The Fall 2009 edition of the University of Michigan’s LSA Magazine caught my attention because of its connection to a strong value in Judaism. The magazine contains a variety of articles all united by the theme – preserving the past, something we are quite familiar with in the Jewish community.

Included in the contents:

• A UM alum who photographs Antarctica, to preserve its beauty, lest global warming brings about changes.
• Three LSA faculty who are dedicated to saving the Great Lakes as a fresh water resource.
• A collection of recipes and cookbooks from the 19th century to help us remember how people used to eat.
• An explanation of how certain UM football game traditions "came to be", including The Victors and the Little Brown Jug.

The same issue of the magazine features a sampling of treasures from UM’s various museums, including: art work, plant life, a whale skeleton, an authentic letter from Christopher Columbus, and a book of Psalms (Genoa 1516) written in 8 different languages, including Hebrew.

Dean of LSA (UM’s college of Literature, Science and the Arts), Professor Terrence J. McDonald, explains the overall content of the journal as tying in with this Academic year’s focus on museums, and the introduction of a new Museum Studies minor. Dean McDonald concludes his remarks by stating his "hope to continue the crucial dialogue between the ever-present now, and the equally important then."

As Jews, we can appreciate, and relate to these efforts to preserve these relics of the past, for that is something we do well, and we are pained when remnants of our history are destroyed, and therefore lost.

On the other hand, our goal is only partially to record and remember our history. More prominently, we are people who daily strive to keep the past alive.

Rather than place Torah Scrolls in museums, we embrace the Torah through our chanting of its words and our practice of its principles. The tzitzit on the corner of the garment, and the tefillin on the arm and head, both described in the millennia old words of the Shema, are still among our sacred garments today.

A story is frequently told that as immigrants on boats (at the turn of the century) were about to arrive on the shores of North America, they would throw their tefillin overboard, to symbolically express their rejection of "old world values". Fortunately, this effort to rid ourselves of tefillin has not been a success.

Even when we are innovative in the synagogue and Jewish life, we must be wary to not trade away our precious past, rather to embrace it. This is successfully evident in our recent adoption of new liturgical books. Both our Siddur Tefillah l’Moshe, and the Etz Chaim Chumashim a few years before, retain and return to the traditional language of Torah and Jewish prayer, only intending to make the transmission of these words to our congregants an easier process.

I was delighted recently to see what has become of some of our former Siddurim and Chumashim. While spending a Shabbat with students and faculty of the Frankel Jewish Academy at the Butzel Conference Center in Ortonville, I was moved to see that our own Sabbath and Festival Prayer Books and Hertz Chumashim are in good supply and being used by Butzel guests. In fact, both of the Frankel minyanim — the mechitza and the egalitarian — made use of our former holy books. Through smiles and tears, I glanced at many of the dedication labels, and I feel confident that those whose names appear on the inside covers are honored that though the location has changed, the value of the books live on.