By Rabbi Menachem Margolin
The burning of books is no insignificant matter. It is loaded with weight and significance. When an ancient civilization wanted to eradicate a culture, or felt threatened by it, they burned libraries, such as in Alexandria.
In more recent history, the famous German Poet Heinrich Heine warned that: “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people” and of course, his books ended up on Nazi bonfires along with Torah scrolls, and 6 million Jews were murdered, many incinerated in concentration camp crematoria.
And looking to the future we have Ray Bradbury’s dystopian science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451 which focuses on a society where books are burned (the book named as it was after the exact temperature at which paper combusts.)
What we are witnessing in Sweden right now, where the Koran has already been burned, and by the time this appears, a Bible may have been burned too outside of the Israeli Embassy, is not just dystopian but deeply disturbing.
Most alarming of all, despite a majority of the population against such burnings, and despite widespread political opposition, the hand wringing is in full swing: It is a constitutional right. It is a matter for the Police, they say.
Constitutions are important. And of course, should be protected. But surely, given the wide arc of history, and the horrors that can flow from hateful acts, they should not be so sacrosanct, or held in such esteem that they permit the burning of books, especially a book that is the foundational text of ethics and laws that most European countries live by?
A Constitution cannot be so sacrosanct that its citizens and politicians can sit back and permit the burning of the word of G-d in front of the world’s only Jewish State Embassy on a Sabbath, can it?
And how can a bastion of Liberal Democracy, a safe haven for so many, and a leader in science, environmental issues, and which is renowned for its good governance permit such a disgusting act taking place?
It is unusual for me to write with so many questions. Usually I can find answers, in wisdom, in logic, in ethics and in the common decency of people.
As we approach the Sabbath this evening, I will not know until nightfall tomorrow evening if the burning of the Torah/Bible did in fact take place.
That I even have to ask such questions in Europe in 2023, and that I cannot even be sure that decency, historical precedent, simple memory and the death of six million Jews is enough to slay this great and sacred constitutional cow is tragic.
That, by the time I wish my family a shavua tov (a good week), the ashes of my beloved Jewish bible may be blowing in the wind and bouncing off the walls of the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm tells me that Europe has learned nothing. This is the biggest tragedy of all.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin is Chairman of the European Jewish Association.