When Dovid Mandel volunteered during the busy pre-Pesach sheimos season, little did he realize that he’d soon be in charge of burying our community’s sheimos on a more permanent basis.
Sheimos – literally, “names” (referring to the name of G-d) – consist of printed Torah materials as well as objects that have innate holiness and thus require a respectful burial. Aside from organizing and arranging for either the burial or selling of the sefarim (Torah books) brought to the shul, the one- to two-hour weekly job includes making sure that the sefarim collected conform to the Agudah’s values.
When longtime sheimos head Bill Lerner “retired” from this voluntary position, after 25 years, many people tried to assume his role but found it overwhelming. “I wasn’t planning to continue after Pesach,” admits Mr. Mandel, who is a Ner Israel Kollel Fellow in addition to being an expert dealer of antique sefarim, “but I tried it and it was fun. The place looked absolutely terrible, and I saw that nobody wanted to do it.” Mr. Mandel, who was asked by Agudah president Michael Fulda to take on the job, mostly worked alone until recently, when two teenaged volunteers, Moshe Cohen and Yaakov Weiskopf, began helping him. Yaakov’s father, Rabbi Mordechai Weiskopf, has managed the actual burial in years past.
Sheimos Logistics
Thousands of bags of sheimos are dropped off annually in the small alcove outside Harav Moshe Heinemann’s office. Since it is impossible to store them there, these bags are pushed through a laundry chute-like opening in the floor to be stored in a sizable room on a lower floor. When the room fills up, which has been every two years, it is time to bury the material in the Agudath Israel Cemetery. Selling and giving away the sheimos has alleviated the need to bury the tightly-packed room more frequently than that.
To make sorting through the sheimos easier, people are asked to deposit their sheimos in two wooden bins, one labeled “sefarim” and the other labeled “papers.” One of the teens takes care of the paper bin. The other teen goes into the downstairs sheimos storage room once every three weeks to ensure that the bags are arranged for maximum accessibility and floor-to-ceiling storage capacity. Mr. Mandel’s job is to take care of the sefarim bin. He goes through the sefarim and separates whatever is sellable, then prices and shelves them on bookcases located in the sheimos alcove. Most books are sold for $1 to $2; there is one $5 shelf. At the time of this writing, there are about 400 books for sale, some of which are required learning by our local schools. Among them are good finds that the shul receives on a regular basis, including brand-new ArtScroll sets of Chumashim that have been donated.
“Our collection is especially good for those who cannot afford to buy Chumashim, Nach, Gemaras, halacha sefarim, and ArtScroll books, among others,” says Mr. Mandel. “Some people get rid of these sefarim after using them once. It saves people a lot of money. With new Gemaras costing $25, paying $2 for a used sefer in good shape is a really good deal.”
A fourth bookshelf in the sheimos room is marked “free.” These are sefarim that are in decent shape and usable but would be hard to sell.
“If we charged for these sefarim and they did not sell, we would have to bury them, which would cost us even more,” Mr. Mandel explains. “So I try to bury the as few sefarim as possible. It not only saves us money but gives people a good bargain as well.”
To clarify sheimos intake requirements, Mr. Mandel has posted a list of rules. One of them is that if you are dropping off more than one 30-gallon garbage bag of sheimos, you need to first call Mr. Mandel. Another is that sefarim that are black with mold must be double-wrapped so they won’t cause damage to other items in the sheimos box.
A woman recently called Mr. Mandel regarding donating 40 garbage bags of water-damaged sefarim. He told her that she might want to hold onto them until the insurance adjuster came to assess the damage. She insisted that she didn’t need to since she took photos of the damage. After speaking to her insurance agent, who corroborated that the adjuster needed to see the actual damage, she called Mr. Mandel to thank him.
“Floods are very, very common,” notes Mr. Mandel. “Every other week there’s another story of a flood in someone’s basement. Your basement may not be the best place to store your sefarim. I’ve seen hundreds of boxes of damaged sefarim due to that.”
The shul does not officially charge for sheimos drop-offs, but there is a suggested donation. Two dollars is suggested for smaller plastic bags; for larger garbage-bag size, five dollars is suggested. “We suggest these donations to help alleviate the steep burial fees,” clarifies Mr. Mandel.
The most recent burial occurred this past summer, after Tisha B’Av. About 25 volunteers, led by Nossi Gerstman, came to help load four containers with the Agudah’s estimated 5,000 30-gallon bags of shaimos. They were buried in a 3,000-cubic-foot plot of land. This year was the first year that trees had to be cut down to accommodate the burial. The bill, including the rental of the four containers and the tree cutting, was approximately $5,000. It was $1,000 extra for the tree cutting. Had there not been so many volunteers, the cost would have been even greater.
The Sheimos Shadchan
Aside from his regular duties, Mr. Mandel serves as a resource for seekers of sheimos. “People have approached me asking for certain items,” he says. “One person collects periodicals printed by the Agudah in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew between the ’50s and ’70s. They don’t have any value, but this person wants them. It makes him very happy, and his donation benefits the shul. Others want anything in Yiddish. There are also people looking for older, out-of-print sefarim, which we get very often. I call them when they are donated, and they pick them up.”
