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Sheimos from Secular Books

Question:

In many sifrei chol (ex. Novels, textbooks, newspapers, magazines, in the later 2 often from quotes) G - d, Lord, etc. are often written. When discarding these papers, should the name of Hashem in any form be cut out and removed from the rest of the paper, with names of Hashem being buried as sheimos? Is it at the very least a hiddur to bury Sheimos from sifrei chol?

I apologize if the question has already been asked in the directory.

Answer:

Thank you for your question.

If the book is a secular book, we can assume that when they write the word G-d etc. that they are not referring to Hashem, but to avoda zara, and there is no need to put it into shaimos. Regarding Jewish newspapers etc., that have the word G-d etc, these words are not really shaimos in the sense that they need to go into shaimos, however they shouldn’t be discarded in an embarrassing way either. Therefore, if the book is wrapped in a bag, that is sufficient, and you don’t have spend time removing references to Hashem from them. It should be noted that this is different than pesukim, or halachos that are written in newspapers which need to go into shaimos according to many poskim.

Best wishes

Sources:

M:B 85-10, Ginzei Hakodesh 7 ftnt. 24, Poskim.

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