literally, “Who makes the work of Creation”]. One recites it when confronting natural wonders—including what insurers call “acts of god” (hurricanes, earthquakes, lightning)—thanking the God Who forever, continuously creates their creation. That creation was created with a word: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” In Ecclesiastes, Solomon, the son of David, tells us that “of making many books there is no end.” Perhaps this is a lamentation to some—it certainly seems so to Solomon—but to the people of the bookstore, this is a great cause of wonder and delight.
Reverence isn’t a strictly religious concept. Wittgenstein said that “the mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.” One of Heraclitus’s extant fragments reads: “the sun is not only new each day, but forever, continuously new.” Emerson, in “The American Scholar,” wrote that “books are the best influence of the past,” and that “the theory of books is noble.”
I grew up in a tradition that regards texts as sacred. It was forbidden to place a sacred text on the floor, or to place a secular text on top of a sacred text (there was even a proper order in which to pile sacred books). We would kiss the cover of the sacred text after using it—a habit I have retained here and there, after a particularly inspired reading session.
Books have helped me live a better life. Does that make them sacred?
Read more on First Things: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/09/the-people-of-the-bookstore