עזרא הסופר

Ezra the Scribe is the man who returned the Torah to Israel after it had nearly been forgotten, 'Ezra was worthy that the Torah be given through him, had Moses not preceded him' (Sanhedrin 21b). When he came up from Babylon to ruined Jerusalem, he found a people that had assimilated, forgotten its language and its faith, and he rose to rebuild not walls but souls.

He gathered the people, read to them from the Torah from morning until midday, 'and they read in the book, in the Torah of God, clearly, and gave the sense' (Nehemiah 8:8), and translated and explained until they understood. And they wept, for they realized how far they had strayed. Ezra taught not by coercion but by understanding, and made Torah study the possession of the whole people, not of a few.

The Sages attribute to him foundational enactments: the Torah reading on Mondays, Thursdays and Shabbat afternoon, the square Assyrian script in which Torah scrolls are written to this day, and the beginning of the Men of the Great Assembly. He did not innovate a religion but saved it from oblivion, and set frameworks for it that would hold for generations.

What do we learn from him? That one can return an entire people to its roots, not by coercion but by access and understanding. Ezra teaches that saving a tradition is done through patient education, 'clearly, and giving the sense,' and that one who gives a people the tools to understand its Torah performs a deed whose greatness is like giving the Torah anew.