The Human Side of the Story

For the week ending 6 May 2006 / 8 Iyyar 5766

Another Survivor Finds A Home

by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach zt'l
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We have featured in the past a story of Talmudic volumes of Polish Jews which survived the Holocaust and found a home in Yeshivat Ohr Somayach. This is a story of a Sefer Torah that made its journey from Poland to Baltimore to Israel.

Written in the early part of the last century, this Sefer Torah was brought after World War II to the Randallstown Synagogue in Baltimore, Maryland where it remained for several decades until that congregation closed down. Since it was too costly to repair, it seemed that it was headed for geniza interment.

An article in the Jerusalem Post about the efforts of the Jerusalem-based Chaim Veshalom Hatzolah organization to provide every Border Police base with its own Torah inspired students of the Baltimore-area Beth T’filoh Dahan Community School to raise the more than $6,000 needed to repair the scroll.

When the job was completed, 77 seniors of the high school brought the Torah to Israel via Poland and marched to the Kotel with it before presenting it to the Border Police.

“The kids marched under the chupah with the Torah,” said the school’s director of education, Zipora Schorr, in describing the ceremony at the school before it was sent to Israel, “and they sang ‘From Zion Came the Torah’ and now we’re sending it back to Zion.”

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