Someone once told me that they saw a woman making out with a Torah and I said that it obviously wasn’t an orthodox shul because in orthodox shuls the women usually don’t get close enough to the Torah to achieve full lip contact, let alone enough time to get any tongue in there, so they usually just use their siddur to kiss the Torah – which never really sat right with me anyway.
So how are you supposed to kiss the Torah anyway?
I’m a hand kisser, the classic not much doing kind of guy that I am – if I happen to be in shul early enough to catch the Torah being brought out before laining I will tap the torah and then kiss my hand, I feel this is the easiest way to kiss the Torah and most tznius. I try not to turn women on while I’m in shul and I know that a hunky guy like self getting hot and heavy with the Torah isn’t really the right thing for shabbos morning so I lay low.
There are all types of Torah kissers, there are those that clasp it with two hands and plant a big one on it’s forehead and those that take their siddur, touchb the torah and then touch the siddur to the lips – is this counted? It seems like 2 degrees of separation when it comes to kissing is a bit un-intimate to say the least. How would a girl feel if I kissed a book and she kissed the book in the same exact spot? Doesn’t seem to romantic to me, yet people are willing to screw around with the sacred text kissing practice and these two degrees of separation.
If you really loved the Torah you would want a peace of it, you would want to get in on that and show your love and appreciation. Not everyone can get a full lipped kiss, but most people kiss without any feeling or touching, they pat one on the Torah’s cover and leave quickly as if they were saying goodbye to their mother in law at a train station. Show a little love, grab it and give it a hug or something – the only time (outside of chabad-bresslov style shuls) you see people really grabbing the Torah and showing it some love is at hakafos on simchas torah, which really shouldn’t count because that’s kind of what the holiday’s about anyway, right?
I wonder if people blow kisses to the Torah? Or maybe they refrain because they feel that kissing should only be between man and wife once a month on mikvah night and even then it’s a little untznius since it’s an obvious takeover of the animal soul because it doesn’t lead to having children.
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