According to traditional Jewish law, decommissioned Torah scrolls are to be either buried in a Jewish cemetery or stored in perpetuity in a genizah, a dedicated synagogue space for out-of-use ritual objects. Damaged scrolls can also be restored and rededicated for ritual use, while those that survived the Nazi era are permitted to be displayed in exhibits dedicated to documenting the Holocaust, as they are, for example, at the Holocaust Museum a few blocks away.
The Torah scrolls at Museum of the Bible are not part of a Holocaust exhibit. Moreover, somewhat strangely, the language used at the museum suggests that they are being rescued not from deterioration, but from their traditional Jewish rites. A placard in the museum accompanying one scroll describes it as having been “saved from being ceremonially buried or placed in a genizah.”
“We have a debt of gratitude owed to the Jewish people,” Green continued, “because they provided us with the Hebrew text and they did it well, and that is the story that the scrolls tell, that they have done it and continue to do it until this day.”
For many Jews, this type of language is unsettling: it colonializes Judaism and its most sacred text, making them into part of a Christian narrative, both historically and theologically. The idea that the Bible came directly in its current form from God and never changed over the millennia is a standard position for some evangelicals, but one that, to most biblical scholars, is deeply problematic.
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The Museum of the Bible Is Exploiting Jewish Tradition—And Saving Its Evangelical Christian Donors Millions
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