torah scroll
Our Torah was written sometime in the 1700s and resided
in a small town in Czechoslovakia called Sobeslav. The style of the
writing is called "modified Beit Yosef". This Torah is a rare type,
written on about 50 deer skins (bellies). By Jewish law, an animal
cannot be killed only to be used for leather (etc.), but for food.
Since deer are kosher, but hard to shecht
(kill in a ritually kosher way),
we imagine that the deer were not killed or eaten by the Jews, only
used by them for the Torah. The Torah stayed in someone's home until
the synagogue was built in the late 1800's. One of the Presidents of
the synagogue's Board of Directors was named Emmanuel Frankenstein. He
read from this Torah.
Almost everyone from Sobeslav who was Jewish died in
the concentration camps in World War II. During the Holocaust, the
Nazis stripped the synagogues of anything valuable and sent many of
these articles to Prague for future display in a "Museum of an
Extinct Race." Many of these objects are now in the State Jewish Museum
in Prague.
After the war these items (including 1,564 Torah
Scrolls from places like Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia) lay piled in
the disused Michle Synagogue for more than 20 years. In 1964 these
sacred Scrolls were given to the care of the Westminster Synagogue in
London. Then came the monstrous task of cataloguing, inspecting and
classifying the scrolls according to their condition. Those that were
deemed usable, or could be made usable without too much labor, were
put up for distribution to various Jewish agencies. Priority has been
given to Synagogues needing a Scroll for use in services. These special
Scrolls are now in use in many countries around the world.
Some of the collection remain at Westminster Synagogue,
a permanent memorial to the martyrs from whose synagogues they come;
many of them are distributed throughout the world, to be memorials
everywhere to the Jewish tragedy, and to spread light as harbingers of
future peace on earth; and all of them bear witness to the glory of the
holy Name.
When a request for a Torah is approved by the
committee, a scroll is handed over on a "permanent loan" basis. Our
scroll (catalogued as No. 1144) came to us by way of Etz Chaim, a now
disbanded congregation in
Novato. They had made the request, which was approved, and had already
received the Torah when the congregation disbanded. When some of the
members of Etz Chaim joined our community, they told us about the
Scroll and made the arrangements for the transfer. That's how we came
to be the proud guardians of one of the Czech Memorial scrolls.
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