Central Synagogue Podcast · Central Synagogue

SERMON: Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, "Shemini 2026–The Sacred and the Profane: The Story of the Yanov Torah"

April 10, 2026·12 min·1 clip

Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland smuggled Torah fragments into Janowska concentration camp, hiding them under mattresses to reclaim their humanity.

1. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue, Manhattan, delivers a Shabbat sermon titled 'The Sacred and the Profane: The Story of the Yanov Torah,' framed around Parshat Shemini. 2. Rabbi Buchdahl is Central Synagogue's Senior Rabbi; no outside guest is featured — the sermon is a solo address. 3. The sermon's thesis is that the distinction between sacred and profane, commanded in Leviticus 10:10, is not just a religious technicality but a survival mechanism, illustrated by a Holocaust-era Torah scroll. 4. Parshat Shemini opens with Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu bringing 'alien fire' (esh zara) to the altar and being consumed on the spot by God, an act that reduces Aaron to silence. 5. The Torah portion then pivots immediately to kosher laws — permitted land animals must have cleft hooves and chew their cud; permitted water creatures must have fins and scales. 6. Buchdahl argues the juxtaposition of the deaths and the dietary laws is deliberate: both are about training perception to distinguish the sacred from the profane. 7. She introduces Mircea Eliade's 1957 book 'The Sacred and the Profane,' noting Eliade founded the academic history of religion at the University of Chicago, and his concept of hierophanies — sacred meaning erupting into ordinary objects. 8. Hierophanies cited by Buchdahl include a loved one's gravestone, a great-grandfather's tallit, and a Passover Seder, each of which gathers identity and memory and points beyond itself. 9. She identifies the Torah scroll in the Aron HaKodesh (holy ark) as Judaism's most recognizable hierophany, its holiness derived not from rare materials but from meticulous letter-by-letter transmission from Sinai through thousands of hands. 10. She notes that an unusable Torah scroll is buried in a cemetery or genizah rather than destroyed, treated with the same care as a human life. 11. On the Shabbat before Yom HaShoah, Buchdahl narrates the story of the Yanov Torah: when German forces descended on Lvov, they forced able-bodied Jews into the Janowska concentration camp. 12. The SS deliberately stripped prisoners of every marker of identity and dignity, which Buchdahl describes as 'the logic of Parshat Shemini in reverse' — rendering everything profane to shut down souls. 13. The Jews of Lvov responded by going to the cemetery where they had buried unusable Torah scrolls, separating the parchment at the seams, and smuggling the fragments into Janowska concealed in clothing and pressed against skin. 14. Inside the camp, inmates hid the fragments beneath thin mattresses and under floorboards, knowing discovery meant death; at night they gathered in the barracks to read from the fragments. 15. Buchdahl states that through this act, 'the Jewish inmates remembered who they were' — not only was the Torah resurrected, 'so was their humanity.' 16. After liberation in 1945, one survivor assembled all scattered parchment pieces into a single patched scroll, the Yanov Torah; surviving Lvov Jews made a pact that the oldest would safeguard it and pass it to the next before dying. 17. In 1975, the last survivor entrusted the scroll to Jewish refusenik Naum Rit as he fled Russia for America; since 2008 it has been housed at Hebrew Union College under a mandate to share its message widely. 18. The sermon is delivered with the physical Yanov Torah present, on loan from former Central Synagogue rabbi Dan Ross, in the week of Yom HaShoah. 19. The tone is reflective and theologically serious, moving between biblical scholarship, academic religious studies, and first-person grief; the pacing is deliberate and the emotional register intensifies with the Holocaust narrative. 20. Listeners who find meaning in Judaism, Holocaust memory, and the theology of grief will connect most strongly; listeners seeking practical or upbeat religious content may not.

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