Mr. Mandel has also gotten calls, such as the one from a gabbai of a shul who was looking for a paroches (ark curtain), from someone looking for a tallis, and from someone looking for tefilin, so he could take them apart and see if the parshios (inside scroll) were reusable.
“We recycle as much as possible, and I try to keep in mind who asked me for what, so that both the shul and the collectors are happy,” says Mr. Mandel. “Some of the sefarim we get are not a full set and thus not sellable, but shuls always want them. For example, I often give Chumashim to shuls, which greatly appreciate them.”
Mr. Mandel finds his job particularly gratifying when he can help someone find a missing volume needed to complete a set of sefarim at the shul’s sefarim sale. From time to time, he enjoys a good laugh, too. Like the time when a man who donated a few volumes of ArtScroll Gemaras realized that he wanted to keep them. He returned to the shul to buy them back at the sheimos sefarim sale.
Mr. Mandel also enjoys the excitement of never knowing what you are going to find among the sheimos. “A few months ago, I found a pair of tiny, tiny tefilin; the box was shorter than a penny,” says Mr. Mandel. “Most probably, it was from the 1800s, based on its look and the straps. I was told they were so small so that travelers could more easily hide them, because of anti-Semitism. I would be willing to give them to anyone who would give a donation.”
And once, Rabbi Mordechai Frankel, the shul’s assistant Rav, found a sefer written and inscribed by Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach. It belonged to a woman in Baltimore who didn’t even realize it was put into sheimos until Rabbi Frankel called to tell her about it. She was so happy to get her sefer back, and at no charge.
You Never Know What You Are Going to Find
Mr. Mandel relates some of the more unusual things that have turned up in the Agudah’s sheimos: thin silver plates with pesukim on them, e.g., from a challah board or a birkas habayis sign, and a coffee cup with Tefilas Haderech (“The Wayfarer’s Prayer”) printed on it.
Random things have been found mixed in with the shul’s sheimos as well. As Bill Lerner reminisced, “I’ve found clothing (including underwear), silverware, china, plastic-ware, small appliances, batteries, toys, novels, insects (some dead, some alive), small animals (dead), dirt, leaves, parts of a training potty, diapers (no comment), an enormous quantity of secular school papers, innumerable empty plastic and paper bags, car and house keys, plus – who remembers?”
In Conclusion
How can we, as a community, cut down on the enormous work and expense associated with discarding sheimos? According to Rabbi Weiskopf, “Perhaps, if we stop manufacturing sheimos wholesale – if we print on both sides of paper, if we don’t print or photocopy papers unnecessarily, we don’t throw out usable sefarim or notebooks just to get new ones – we will be able to cut down on the scores of sheimos that we mindlessly donate. After all, if there is any way that something can still be used, it should not be unnecessarily buried, lechatchila, from the outset.”
Dovid Mandel can be reached at 845-260-1091 or: dovidefraim@gmail.com.
SIDEBAR
Lots of items that are clearly not sheimos – such as Mishpacha magazines, newspapers with Torah content, and pamphlets that shuls publish – are often dropped off at the Agudah. Not sure what is sheimos and what is not? The following Star-K Certification guidelines will help you make the call.
Yes
- Sefarim, whether handwritten, printed, photocopied, or downloaded and printed (e.g., Chumashim, Siddurim, Machzorim, Gemaras, etc.).
- Three consecutive words of a pasuk from Tanach that have been written in one line, with the intention of quoting the Tanach* (as opposed to a melitza, an incidental use of a common expression, which is not sheimos).
- A quote from Mishna, Midrash, Gemara, Rishonim, Achronim, (or their commentaries), that has been printed or written with the intention of explaining Torah.
- Halachic material.
- Homework and test papers in limudei kodesh subjects are sheimos when containing any of the above.
- Invitations from organizations and individuals that contain parts of pesukim. (The sheimos or divrei Torah may be cut away from the paper and buried if so desired. The sentence “Od yishama…” as frequently included in wedding invitations is a melitza and is not intended to explain the pasuk.)
- Mezuzos and mezuzah covers
- Fragment of a sefer that got detached, even if there is no text on it.
- A sefer Torah and sefer Torah cover.
- Tefilin and tefilin bags.
- Any of the names of Hashem.
- A book cover used for a sefer.
- Material written or printed in English or any other language if it conforms with the above rules.
No
The following items should be burned or wrapped in plastic and thrown out in the garbage:
- Schach
- Tallis, tallis bag, tzitzis. (Ideally, the strings of a tallis and of tzitzis should be removed and placed in sheimos.)
- Esrogim, lulavim, hadasim, and aravos
- Jewish newspapers and magazines that contain secular information. The pages that do contain Torah may be removed and placed into sheimos, or the whole paper may be wrapped in paper and placed in a plastic cover (kli besoch kli) and then into the garbage or recycle bin.
- The Hebrew letters standing for Im Yirtzah Hashem, Be’ezras Hashem, and Baruch Hashem may be discarded, although it is considered an act of piety to tear off those letters and put them into sheimos. The Hebrew letters standing for Besiyata D’shmaya may definitely be put into the trash.
Into the Garbage
- Yarmulke.
- Hebrew language books, newspapers, etc., that are not Torah.
