Honoring Every Sefer

The Steipler was especially careful about kavod hasefer, the honor due to holy books. The sefer Toldos Yaakov gives several examples of his care and sensitivity.

Once, when someone took down the wrong sefer for him, he made sure to learn something from it before it went back on the shelf, so as not to “embarrass” it.

He repaired every tear in his seforim. When his Shas was rebound, he said, “I have pleasure from the fact that my seforim have been restored with their proper honor.”

If he fell asleep over a sefer after learning until his last ounce of strength was spent, he felt terrible about the lack of respect to the sefer.

Two of his own seforim, Birkas Peretz and Chayei Olam, were first sold at cost, because he felt they were worth spreading widely. Later he raised the price, feeling that so low a price did not befit the honor of the seforim. The profits went to tzedakah.

In many shuls and yeshivos in Eretz Yisroel, a notice hangs near the seforim shelves about returning seforim after use instead of leaving them on the table. It tells of a time the Steipler finished learning in a yeshiva not far from his home. He had walked about a hundred meters, though walking was very hard for him, when he realized he had not put his sefer back. He turned around, went back to his seat, returned the sefer to its place, and only then went home.

The Steipler was a living Sefer Torah. We may never reach his level of Torah, but there is no reason we cannot reach his level of respect for the seforim in which the Torah is written.