Theft allows Yeshiva Students to get a hands-on Lesson

TWIN CITIES, MN — One month after a handwritten Torah was stolen from Yeshiva High School of the Twin Cities in Cottage Grove, a scribe is working on writing a new one.

Under a trained and experienced scribe’s watchful eye, on Sunday, the school’s students, rabbis and other members of the Jewish community had a chance to write the first few words of the Jewish holy book, which will contain more than 350,000 handwritten letters when it’s complete.

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Each letter of the book must be correct, said Rabbi Moshe Feller at the ceremony, just as every action a person carries out is important.

“Everyone should constantly see themselves in balance and the world in balance — 50/50 — 50 percent to the side of merit and 50 percent to the other side of demerit … and that puts tremendous responsibility because our next deed could tilt the balance for ourself and for the world to the side of merit,” said Feller. “That’s the message of the Torah.”

Through Sunday’s celebration, the student’s got the chance for a hands-on lesson they probably would not have gotten under normal circumstances.

“It’s something they probably would have studied in a classroom somewhere along the line during their years at a Yeshiva,” said Rabbi Mottel Friedman, executive director and dean of the school. “We are showing our students and learning with our students the importance of responding with positivity to a negative event — and not just on par with the negative event. We can’t just go back to the way things were, we need to make it better, we need to grow.”

The school’s handwritten Torah was stolen in late September. Cottage Grove Police Investigator Greg Malcolm, who has been working on the case, said it is the farthest-reaching investigation he has ever been involved in. Yet, at this point he said he has few good leads.

Attention to the crime has also been far-reaching. A national Jewish magazine, American Jewish World, and one of the biggest Jewish Web sites Chabad.org carried stories about the crime.

“Someone didn’t just steal something from us; a lot of people feel the same feeling of violation that we feel,” said Rabbi Moshe Weiss, director of development at the school. “They feel that the Torah was stolen from them as well — people that we’ve never even met, Jews and non-Jews.”

At the school, the handwritten Torah, which contains the first five books of the Old Testament, was taken out three times per week, on Monday, Thursday and Saturday, to be used for services. Torah law requires that only a handwritten Torah be used for services.

“The divinity and the holiness of the Torah really raises the holiness of the entire institution,” Friedman said. “There are restrictions as to what you can and cannot do in the same room as a Torah, in the same building as a Torah, in the presence of the Torah, so it adds a lot of decorum … it helps with the feeling of ‘we’re here for a purpose.’”

The new Torah will take about a year to complete, and will cost $48,000, Friedman said. A scribe from the Twin Cities helped the school start on the project, and the scroll will be sent to a scribe in Brooklyn, N.Y., for completion.

Friedman said they’re still hoping the missing Torah will be returned, but they will continue with the creation of the new one regardless.

“You never stop doing a good thing once you’ve started,” Friedman said.

Anyone with information on the crime is encouraged to call the Cottage Grove Police Department Tip line at (651) 458-2801.