A House Full of Books

This project, to fill our homes with Jewish books, is an interesting addition to the Rebbe’s mitzvah campaigns. We know that there’s a mitzvah to study Torah, but is there a mitzvah to buy books, per se? The final mitzvah of the Torah is for each Jew to write a Torah scroll, a very skilled and labor-intensive process. Very few of us are able to write our own Torah, and before the advent of the printing press, very few people had sacred writings in their homes. Today, when books can be mass produced inexpensively, this mitzvah has become accessible for all of us. So, on one level, the campaign to fill our homes with Jewish books may be about using advances in technology for holiness. .

The Torah is G-d’s wisdom condensed into words, ink on parchment. When we print a Torah book, the ink, the paper, and even the binding become holy and sacred. When we bring these books home, the home becomes sanctified as well. Another step in the process of bridging the gap between the finite and the infinite, and between the mundane and the divine.