While there is no such thing as 100%, we’ve done a great job at making ourselves more secure. But at what cost?
We can assign a dollar value to it. We introduced a voluntary security assessment this year.
There is also the cost in time. I can’t even imagine how many hours I have spent going to security workshops, meeting with police officers, having conversations with staff and lay leaders, interviewing security companies—all time that could have been spent doing something more productive.
There is the cost in stress. That is a little more difficult to measure. But fear, no matter how irrational, causes anxiety, which takes a physical toll on us.
For a synagogue community, there is another toll. In placing so much emphasis on securing the body, we neglect the spirit.
The walls of this building are now harder than ever, but what about what is inside these walls?
Emil Fackenheim was born in 1916 in Germany. Like many enlightened German Jews of his generation, he embraced both aspects of his identity, believing that the flourishing Jewish community in Germany was secure. Studying at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, he received his ordination as a Reform rabbi from Dr. Leo Baeck in 1938.
After Kristallnacht, Fackenheim was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but was released after 3 months. He escaped to Scotland, where his parents joined him. Fackenheim was then sent to Canada, where he was interned as an enemy alien for 16 months. His older brother did not escape Europe, and was murdered in the Holocaust.
Fackenheim served as a pulpit rabbi for several years, and then became a Professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. He became a Zionist in 1967, when he came to understand the central importance of the Jewish state. He made aliyah in 1984 and joined the faculty at Hebrew University. Fackenheim passed away in 2003.
In the 1960’s, Fackenheim first began to address the significance of the Holocaust to Jewish theology and philosophy. He is most well-known for adding a 614th commandment to the traditional 613 commandments in the Torah: “Don’t give Hitler a posthumous victory.” In an essay, Fackenheim explains what he means:
… we are, first, commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish. We are commanded, secondly, to remember in our very guts and bones the martyrs of the Holocaust, lest their memory perish. We are forbidden, thirdly, to deny or despair of God, however much we may have to contend with him or with belief in him, lest Judaism perish. We are forbidden, finally, to despair of the world as the place which is to become the kingdom of God, lest we help make it a meaningless place in which God is dead or irrelevant and everything is permitted. To abandon any of these imperatives, in response to Hitler’s victory at Auschwitz, would be to hand him yet other, posthumous victories.
Emil Fackenheim, Essay entitled “The 614th Commandment.”
To summarize, he lists four aspects to the 614th commandment:
- Survive
- Remember the martyrs of the Holocaust
- Don’t give up on God
- Don’t give up on the world
The 614th commandment has been criticized as being too focused on the tragedy of the Holocaust as the primary motivating force for Jewish survival. It is not enough to merely survive. Judaism, and the Jewish people, must be worthy of survival. Jewish survival must be for something positive, rather than merely denying Hitler a posthumous victory.
I cannot imagine that Fackenheim would have disagreed with that. We have done a great job of physically ensuring Jewish survival. We have hardened our synagogues, schools, and community centers. Is there any religion that surrounds its houses of worship with as much security as we do?
The prowess of the Israel Defense Forces is legendary. Jewish organizations closely monitor the media and keep close watch on antisemitic groups around the world. We are an extremely vigilant people. But does this vigilance translate to an embrace of the positive reasons for Jewish existence? We can have the tightest security imaginable, but what are we protecting?
We need to match, or even surpass, our commitment to security with a commitment to Jewish life. Let’s fill our insides with Yiddishkeit, both in our synagogue and in our homes. Emil Fackenheim numbered his mitzvah 614. This year at Sinai, we are going to embrace the immediately preceding commandment: mitzvah number 613: Thou shalt write a Torah. Maimonides explains the mitzvah clearly.
It is a positive commandment for each and every Jewish person to write a Torah scroll for themself…
Mishneh Torah, Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah and the Torah Scroll, 7:1
Write a Torah scroll?! This is a difficult mitzvah to achieve. What do we need another Torah scroll for? Don’t we have an ark full of them? Can’t we just pull a printed copy off the shelf? What is the point of such a difficult requirement?
Maimonides addresses this question as well. He writes:
Even if a person’s ancestors left behind a Torah scroll, it is a mitzvah to write one oneself. A person who writes the scroll by hand is considered to be like someone who received it on Mount Sinai.
Ibid.
This still does not address the very real objection that the skill needed to write a Torah scroll is substantial. The Torah is a big book, and it takes a tremendous amount of knowledge and time to write it. People in Maimonides’ day were no more capable of fulfilling this mitzvah than we are today. So he continues:
[Someone who] does not know how to write it personally, [should have] others write it for him.
