Miami Beach Synagogue’s Lost Torah to be Replaced

Scores of people gathered Sunday to collect money for a new Torah for Miami Beach’s Chabad Shul, which was damaged in a suspicious fire last month. Its Torah was apparently stolen.

MIAMI BEACH, FL — With a goose quill in his hand and a black ink pot at his side, a young New York rabbi Sunday began writing the words of the Hebrew Bible on parchment, the first step in a long rehabilitation for Orthodox Jews whose synagogue burned down last month in a suspicious fire.

”We’re trying to make a new beginning here and I’m more than glad to help out,” said Rabbi Yochanon Klein, of Brooklyn.

The making of a Torah includes the books of the Old Testament — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy — written upon 60 pieces of parchment sewn together into a continuous scroll.

Klein learned the craft of making a holy book in Michigan. He has made a ”handful” of Torahs since he was 16, including the first one for the Jewish community in Birmingham, Ala., completed in 2003.

His latest effort comes at a time when South Florida Jews are both vulnerable to and frustrated by new threats of anti-Semitism.

Last Wednesday — two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day — vandals spray-painted three swastika signs at the Chabad of Parkland in Broward County.

On April 22, the third day of Passover, someone set fire to the Chabad Shul.

Law enforcement agencies are investigating both incidents. The city of Miami Beach and the Anti-Defamation League have banded together to sponsor a May 19 forum on security for religious institutions.

Klein was a special guest during a fundraiser Sunday for Miami Beach’s Chabad Shul held at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center. The community is raising money to pay for its very first Torah since it doesn’t own one. And the Torah it had borrowed had disappeared after the fire.

A fourth-generation sofer, or scribe, Klein, 27, will spend the next eight to 10 months in Brooklyn handwriting the Torah, he said.

On Sunday, Klein showed Harriet and Karl Kritz how it was done.

Klein guided the hand of Karl Kritz, who sponsored the letter chet, which means life in Hebrew. Kritz and his wife, Harriet, sponsored the first letter for the Torah.

”The rabbi is writing the very first sentences of creation,” said Harriet Kritz. “It’s a very special happening to write a Torah, more so to replace one that has been desecrated.”

People were lining up to sponsor the Torah: a letter for $18 or a chapter for $1,800.

The Chabad Shul, which began in Miami Beach four years ago, has never owned its own Torah because it is too expensive. Costs run anywhere from $35,000 to $80,000. What’s worse, the borrowed Torah it had been using vanished in the fire, said Rabbi Zev Katz, head of the Chabad Shul.

NO REMNANTS

Katz and Zalman Fellig, who lent the Torah, believe it was stolen because they did not find any burned remnants inside the Holy Ark, a closet where it was kept.

”The Torah is being held in captivity,” Fellig said. “I would compare it to a time bomb. You’re playing with the holiest thing the Jewish people have.”

Beach police and fire officials have not determined the cause of the fire or whether the Torah was missing.

GOOD FROM TRAGEDY

As Katz watched Klein write down the letters and words being sponsored by congregants, he noted the outpouring of good that is arising from a tragedy that has baffled him and others.

Katz said: “This makes me feel the synagogue is really needed because people are showing their connection to it. We can keep going because of all the people behind us.”