A century-old Torah that has made a journey around the world will be taken to Poland in May to complete its restoration, with South Florida Holocaust survivors writing in the final letters of the Old Testament scroll.
The Torah, rescued by Boca Raton resident Sibyl Silver, is one of 118 discovered in storage in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, 248 miles east of Moscow. Silver has brought three to Boca Raton, where they have a place of honor at her Orthodox congregation, Boca Raton Synagogue. She plans to return to Russia in the coming months to bring back several more.
The Torah will travel with high school students on the March of the Living, a two-week journey in which students visit concentration camps in Poland and then travel to Israel. About 15,000 students from all over the world are expected on this year’s trip, which begins May 1; 80 are expected from Boca Raton.
South Florida Holocaust survivors, traveling with students on the march, will fill in the final word of the Torah, “Israel,” during one of the stops in Poland, where a professional scribe will make sure the scroll, written on parchment with a special pen and ink, is ready for use. Silver said the completion of the Torah’s restoration in Poland demonstrates to anti-Semites that Jewish life survived the Holocaust.
“We are showing that the Jewish people cannot be eradicated,” Silver said. “You can’t kill us; we’re still here.”
Silver displayed the three Torahs she has rescued during a Holocaust Remembrance Daycommemoration on Wednesday at the Jewish Federation. Scribes who have examined them said each had a different site of origin: North Africa, Czech Republic and Belarus. All were placed in storage by the Russian Army after its soldiers liberated Eastern European cities at the end of World War II.
The rabbis got permission to bring 10 of the Torahs to their synagogues in Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow for restoration. Silver, through the Jewish Heritage Foundation, which she founded, hopes to help link the scrolls with descendants of the families who sponsored them or synagogues that want to place them in their congregations to be used during worship.
Silver, a retired teacher, described the many obstacles, worthy of a spy thriller, she has faced as she has worked for the past four years with Russian officials to have the Torahs released. She said she and her colleagues were stopped by Russian police and she suspects their telephones were bugged as they negotiated.
“I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge,” she said.
Rabbi Martin Boas of Deerfield Beach started restoring the Torah to be brought to Poland a week ago. He said it suffers from broken letters, faded ink and damaged parchment. He has to examine each letter to make sure it is written perfectly for the Torah, read during religious services, to be considered kosher, or usable.
“I’m about one-fifth of the way through,” said Boas, who said he has been restoring Torahs for 30 years. “It’s in surprisingly decent shape for a scroll that old.”
Rosa Golish, of Boca Raton, and her family have donated $10,000 to restore the scroll. Golish’s daughter, Ariella, went on the March of the Living last year. The family wants to have their youngest son, Yosef, read from the Torah during his bar mitzvah in Israel next year.
“When we heard about this project, we didn’t think about it for one second, we knew we wanted to do it,” Rosa Golish said.
The Jewish Heritage Foundation and the March of the Living Southern Region are accepting donations toward the scrolls’ repair. Call 561-852-6013 for more information.
Originally published HERE.
