Why are the Jews called the People of the Book?
The Jews are called the People of the Book for several reasons. The first is related to the fact that our people received the Torah on Mount Sinai, they live according to the Torah, read it, reread it and teach it. Among other peoples, this, in the first place, explains why the Jews are called the people of the Book, who study It and live according to It.
The second reason is that Jews are constantly learning. Our education system is built on the study of the written and oral Torah, the Talmud, the Mishnah and other holy books. Jews are always with books. If you go into the synagogue, you will see that there are cabinets full of books, and all of them are read and re-read, because the Jews are constantly learning, improving their knowledge of the Torah and other sacred books.
For Jews, books are an absolute value, because knowledge about Gd and the world comes through them. The one who knows more, the one who has read more, is a more respected, more authoritative person. Therefore, the book always goes along with the Jews. During two thousand years of exile, the Jewish people are preserved as a people solely through their education and the study of the holy books.
“We are accustomed to being called “the people of the book”. Sometimes in the original sense of this definition: “the people of the Book”, more often in a generalized, reduced one: they say, while all normal people are busy with simple everyday affairs, Jews sit with their noses buried in books.
Today it is difficult to say when it started. It is believed that the book preceded the material world, created by 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And after receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai, our teacher Moshe encouraged his hard-nosed, in other words, stubborn people to read it attentively and interestedly. Much later, the sages, worried about the loss of memory, tried to write down, in addition to the written Torah, also the oral one. Since then, an avalanche of books has rolled down, which has not stopped to this day.
The wisest of the wise, King Solomon, remarked: “Compiling many books - there will be no end, and reading a lot - is tiring for the body” (Koheleth, 12:12). But even despite the obvious tedium of this process, we continue to read almost anywhere, at any time of the year, day or night, in any life situation, in any language and in any position. We read to gain wisdom, to have fun, to achieve enlightenment, to successfully pass an interview, to know the truth, to renounce the surrounding insanity, indulge in dreams, arm ourselves with knowledge, find out the latest gossip ... The list of goals for our reading can be extended indefinitely. The prophet Yehezkel even ate one very, as they say, “heavy” book whole, and it was sweeter than honey in his mouth. What does not happen to readers!”
Nekod Singer