A LONG JOURNEY

Torah returns to temple, temporarily

By RABBI FRANKLIN W. MULLER

Special to The Vindicator

This weekend concludes the High Holiday period for the Jewish people with the celebration of Simchat Torah, Hebrew for “the joy of Torah.”

For the past several weeks, Jews have welcomed the New Year with Rosh Hashanah, prayed for forgiveness for wrongs committed on Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, and celebrated our bounty during the weeklong harvest festival of Sukkot, or Feast of Tabernacles.

While these holy days are bright stars in the constellation of Jewish life, the most joyous holiday of them all is undoubtedly the one that culminates this special season of the year known as the Days of Awe.

Simchat Torah, complete with dancing and singing, celebrates God’s gift of the Torah to the Israelites some 3,000 years ago, comprising the first books of the Bible known as the Five Books of Moses.

As heirs to the greatest religious teachings of all time, today’s Jews regard the holy Torah as the highest form of Revelation and are guided daily by its moral instruction.

On Simchat Torah, we complete the weekly cycle of Torah readings by reading the very last chapter of Deuteronomy. Yet, our tradition teaches that we are never fully finished with studying the Torah.

Right after we read the final words in the scroll, we roll it back to the beginning and read the opening words of Genesis. This reminds us that Torah learning is a never- ending process, from year to year, throughout life, from childhood to old age.

In honor of the holiday, I would like to share a very special story about a Torah scroll that came home this year. The temple that I serve, Congregation Rodef Sholom, owns many Torah scrolls, as do most Jewish houses of worship, to underscore the importance of the Torah in Judaism and in our lives. Unfortunately, there are some congregations, especially new ones, that cannot afford to purchase a Torah, which is very expensive because each scroll is handwritten by a scribe, a painstaking labor of love that can take up to a full year.

Back in 1947, there was a temple in Beaver Falls, Pa., in need of a Torah. A newly ordained Reform rabbi named A. Stanley Dreyfus, who hailed from Youngstown, prevailed upon the members of Rodef Sholom to permanently loan Temple Beth El one of their Torah scrolls, which they did. The scroll was very old, dating back to 1868, the year after Rodef Sholom was founded, but was still in good condition. Rabbi Dreyfus served the Beaver Falls congregation as their spiritual leader from 1946-51. When the congregation disbanded in the late 1950s, they contacted Rabbi Dreyfus and returned the Torah to him, which he kept in his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., for the next 50 years.

Rabbi Dreyfus unfortunately passed away in July 2008. This past August, his wife, Marianne, contacted me about the Torah, asking whether Rodef Sholom wished to have it returned or passed along to another congregation in need of a scroll. I thought about how meaningful it would be for my members to have the Torah come home again, particularly for those who belonged to the congregation when it was still in possession of the scroll before 1947. I jumped at the chance, but wondered how it would be brought back to Youngstown. As luck would have it, a couple from the congregation, Andy and Hilari Lipkin, were going to New York to visit family and graciously offered to pick up the Torah from Mrs. Dreyfus at her residence in Brooklyn and bring it back to Youngstown. Talk about a mitzvah, or good deed! I was ecstatic. And what timing, for all this occurred only days before the start of Rosh Hashanah.

To properly welcome the Torah home, I decided to read from the scroll during the New Year morning service Sept. 19, and tell the congregation the whole amazing story. This is how I began: “Dear friends, a Torah scroll is like a person. It journeys to different places in the course of its lifespan. It imparts wisdom to the people it touches and influences at each stop along the way. Sometimes, just like a person, it gets to come home again, where it all began. Let me tell you a story about a Torah, one of our Torahs, that has just come home to us.”

Well, you could have heard a pin drop in the entire sanctuary. I noticed some eyes moist with tears, others with smiles from ear to ear, and heads nodding with pride. It was quite a moment. I concluded as follows: “Some day this Torah will continue its journey to another congregation where it shall further its mission of teaching a new group of our people about the history, ethics and values of Judaism.” Over the next couple of weeks, I took advantage of every opportunity to tell the story, especially to the children in the congregation. Little did I know at the time was what was yet to happen.

Just last week, on the last day of September, I got a phone call from Ina Rae Burdman Levy, who grew up in Youngstown and was married to Rabbi Ted Levy, who sadly passed away a few years ago. Active in the World Union for Progressive Judaism for nearly fifty years, which has been instrumental in helping to establish new liberal Reform congregations all over the world, Ina Rae asked me a question that I have never once been asked in my 26 years since ordination from rabbinical school. “Rabbi,” she asked, “do you by any chance have an extra Torah at the temple that you would be willing to place on permanent loan to a new congregation forming in Russia?” I was floored. Talk about “beshert,” the Yiddish word we use when something was ordained in heaven, or meant to be! Choking back the emotion, I said that her timing couldn’t have been any better.

What an incredible coda to this story, as the Torah that came home to Rodef Sholom will soon be on its way to Congregation Kadima, located in a small town called Gomel, in Belarus, Russia. Call it serendipity or coincidence, but amazingly enough, Ina Rae’s mother, Doris Burdman, of Blessed Memory, who in the years she was alive made quite an impact on Youngstown through her philanthropic and volunteer efforts, was a student in the Medical School in Gomel as a young woman.

As the Torah journeys on to its next destination halfway across the globe, may its spiritual teachings and moral lessons resonate within the hearts and minds of those new parishioners who will minister to its cause and care for it as their newest child, and undoubtedly their most valued possession. Happy Simchat Torah!

XRabbi Franklin W. Muller is the rabbi at Temple Rodef Sholom in Youngstown.