photo/alex axelrod

Chabad of Sunnyvale didn’t have its own Torah scroll, so in May it launched a Torah-writing project that concluded March 18 in a gala siyyum, or completion ceremony, held at the Hilton Garden Inn in Mountain View, where the congregation holds High Holy Day services.

Nathan Moncharsh, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor, wrote the first letter of the scroll before it was shipped to a professional scribe in Israel. At the siyyum, final letters were written by Moncharsh (pictured above, center, with his family), Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, and members of the Sommers and Orrin families, lead sponsors of the project to which 100 families contributed. Then 250 guests danced and celebrated with the new Torah.