THE YEAR OF THE TORAH

THE YEAR OF THE TORAH

First Day Rosh Hashanah 5764

September 27^th, 2003

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

 

This morning I want to talk with you about three Torahs. The first Torah is this little one. It isn't a kosher Torah because it was printed by machine on paper. The second Torah was a small kosher Torah with a very special story. It was destroyed in the fiery descent of the space shuttle Columbia. It was taken into space by the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. The third Torah was probably a large Torah scroll because it was used by the Romans to wrap around Rabbi Hanina ben Teradion when they burnt him at the stake for the crime of teaching Torah.

 

From these remarks I hope that you will grasp in your arms and hearts the preciousness, the unswerving devotion with which we the Jewish people have embraced Torah. It is more than a metaphoric "Tree of Life." It is our life. It is our life-force. It is our essence. All else is peripheral to our existence is as Jews. We have known it. Every oppressor has known it. With joy and brilliance we have taught and learned it, even at the peril of our lives. With Ilan Ramon it has been taken to the heights. All of Judaism stems from Torah. It is for this reason that the Aron HaKodesh, the Holy Ark containing Torah is the focal place of every synagogue. As much as you might look at the Cantor or me, by the architecture of this room your gaze is directed to Torah.

 

I have chosen to preach this morning on Torah most specifically because we are dedicating this year for our congregation as The Year of the Torah. Temple Beth-El has been the beneficiary of great love by its members and in all of our Arks we have seventeen sifrei Torah and four megilot Esther. The time came to inspect and restore the quality of each sefer Torah to its pristine condition. All except the Holocaust Torah in the case to my right, which is left in its desecrated condition. It is a perpetual reminder that the Nazis knew that to extinguish us you would have to destroy our soul - the Torah, not just burn our bodies. This year we are embarking on probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be able to dedicate letters, words, phrases, sections, books and entire scrolls in honor or memory of our families, children, grandchildren, spouses, as we restore our scrolls to their original initial and pure state. That linkage, the renewal of the spiritual umbilical chord that stretches from the dawn of our existence, begins for our congregation, here today, Rosh HaShanah, 5764.

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Just for our understanding, a sefer Torah is the Five Books of Moses, Chumash - five, Genesis through Deuteronomy, the first third of our Bible. It is written by a specially trained, pious person called a sofer writing with a unique compound, with usually a turkey feather as a quill on the skin of a kosher animal which has been specifically prepared. There are myriads of rules governing the creation of a Torah scroll. There are no vowels, periods or comas or musical notes in the sefer, the scroll. It is the supreme form of Jewish art, testimony to the centrality and our love of Torah. We know that the sefer we have today is virtually unchanged for two thousand years as pieces have been found at Masada and in the Dead Sea caves among the other scrolls. Its story, its values, its commands and demands, its ethic, ritual and milieu is what makes us, us.

I.

The first Torah:

I learned to pray, I learned my Torah in Junior Congregation. While the adults were in the main sanctuary, we were in the small chapel. Our voices met in the lobby. Every Shabbat we took turns being "rabbi," "cantor," and reading a summary of the weekly portion in English. Each of us received parts in the service and I have the original board. Before someone purchased a real sefer Torah, we used this one. We hugged it. We kissed it. We even fought over who would carry it. As children we learned that there was nothing more priceless than Torah. When my synagogue closed, as there were but few Jews left in my hometown, my synagogue allowed me to come a remove things before the building was sold. I took books from the library which were added to our Adult Learning Center library. And then I saw this Torah, remembered my youth, and brought it here. Every child should have their own Torah, for the youngest colorful stuffed ones, for older little ones like these, and for older yet, one like this. Each teenager and adult should have their own Chumash, Hebrew-English with notes to read and study. This Torah will be passed with my story to my granddaughter Ariel. Pass one to yours.

 

II.

The second Torah:

To understand this story you must realize that many people in Europe owned kosher, readable, very small sifrei Torah The following story appeared under headlines such as "Kaddish for a Sefer Torah" and "The Torah That Went from the Depths to the Heavens.". It occurred in a barracks in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen on a Tuesday morning in March 1944. There Rabbi Simon Dasberg unfurled his tiny Sefer Torah measuring just 4 1/2 inches tall. A thirteen-year-old, Joachim Joseph, chanted his blessings as Rabbi Dasberg had taught him, and read aloud from the sefer Torah. Men who were strong enough covered the windows and doors with blankets and stood watch to make sure that the SS guards weren't coming. Four candles barely lit the room. "Afterwards, everybody congratulated me. Somebody fished out a piece of chocolate that he had been saving, and somebody else fished out a tiny deck of playing cards. Everybody told me, 'You are a bar mitzvah boy now. You are an adult now.' I was very happy. And then everything was taken down, and we went out to morning roll call." Rabbi Simon Dasberg was forty-two years old at the time, and had been chief rabbi of the Netherlands. Ample testimony exists to substantiate that he had brought several Jewish texts to Bergen-Belsen and tried to study and pray from them every day. When the Rabbi learned that Joachim Joseph was thirteen, he asked if he could teach him to read from the miniature Torah. They studied secretly at night.

 

Joachim Joseph was born in Berlin and raised in Amsterdam. In his earlier years he watched and had anticipated quite a different scenario. In 1942 his family was sent to the Dutch prison camp Westerbork and a year later to Bergen-Belsen, the same path followed by Anne Frank. She died there. Joseph lived. There his parents were sent to other sections of the camp while his brother was with him.

