Tom Vogt - The Columbian

Levi Kagan, a scribe from Detroit, attends a Torah inauguration ceremony at the Chabad Jewish Center in Vancouver. Kagan did the first few characters on the Jewish sacred text Friday.

VANCOUVER, WA — This is how important the Torah has been to the family of Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg: It’s measured by the opportunity the Greenbergs had 42 years ago when they were allowed to leave the Soviet Union and settle in the promised land.

A Torah all their own

Tom Vogt – The Columbian

Levi Kagan, a scribe from Detroit, attends a Torah inauguration ceremony at the Chabad Jewish Center in Vancouver. Kagan did the first few characters on the Jewish sacred text Friday.

VANCOUVER, WA — This is how important the Torah has been to the family of Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg: It’s measured by the opportunity the Greenbergs had 42 years ago when they were allowed to leave the Soviet Union and settle in the promised land.

Greenberg’s parents boarded the train in Moscow with their five children, some luggage and a rolled-up rug. And then they risked their chance at freedom by hiding two Torahs inside that rug.

The Jewish sacred scrolls remained undiscovered when they passed through the border checkpoint — “We call it a miracle,” Greenberg said — and his family was safely on its way to Israel.

Now the Vancouver rabbi is undertaking another Torah adventure. Chabad Jewish Center literally opened a new chapter Friday evening when a visiting scribe carefully inked the first few characters on a new piece of unblemished parchment.

While it’s the first Torah written for the local Jewish community, it follows a tradition that goes back 3,220 years to Moses, Greenberg told the members of the group.

“We have a chance to be part of that chain,” Greenberg said.

Most of the work will be done over the next year or so by a scribe in Israel, but the members of the local Jewish community had a chance to watch the project get under way. Levi

Kagan dipped a quill pen in black ink and made the first stroke on the parchment.

“I am very happy to be part of it,” said the Detroit scribe, who works primarily as a restoration and repair specialist.

It was the first of what will be 350,000 characters in the Chabad center’s Torah. And character by character, space by space, line by line, the scroll will be identical to every Torah that has come before it over the span of 32 centuries.

“You copy from another Torah, or from a reference book,” Kagan said.

If even one letter is missing, the entire scroll is unfit for use. But the Torah won’t be quite finished when it comes back next year. The last bit of work will be done here, in a completion ceremony that will mirror Friday’s initial work.

The characters are penned on parchment made from the skins of kosher animals. When the Chabad Torah comes back to Vancouver, the scroll will be about 120 feet long and will list 613 mitzvahs, or commandments. And the very last mitzvah commands every man to have his own scroll.

It can be undertaken collectively, however, and that’s what the Chabad Jewish Center is doing through its Clark County Community Torah project. Marty Rifkin of Vancouver and his family will match whatever the rest of the community donates.

“We all will have an opportunity to participate in the 613th mitzvah,” Rifkin said.

“This is a once-in-lifetime opportunity,” Rifkin said. “It’s rare for a community to have an opportunity to create one. A lot of Torahs come from other places.”

Which echoes how Rabbi Greenberg’s family took those Torahs to Israel in 1966. The scrolls weren’t theirs, by the way. After the Soviets closed down synagogues, they stored the Torahs in a warehouse.

“A Jew probably bribed a guard to get them out before they were destroyed,” Greenberg said. “There were 150 Torahs in the warehouse. Think of how many synagogues that represented.”

4 Comments

  • looking 4

    I’ve been looking for chabad for some time now in Vancouver, would anyone know a way to get a hold of them, and know which part of Vancouver they are in? thank you for this article!

  • Native Vancouverite

    Chabad of Vancouver: (604) 266 1313
    Rabbi Wineberg & Rabbi Dubrawsky

    Chabad of Downtown: (778) 371 9508
    Rabbi Bitton

    June 11, 2008 1:03am

  • here it is!

    vancouver, bc, canada.
    shliach: rabbi and mrs wineberg
    chabad address: 5750 Oak ST.
    chabad #- 604-266-1313