Israel – Kiryat Arba Chief Rabbi Dov Lior has ruled that the pages distributed in synagogues on Friday nights, dealing with the weekly Torah portion and other religious and social topics, should be recycled instead of buried in a repository (geniza).
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“The problem of geniza has recently become worse due to the abundance of materials being printed, and the difficulty to collect everything, which causes the problem of Torah words being scattered around and desecrated,” Lior wrote. “Therefore, the religious council has decided to collect such materials accumulated for geniza in order to recycle them and prevent a greater desecration,” he explained, noting that such a direction exists in Jewish law.
“I hope the public will collaborate for the dignity of the holy writings, to prevent desecration and to keep our city clean,” Lior wrote.
Read more at The Jerusalem Post
Smart idea. The proliferation of papers that accumulate in shuls and beis medrashim (especially erev shabbos) has gotten out of hand. Its virtually impossible to separate real sheimos (which should be buried with dignity and legally at a landfill or cemetary) versus this junk on parshas hashavuah or announcements regarding some kiddush or a plea for funds for some yosom or new chassan/kalah needing money to buy a condo in Lakewood etc.). By allowing it to be buried in any location we will avoid the types of chillul hashem we read about here several months ago in New Jersey where this stuff was illegally buried outside of a landfill on some private land not zoned for trash disposal.
What right does anyone have to place these sheets in a shul and place the burden of paying for geniza on the shul. Our shul gets loads of these (propaganda) Torah sheets. It is pure geneiva from the shul. In addition what right do you have to deesecrate the shul with flyers. A shul is a mikdash m’at.
The first thing to do if you believe that a shul is holy is get the people to stop talking and shmoozing throuhout their stay in shul.
My rabbaim have been saying this for years!
It may be done. However, they must be placed in a box or shopping bag that the contents do not have “bizoyon” (desecration).
I wonce asked one of the leading poskim in new york,and he to told me to discard them “bderech koved” .I asked him was does that mean? he said to put it in a double bag .
I know a Rov in Williamsburg whou collects all leaflets left in his Bhm”d and deposits them
the Belz bhm”d since they arey thet ones who started ity withy alim litrufah. He may be wrong, buty he has a point …