 

Afterwards, Rabbi Dasberg gave Joachim Joseph a gift: the miniature Torah scroll, covered in a red velvet wrapper and tucked into a small green box. "He said: 'This little sefer Torah is yours to keep now, because I'm sure that I will not get out of here alive. And you maybe will.' And, you know how children are; I didn't want to take it. But he convinced me. And the condition was, I must tell the story." Rabbi Dasberg disappeared from his barracks a couple of months later. Joseph used rags to wrap the green velveteen box that held the Torah and stuck it deep down in his backpack. In a miraculous story his brother and parents survived, and eventually came to Palestine. In 1951, despite hating to talk about the camps and not wanting to do so, his father made him fulfill his promise to Rabbi Dasberg and published a first person account in the Jerusalem Post. He didn't speak about it for the next forty years. He studied atmospheric physics, received a doctorate from UCLA in 1966, and pioneered experiments in how dust particles in the atmosphere affect the climate. "He opened the Torah periodically just to look at it. But he never read from it." Nine years ago, with his oldest grandchildren six and eight, he took down the Torah and told them the story.

 

Ilan Ramon noticed that sefer Torah on a shelf in Joseph's study two years ago while visiting the apartment in Tel Aviv. The astronaut and the scientist were working on experiments that would be performed on the space shuttle, and they had become friends. Ramon asked about the scroll. Weeks later, he phoned Joseph from Houston and asked permission to carry the Torah into space. Joseph agreed immediately, happy for another chance to make good on his promise from long ago.

 

So when you see the terrifying video of the Space Shuttle Columbia that broke up that beautiful Shabbat morning, in addition to all the other feelings and observations, now you know that amidst all the debris was this one tiny, precious sefer Torah that had survived the depth of depravity to soar to the highest heavens, as near as to God as we can go.

 

III.

 

The third Torah:

The Roman legions sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in the year 70 C.E.. Yet they could not crush us nor destroy us. It was a most difficult era in our history. In the Talmudic tractate of Avodah Zarah (18a) is recorded the following story.

 

They found Rabbi Hanina ben Teradion sitting and occupying himself with the Torah, publicly gathering assemblies, and keeping a scroll of the Law in his bosom. Straightaway the Romans took hold of him, wrapt him in the Scroll of the Law, placed bundles of branches round him and set them on fire. They then brought tufts of wool, which they had soaked in water, and placed them over his heart, so that he should not expire quickly. His daughter exclaimed, 'Father, that I should see you in this state!' He replied, 'If it were I alone being burnt it would have been a thing hard to bear; but now that I am burning together with the Scroll of the Law, He who will have regard for the plight of the Torah will also have regard for my plight.' His disciples called out, 'Rabbi, what seest thou?' He answered them, 'The parchments are being burnt but the letters are soaring on high.' I repeat Rabbi Hanina's words:

The parchments are being burnt but the letters are soaring on high.

 

IV.

It is now our holy and sacred task to brings these letters back down to earth. Imagine that we can extend our hands, sweep them through the air, and from the ashes of Rabbi Hanina's Torah and from the debris from Ilan Ramon's Shuttle, catch the holy letters of Torah into our hands. There is an ancient maxim that every living soul is a letter of the Torah. We are each a letter and we may find our own letter. But the letters can not be left detached and separated. They have to be connected, for the maxim concludes, wherefore all souls together make up the Torah. Together all of us, adults and children, can in the most spiritual and holy way, recreate Rabbi Hanina's Torah and reconstitute Ilan Ramon's Torah. From the skies we will bring down their letters and make whole the Torahs. These Torah scrolls, reaching from the days of old will be read here, in this synagogue, on this bemah by our children and our children's children, and by generations beyond our view.

 

We will do this by each one of us dedicating a letter, a verse, a section, a parsha, a book of the Torah or an entire Torah scroll in honor, in memory, in love, of family and friends, of events in our lives. When the sofer comes a month from now, again next February, and then for the grand siyyum, conclusion, next May, we have the golden, exquisite opportunity to "write ourselves in the Torah," to become letters in our Torahs, to stitch ourselves into the eternal fabric of Torah. One of the sweetest memories of my youth, I was nine or ten, was watching the sofer fill in my letter in the Torah, donated by my parents. I don't know what happened to the certificate, but that letter is still afire in my soul. The fires that consumed Rabbi Hanina and Ilan Ramon did not consume their Torahs' letters. They await us to gather them and reconstitute them here in our Torahs, with all their glory, and with all our love. This Year of the Torah will be forever etched in our memories and hearts and that of our children.

 

Conclusion

In Pirkey Avot Rabbi Yose ben Kisma related: Once I was traveling on a journey. A certain man met me and extended greeting. I greeted him in return. He inquired, "From where do you come?" I replied, "I come from a great city of scholars and sages." He said, "Rabbi, if it would please you to live with us in our community, I would give you thousands of gold dinarim, as well as the most precious stones and pearls in the world." I replied, "Though you give me all the silver, gold, precious stones and pearls in the world, I would not live anywhere except in a community where there is Torah." Moreover, at the time of a person's death, neither silver, gold, precious stones, nor pearls will accompany him, only his Torah and good deeds. (Pirkey Avot 6:9)

 

We live here. The most precious and sacred thing that we have here are our Torahs. During this Year of the Torah, let us inscribe ourselves in our eternal Torah, letter by letter, verse by verse. We will bring down the letters of Rabbi Hanina and Ilan and together engrave them in our seventeen Torah scrolls.

 

It is said: "The Torah (of Moses) was not written ink, nor was it engraved on stone. It was white fire carved on black fire." (Opatoshu, Last Revolt, 1952, ch.10, p. 71). The letters that we will write will surely be a great fire, burning brightly in our hearts, and its light, from above, below and between the letters, will surely be an eternal flame that will last for all time. May this be a glorious, thrilling and uplifting experience for us all.  Amen.