The Symbolic Representation of the Sefer Torah - Maqom

writes: “It is directed toward a particular goal and becomes, among other things, a mechanism forachieving those goals. Religious ritual connects the participant to some transcendent presence. It providesa bridge to G-d by engaging the participant in an act that G-d has commanded. At the very least, it isefficacious in the sense that it is pleasing to G-d or avoids G-d's displeasure. But it only produces thedesire results when preformed correctly.” Ritual is generally resistant to change and detailed in its content.Examples of ritual are some of the mitzvoth (sing. mitzvah: commandment) described in detail in Jewishlaw or halakha.In contrast to ritual, Liebman explains that ceremony is connected directly to the social order itrepresents. For example, in reform synagogues the traditions observed such as the removing the Torah arenot based upon law or mitzvoth but are chosen because of their importance in the eyes of the congregants.Liebman describes the ceremony (1999, p. 309). “The Sabbath service in a Reform synagogue may notinclude reading from the Torah or may include reading only a few lines rather than the entire weeklyportion, but it will include a rather elaborate ceremony in which the Torah scrolls are taken out of andreturned to the highly ornamented ark in which they are kept. A bar mitzvah ceremony in a Reformsynagogue might have the rabbi removing the Torah scroll from the ark and handing it to the parents or theyoungster whose bar mitzvah is being celebrated. The parents, in turn, hand the Torah, in this case asymbol of Jewish tradition, to the bar mitzvah celebrant.” In this case, the actors do not believe theiractions to be a mitzvah requiring precise and detailed rules determined by generations of rabbinicalauthorities. Their performance is a symbolic act whose social nature in this case is quite explicit. AsLiebman continues to explain, “The ceremony symbolizes the ties between parent and child in a Jewishcontext; the centrality of generational continuity and the special role of the parent-child relationship intransmitting the Torah (i.e. tradition). The ceremony clearly manifests and affirms the participation andidentification of these actors in the Jewish social order. In the words of Malina (1986, p. 7), a cultureprojects “collective communication.”While I agree with Liebman’s definition of ritual and ceremony, there is also a grey area that hediscusses: customs that vary in different communities and Jewish ethnic groups. In our discussion about16