Simchat Torah -- 5777

Each Shabbat, a new bar or bat mitzvah takes their place in front of the unrolled Torah, takes a deep breath, and reads.  Some are confident and some are shaky, but all understand the power of the moment:  they are doing something difficult, and they are standing where countless others have stood before.  They are assuming their place in the great chain that is our people.

In honor of Simchat Torah, I’m dedicating this column to our sifrei Torah (Torah scrolls) and their places of origin.

Two of our scrolls are on permanent loan from the Memorial Scrolls Trust, a London-based non-profit dedicated to the preservation and promulgation of Torah scrolls from the former Czechoslovakia.  Our principal scroll hails from Pilsen (Plezn), and our secondary scroll comes from Kardasova-Recice, in West and South Bohemia, respectively.

Beilee Kagan, our member, spent the summer researching the towns of Pilsen and Kardasova-Recice.  She built a page on the Temple Emanuel website to share information about the communities that created and once housed our sifrei Torah.  We hope this will deepen our connection with them.

To think that boys from those places read the very same words, written in the very same ink, as they became Bar Mitzvah.  Our lives are linked to theirs because we share the same story.  To think that thousands of people from those places reached out to kiss these scrolls as they paraded past.  Our lives are linked to theirs because we share the same Torah scroll, just as our lives are linked to all Jews because we share the same Torah.

Beilee compiled photographs of those communities as well as our own scrolls.  Please take a look, here:  emanueloftempe.org/about-us/about-our-torah-scrolls.

Learn more about the work of the Memorial Scrolls Trust here:  www.memorialscrollstrust.org.

We are custodians of these scrolls and the invisible yet indelible memory of those who have gone before us.  It is our honor to protect the scrolls and allow the wisdom they contain to live through us.  We hope that others will follow after, taking their place 100 and 150 years from now and, after a deep breath, begin to read.