Ibid.
The solution is to hire a sofer, a scribe, to serve as our representative. And for a bonus: if a person writes a single letter of the Torah, it is as if that person has written an entire Torah. That is because if a single letter is missing, the entire Torah is pasul, or invalid. So it is possible for a sofer to guide a person’s hand in writing the letter correctly, and then that person gets credit for the entire scroll. That’s a pretty good deal.
What is so special about the Torah?
On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the creation of the world. Rabbinic teachings suggest that the physical world around us was not the first thing to come into existence. A midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 1:1) states that, before declaring “Let there be light,” God first created the Torah and used it as a blueprint.
Similar to Plato’s Theory of Forms, God’s Torah is the perfect, non-physical template upon which our physical world is modeled. Jewish tradition teaches that all Truth, all knowledge, is hidden within the words of Torah. hafokh bah v’hafokh bah, ki khulah vah, Pirkei Avot teaches. “Turn it and turn it, for all is in it.” As we continue to plumb its depths from one generation to the next, revelation continues.
Just as the metaphysical Torah lies at the center of Creation, the physical Torah scroll is placed at the center of the synagogue, in the Holy Ark, modeled after the Holy of Holies. A Torah scroll is the most sacred item in Judaism. This makes the 613th commandment a particularly meaningful one.
I am excited to announce that this year will be the “Year of the Torah” at Congregation Sinai. By next Rosh Hashanah, we will have a new Torah scroll in our ark. Thanks to Jeanette and Eli Reinhard, who are dedicating this Torah, every single one of us will have the opportunity to fulfill the 613th mitzvah, personally scribing a letter.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about Sinai’s existing Sifrei Torah. These are the scrolls that, as Maimonides describes, have been “left to us by our ancestors.”
When we look into the ark, we see the mantle, not the scroll underneath. Right now, we have a beautiful set of High Holiday mantles that were custom made in 2013. What about what is inside? The words are the same in all of them, but each of these scrolls is unique. How did they get here?
In every case, there was once a blank parchment over which a skilled sofer toiled. When he finished, a person or community purchased that Torah. How many arks was it stored in? How many B’nei Mitzvah were celebrated with it? What was its journey? How did it arrive at Congregation Sinai?
I have been doing some research. Before the Holocaust, there was a lot of money to be made in Eastern Europe writing Sifrei Torah for Jews in America. A sofer could earn enough by writing one Torah to support himself and his family for an entire year. To give you an idea of how big this business was, there were around 5,000 soferim in the region around Warsaw alone.
As the Jewish population in America became more established, Ashkenazi immigrants would write to their relatives in the old country to arrange to have a Torah sent over.
In Russia, the sofrut business ended abruptly in the early 1920’s when the Communists took over. In fact, there are large stashes of Torah scrolls in Russia today, numbering in the thousands, that were confiscated during the Soviet era. In Poland, Romania, Hungary, and other communities, the business dried up in the 1930’s.
Congregation Sinai was founded in 1954. All seven of our Torah scrolls are from this pre-war period. My best guess is that, by 1960, Sinai had acquired all of them. Most likely, they were purchased on the used market by members of the young synagogue, although it is possible that some of them may have been passed down in the family. The eighth Torah, owned by the Mirkin family, has been on permanent loan since 1991.
A Torah is written on parchment, which is made from the skin of a kosher animal. It takes 62 to 84 individual sheets of parchment, stitched together with animal sinew, to make one Torah. The scroll is attached to wooden posts called atzei chayim, trees of life.
The sofer writes with a feather pen, using special ink. There are precise rules about the correct formation of every single letter. Rows and columns must be straight, and not one of the 304,805 letters can touch another.
We treat the Torah, which contains the words of God, like royalty. We tie it together with a belt, dress it in a decorated mantle, crown it, and stand up to give it honor whenever it is removed from the ark. To prevent deterioration, we don’t touch the letters, using a yad, hand, to point out the correct place in the text.
For a Torah scroll to be used during services, every single letter must be correct and legible. A single mistake renders an entire scroll pasul.
Over time, Torah scrolls deteriorate. The letters can fade, smear, or even crack off the parchment. Parchment can tear, and stitching comes out. If the letters deteriorate too much, a Torah becomes pasul. A pasul Torah can be restored by a sofer. A restoration involves cleaning, re-inking letters, sewing together torn or separated pieces of parchment, and patching holes.
Currently, two of the Torah scrolls in our ark are kasher. Two are kasher b’diavad, which means that they are kosher for ritual purposes, but there are significant problems that, if not addressed, could eventually invalidate them. Four of the scrolls are pasul and cannot be used in their current condition. I’d like to say something about each of them.
