A 19th-century Torah scroll rescued from the Holocaust arrived recently at Orangevale’s Temple Or Rishon, where around 200 people gathered Sunday to rededicate the precious item.
For years, the scroll was stored in a former synagogue in Prague, where the local Jewish museum accumulated more than 200,000 religious objects from destroyed Jewish communities following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939.
A London-based organization called Memorial Scrolls Trust sent the Torah scroll to Or Rishon as a long-term loan. Per agreement, if the congregation dissolves or merges with another, the scroll would be returned to the Memorial Scrolls Trust. If the Czech Jewish community to which the Torah belonged is ever revived, the scroll would be returned to its original home.
Or Rishon, a Reform congregation with about 250 households, was founded in 1983. Located about 20 miles northeast of Sacramento, Or Rishon is one of about 20 congregations and Jewish organizations in Northern California with a rescued Torah through the Memorial Scrolls Trust.
As one Bay Area congregation knows, sometimes the Torah scrolls actually do go home.
Foster City’s Peninsula Sinai Congregation returned one of its rescued Torahs in 2017 to the Eastern Czech town of Olomouc, where the Jewish community has re-emerged in recent years.
Or Rishon Rabbi Alan Rabishaw contacted the Memorial Scrolls Trust last summer, after meeting a congregant’s cousin visiting from London who is a member of the Westminster Synagogue, a London congregation integral to the founding of the Memorial Scrolls Trust.
Rabishaw emphasized how important it was for his congregation to receive a rescued Torah in good enough condition to be used during services, including for b’nai mitzvah, rather than to sit on display as a memorial artifact.
“We don’t want one to just remind us of history,” Rabishaw told J. “We want one that would allow us to bring it back to life and to be celebrated as part of our synagogue today, not just the memory of what was.”
In November, Or Rishon was matched with Torah No. 492, a scroll from Domažlice, a small town about 12 miles east of the German border. At the height of its Jewish population in the late 19th century, 153 Jews lived in the town, according to the Jewish International Cemetery Project.
The scroll was restored by Neil Yerman, a New York-based sofer, or scribe, who has been writing, maintaining and restoring Torah scrolls for over 40 years. Although the scroll was originally estimated to be around 114 years old, Yerman told J. that he believes it is at least 50 years older, dating it back to around 1860.
Yerman traveled to Orangevale to hand-deliver the Torah to Or Rishon and join the rededication.
After the recent releases of Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity, Rabishaw said he couldn’t help but see a bigger meaning in the ceremony.
“It wasn’t just about this Torah in particular. It was also about our shared commitment as the Jewish people to be strong and draw resilience from our Torah, from our history,” he said. “For me, it’s a message to Hamas: Those who want to destroy us will not succeed.”