Synagogues receive new, old Torah
LEISAH NAMM
Managing Editor
Two local synagogues celebrate Simchat Torah this year by welcoming a new Torah.
Temple Chai's Torah is literally new - written this year by a scribe in Israel. Temple Gan Elohim's "new" Torah was recently hand-carried to Phoenix from the Czech Holocaust Memorial Foundation in London. It is the last Torah from this collection of Torahs rescued from the Holocaust that was sold to a congregation, says Rabbi Lester Frazin, spiritual leader for Gan Elohim and Temple Havurat Emet in Sun Lakes.
Havurat Emet received a Torah from the same organization earlier this year and the foundation notified Frazin that these two Torahs were the last two that will be offered through the foundation, which stored Torahs at the Westminster Synagogue in London. "The rest are in such horrible shape that they're going to make a museum out of them," Frazin says.
Because the foundation was unable to identify the city the Torah was from, the congregation will adopt a "synagogue without Jews" in Presov, an industrial city in Northeast Slovakia that dates back to the early 13th century.
In 1940, the city's Jewish population numbered 4,000, 40 percent of the total population, according to the Web site Synagogue without Jews. In 1942, the Jews were deported; a few hundred survivors returned after the war, but many then emigrated to Israel or America.
"We're going to adopt that town, and all of the people who had lived there, as our family," Frazin says.
"The Torah is a living thing and it has a soul," he says. "We adopted a soul and we're adopting the souls of the people who heard its sacred words."
Frazin will conduct a formal "adoption service" during an Oct. 8 Torah dedication.
The synagogue is "symbolically adopting all those who perished so that they did not die in vain," says Marcey Strick, Gan Elohim president.
Religious school students will decorate the Torah cover and congregants will decorate the Torah's binder. Calligrapher Domenica Corbo will design hand-lettered Holocaust Torah dedication certificates.
Gan Elohim's Torah dedication for the Holocaust Torah, which includes music by song leaders Scott Leader and Emily Kaye, will be held 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 8, at Mission Bell United Methodist Church, 4645 W. Bell Road, Glendale. Call 623-210-7435 or visit www.templeganelohim.org.
Earlier this year in May, on Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah, Temple Chai dedicated a Torah that about 400 Chai members - adults and children age 10 and older - helped write. Each wrote one letter, guided by scribe Neil Yerman, in the first Torah portion, Bereshit. Artist Ruth Levi scribed the portion Chaye Sarah and a scribe in Israel scribed the rest.
The congregation's Simchat Torah celebration begins at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7, and will include a picnic dinner, a holiday program and music by the synagogue's band, the Chai Tones.
Temple Chai is located at 4645 E. Marilyn Road, Phoenix. Call 602-971-1234.
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