Mayor Joins Jewish Community to Welcome New Torah

Thousands of years of Jewish history has come home to Oceanside, California with Sunday’s dedication of the new community Torah scroll for the city’s Chabad Jewish Center.

More than 100 attended a dedication ceremony on Sunday at the Courtyard Marriott in Oceanside, marking a major turning point for the eight-year-old Jewish center.

“It’s a huge milestone for us,” said Rabbi Baruch Greenburg, who helped start the center in Oceanside from a small table in his home.

“It’s a new era for the community,” he added, which now includes more than 300 members.

On parchment scrolls, complete with 10,416 lines of text and 304,805 Hebrew letters, the Torah was written by a trained scribe in Israel after being commissioned by the local Jewish center late last year. As it did 3,300 years ago, the Torah features the first five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

At just about 2 feet long from shaft to shaft – carved wooden handles that help keep the scroll in place – a Torah is a major step for a Jewish community, an endeavor funded with money from community members.

“It’s a really special occasion,” said Paula Gillick, a Oceanside resident who stood in line to help write the last letters of the Torah as part of the ceremony. “There wasn’t anything that brought the Jewish community together here before this.”

In Jewish tradition, the ceremony is likened to a wedding ceremony, complete with an ornate chuppah canopy adorning the table where the Torah was unrolled, vibrant music, a cheerful procession and festive food.

Yet Oceanside resident Kenneth Mitzner said it’s more like a bar mitvah, the traditional ceremony for Jewish teenagers.

“It means this congregation … we as a whole are coming of age,” said Mitzner, who has been involved with the Oceanside Chabad for nearly six years. “It means we are large enough and we have enough members to have this for the community.”

Mitzner found out about the center after moving to Oceanside from Torrance; he received a flier in the mail about one of the high holidays. “Our lives changed after that,” he said, sitting alongside his wife, Ruth Mitzner. “None of the Jews in Oceanside knew the other existed.”

Abe Levy, another Oceanside resident who has been involved with the center for most of its existence, said the new Torah ensures a local stake in the continuity of Jewish customs for his two children.

“This beings Jewish life to Oceanside,” he said. “It means our children will have a Jewish life to live.”

Mayor Jim Wood attended the ceremony to give the Chabad a proclamation on behalf of the City Council.

“This is wonderful for the community and the diversity of Oceanside,” he said. “This is really something special.”