Features

6/22/2002 11:08:11 AM

Celebration and jubilation Blythe Wachter
Leader-Telegram Staff

Leader-Telegram staff photo

Rabbi Yosi Gordon, front, along with other members and guests of Temple Sholom Synagogue in Eau Claire danced Sunday during a dedication ceremony for the congregation’s new Torah scroll, which Gordon discovered in Israel last year.

Dancing spilled from the red-carpeted aisle of Temple Sholom Synagogue into the street Sunday.

As Minneapolis accordionist Mark Stillman played Jewish folk (klezmer) music, dozens of members and guests joyously joined hands and danced around a weddinglike canopy.

But the celebration was not a wedding but a dedication of the congregation’s new Torah -- although members shared the emotions of a bride and bridegroom as they took turns holding the heavy scroll under the white canopy.

“If I have to describe a feeling we have for the Torah, it’s love,” Rabbi Yosi Gordon said.

The Torah contains the first five Books of the Hebrew Scriptures, or the Books of Moses. It is handwritten in Hebrew by a special scribe using quill pens and ink on a parchment scroll.

Every scroll, in a continuity from ancient times, is copied letter-for-letter, column-for-column, from another scroll. Every letter must be perfect, and no two letters may touch, according to Helaine Minkus, president of the congregation. 

The Torah contains Judaism’s central teachings. Gordon, who lives in St. Paul and serves as the congregation’s part-time rabbi, described it as the anchor keeping a community together. 

The congregation’s new Torah once belonged to a Russian synagogue. Gordon discovered the scroll, written in Prague about 1930, in Israel last summer.

Temple Sholom, 1223 Emery St., already owned three Torah scrolls. But the one that was used most had major rips and water damage, and some of the letters had flaked off with age. A Torah scribe determined it could not be repaired.

Because none of the congregation’s scrolls were kosher, or ritually fit to use, congregants decided in December 2000 to raise funds for a restored Torah. A new one would cost $40,000 to $60,000, Minkus said.

The congregation, which has a fluctuating membership of 30 to 40 families, raised about $20,000. To acquire and restore the scroll cost about $11,500, leaving the congregation money to refurbish the synagogue -- “to make a proper home for the Torah,” Minkus said.

Stained-glass doors designed by artist Laurie Bieze replaced old, dusty drapes on a newly constructed ark, where the scrolls are kept. Members cleaned and painted, added new lights, installed new windows, refurbished the podium and bought American and Israeli flags.

Completing a new Torah can take a scribe up to three years; restoring Temple Sholom’s scroll took seven to eight months. 

“It’s handwritten, and it has to be absolutely correct,” Minkus said.

A scribe does repairs to a scroll under a rabbi’s supervision. When the name of God is repaired, a special expert is required, Gordon said.

After the scribe makes the repairs, a computer scans the scroll to check for accuracy. A computer caught 31 errors in the congregation’s Torah, which then were corrected.

The parchment is attached to rollers called “atzei hayyim.” 

At Sunday’s celebration, member Suzon Gordon of Altoona passed out copies of the service’s Torah readings in Hebrew and English. She said she was delighted the congregation now has a scroll in which “we can read all the words in any section.”

The congregation learned details about its scrolls during a May visit to Eau Claire by Rabbi Eric Ray, a renowned Torah scribe and expert on calligraphy styles from New York. He identified two of the scrolls as dating back to the late 1800s and a third to about 1920.

“To me, it’s exciting because this temple already had three Torah scrolls, and nobody knew where they came from or what they were about until last month,” Gordon said.

The new Torah -- already used in a bar mitzvah for a 13-year-old -- has been a means of growth, Minkus said. Several members learned to chant a line from the Torah for the first time for the dedication, she said.

“We all amazingly invested in this project with our hearts and souls,” Gordon said.

Several guests, including a few Christian and Muslim neighbors, attended the celebration. Among the guests was Vicky Dim of St. Paul, who said she was “thrilled.”

“As Rabbi Gordon says, the Torah is the most precious object in Jewish life,” Dim said. “It’s very rare in a lifetime to be part of a congregation acquiring a Torah.”

Coming the farthest was Dana Giffen of Ashland, Ore., who was part of the congregation for 28 years. “This community is very dear to me,” she said.

“It’s a joy to come together for a happy occasion.” 

Wachter can be reached at 830-5828, (800) 236-7077 or blythe.wachter@ecpc.com.

Reprinted with permission, from the Leader-Telegram Online Features , 6/22/2002.