The rabbi’s tone conveyed to the class the expectation that no student should ever again raise such a foolish question. And no one ever had. Nor, it seemed to Bento, had anyone but he himself observed that the people of Israel collectively in their reverential posture toward the Torah had committed the very sin that God, through Moses, had most warned them against: idolatry. The Jews everywhere worshipped not golden idols but idols of paper and ink.