Let’s start with the two kasher scrolls. The scroll that we use week in and week out was donated by the Berman family in 1959. The mantle was replaced in 1986 in memory of Mary Rokofsky, the grandmother of Sinai’s rabbi at the time, Alan Berkowitz.
The Smulyn Torah comes from Russia. The current cover was dedicated by Al and Ruth Sporer in 1991 in memory of Al’s mother, Kreindel Perel bat Shmuel Yitzchak. At some point, a coating of lime was painted on the back of the parchment so that it would look white whenever it was lifted. That makes it extremely heavy, and unfortunately can also cause faster deterioration.
Next come the two kasher b’diavad scrolls. Mr. and Mrs. Hyman Weisel donated this Torah, which is from Germany. Several different scripts are apparent in various parts. It was not uncommon for soferim in different villages to specialize in certain books of the Torah. As long as the size and spacing lined up, the different segments could be stitched together into a single scroll. The cover was replaced in 1986.
This Torah is on long term loan by Barry and Rosemarie Mirkin. It has a special history at Sinai. Barry’s grandfather commissioned a scribe to write it in Kiev in 1912, even dedicating a special room in the house. He was planning on immigrating to America, and wanted to bring a Torah scroll with him. He left it incomplete, intending to have it finished in America. Things did not work out as intended. After many harrowing adventures, including being arrested, he and his wife landed in Massachusetts in 1923. The Torah was shipped in a wooden crate, surrounded by sanitary pads. He never got around to completing it.
In 1991, Barry brought the scroll to San Jose. A sofer came to finish what Barry’s grandfather had begun 79 years earlier. Members of the community were given the opportunity to participate. We have photo albums of people writing letters with the sofer, fulfilling the 613th mitzvah. Some of those people are in this room. There are also photos of parades and dancing to celebrate its completion.
Sinai’s remaining Torah scrolls are pasul. This Polish Torah was donated by David and Ethel Hellman. It was probably Sinai’s first Torah. Congregation Sinai was formed in the Hellman living room when David needed to say kaddish for his father when he died in January, 1953. This Torah was purchased in April that year from a Judaica shop in New York for $300 and donated to Sinai in his memory. This cover is from 1991.
This Torah is from Russia, and was dedicated by Sol & Charlotte Ellner in memory of Sol’s parents. The Torah can always be identified by its multi-colored handles. The cover was donated in 1986 by Sinai’s Confirmation Class.
The next two scrolls are Sinai’s oldest, dating from the 19th century. This mantle goes with our heaviest Torah, from Germany. It was donated by Marcus Liebster, a Holocaust survivor, in memory of his parents. I suspect that the red cover dates to the 1950’s when it was donated.
This Torah, our smallest, is from Poland, and was donated by the Konar family. The cover was donated by the Sporer’s in 1991 in memory of Elka Sosha bat Feivel, Ruth and Maureen’s grandmother.
These eight scrolls bring with them a lot of memories, only some of which can be redeemed. If they could speak, what would they say?
All of our scrolls are heavy. So heavy that the number of people who feel comfortable performing hagbahah, or lifting the Torah up high after the reading, is limited. Because of improvements in parchment making technology, new Torah scrolls are considerably lighter than older ones. Sinai’s new Torah will be less than 15 pounds. The writing will be clear and beautiful.
It will be the first time in Sinai’s history that a new Torah scroll, written especially for our community, will be placed in this ark. Thank you again to Eli and Jeanette for making this a possibility for us.
The bulk of the Torah will be written by a sofer in Israel, where most Torah’s are written these days. The sofer we are working with is Zerach Greenfield. He will visit several times over the coming months to teach us about our most precious book. He will also do some writing. We want as many people as possible to write a letter: women, men, and children.
This is a potentially once in a lifetime opportunity for us.
A side part of the plan is to create new Torah covers for all of the Sifrei Torah in the ark, to be used throughout the year. They will complement one another thematically, and fit in with the look of the rest of our beautiful sanctuary. Best of all, Sinai members will have an opportunity to participate in actually making the covers. I cannot think of a better way for us to honor these ancient texts.
This is going to be an exciting year at Sinai. There will be so many opportunities to get involved. Take them. Jewish continuity is not guaranteed by locking down our security and strengthening our walls. It’s secured by filling our hearts.
This year, we are going to put a new Torah in the heart of our synagogue.
May it fill our hearts with love and pride.
Shanah Tovah Umetukah. May we have a sweet new year.
Rebyehoshua 