Rabbi's Monthly Letter
Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein
In 1951, soon after the creation of the State of Israel, with the blood, death and horror of the Nazis' murderous annihilation still fresh in mind, the Knesset voted to create a memorial day for the six million who had perished. Called Yom HaZikaron l'Shoah Ve-Gevurah (Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and Heroism) and later shortened to Yom HaShoah, the date chosen for annual memorial was the 27th of Nissan, just after the end of Passover and a week before Israel's Independence Day.
For decades St. Peter's Lutheran Church and Central Synagogue have joined together for an annual commemoration of Yom HaShoah in the belief that all people must remember the victims of the genocide, vow that such monstrous atrocities not happen again and work for a world in which human annihilation is obliterated.
Our commemoration this year will be unusual.
On Yom HaShoah eve, Wednesday, April 30, at 6:00 p.m. our congregations will welcome a unique Torah scroll with a remarkable, almost unbelievable story. Central Synagogue will be entrusted as guardian of a scroll that survived the Holocaust and just recently has been given new life.
The entire story and history of the scroll will be told for the first time that evening. The Torah scroll, which was hidden during the Holocaust, was discovered and acquired by Rabbi Menachem Youlus of Save a Torah Foundation. This organization is dedicated to rescue, restore and resettle Torah scrolls primarily from communities lost in the Holocaust. The final letters of the restored scroll will be filled in that evening, in keeping with the tradition that filling in a single letter fulfills the commandment to write a Torah.
The donor of this Torah, who is neither from New York nor a member of our congregation, believed that it was proper that Central Synagogue keep and safeguard this Torah. It will be greeted under the chuppah by other Torah scrolls that have been given to the congregation in the last year.
Every Torah is unique. The skill of each sofer (scribe) is etched into the letters they wrote; the beauty of each scroll is enhanced by its own history; and the life of each scroll is strengthened by the many hands that touched it as it has been read by generations of young men and women becoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Rarely can we know the specifics of the story of any particular Torah scroll, but we know enough about the Torah that will be brought to us on April 30 to give us reason to celebrate that the people of Israel live. This scroll has been reborn; so be with us as we bring it to our home.
Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein
