Writers have speculated for decades about the possibility that computers in their various forms will one day replace physical books. So far, this doesn’t seem to be happening, which is comforting to someone like me who stubbornly refuses to use a Kindle or similar apparatus. I’m also comforted by the thought that, even if books do go the way of the typewriter and the rotary phone, observant Jews will preserve them as the only way to read and study on Shabbat.
With recent technological advances in mind, Daniel Bonner considers the centuries-long Jewish love affair with the book, beginning with the words of Deuteronomy 31:19.
“Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be My witness against the people of Israel.” The rabbis of the Talmud interpret this verse as a literal obligation on every Jew to write a Torah scroll. If unable to write one, a person should buy one, or alternatively participate in its writing in some way, including by writing a single letter.
Commentators over the generations developed this precept, extending it beyond the creation and purchase of Torah scrolls to the purchasing of any Jewish books. Other texts bear this out, including the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot (1:6): “Joshua ben Perahiah used to say: Appoint for thyself a teacher, and acquire for thyself a friend, and judge all men with the scale weighted in his favor.” Predating Thomas Carlyle’s “My books are my friends that never fail me” by at least seven centuries, Rashi, the 11th-century commentator, interprets this rabbinic adage this way: “‘Acquire for yourself a friend.’ You could read this as books, or you could read this as literally ‘friend.’”
One detects in Rashi’s comment a preference for the figurative interpretation in this case, and it might very well have been the inspiration for the following statement written a century later by Rabbi Judah ibn Tibbon in an ethical will to his son Samuel: “My son! Make your books your companions.”
