Teens Help to Mend a Holocaust-Era Torah, Letter by Letter
Samantha Busey, 17, is part of a weighty project taking place in Boca Raton, Fla. The CTeen member is raising funds to restore a Holocaust-era Torah that was brought to America from Russia.
A few years ago, Chabad of Boca Raton congregants Sibyl and Bob Silver heard about several Torahs being housed along with other Judaica outside of Moscow. Through their work, three Torahs have been brought to the United States, one of which the CTeen group has set out to refurbish.
The CTeen members—about 100 in the area’s program—are giving people the chance to buy letters in the Torah, with the five most active teen participants slated to accompany one of the Torahs to be read in Jerusalem near theWestern Wall (Kotel) after it’s refurbished around the middle of 2016. The project is ongoing; teens can continue to join.
“The idea that people would own letters in the Torah sparks an unbelievable unity between the Jews,” said Chabad Rabbi Yossi Denburg, director of CTeen of Boca Raton. “It brings out the unity of all those Jews in a very strong way and connects the Torah to all other Torahs, even the Torah received by Moses.”
The Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—started a special campaign in the 1980s tied to buying letters in the Torah as a way of fostering Jewish unity, explained Denburg.
Today, Busey and the other CTeen members are out in their community, asking people to help rewrite portions of the Torah that were ruined.
This is an opportunity not only to repair a Torah, but to repair one that survived the Holocaust era and is being brought back to life, stresses Denburg.
“Usually, when the Holocaust is mentioned, it’s because it brings a solemn remembrance,” says the rabbi. “I think it’s nice that the Holocaust is now being used as avenue through which teens could perform this unbelievable campaign of convincing Jews to own their own letter in the Torah. It’s directly encouraging active Jewish participation.”
The Denburgs have received funding from the Meromim foundation through the Merkos 302 global Jewish youth initiative to move ahead with some of their work this year.
‘We Can Fix It’
This is Samantha’s first project with CTeen. Growing up, she went to Hebrew school, but says for the most part, she was the only Jewish young person in her area. “It’s the first time I’ve done anything with Jewish kids,” she says. “We’ve added each other on social media, we’ve been talking, and it’s been cool to connect with others in my age range who come from the same culture.”
She feels she’s been learning a lot from the CTeen program and is glad to be a part of it, especially where this project is concerned. For her, the Torah restoration is a responsibility, she explains. “I feel like as a Jew, the Holocaust was the darkest chapter in our history. It was pretty much the darkest chapter in human history, so I feel like taking a piece from that time and fixing it, showing we’re still around and still care is so important.”
Maya Franks attended the kick-off event for the Torah-restoration project, which was also her first experience with the teen group affiliated with theChabad-Lubavitch movement. The group had the chance to practice writing on a piece of parchment with a feather pen and ink—similar to what a scribe would do—and got to hear from the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
Maya says she found the talk powerful and motivational: “It was really moving; it just brought everything together. It felt a lot more purposeful, what we were doing.”
In fact, she told her great-uncle, himself a survivor, about the project this past weekend, and reports that he was excited and interested in her efforts to make the Torah whole again.
Beyond the Torah’s restoration, the 16-year-old says she’s most inspired by the fact that after the Torah is ready, they’re going to take it to Israel and read it. “It’s going to be used again,” she says. “That’s the part that’s important for me—that they’re making it so we can use it again. Even though the damage happened, we can still use it and fix it, and move on from there.”
‘Standing for Freedom’
CTeen parent Ilene Busey, whose family lost relatives in the Holocaust, says she’s honored that her daughter has the chance to be involved with Chabad and the Torah project. In fact, she and her husband Scott want their three younger children to experience CTeen one day as well.
“They’re a beautiful young family,” Busey says of the Denburgs—the rabbi, his wife Shayna and their two young children—who started their work with Jewish teenagers in Boca Raton just this year. “They’ve opened their doors and their hearts to my daughter and other kids in the community. CTeen is phenomenal and their message is phenomenal, and I’m proud that we’re a part of this.”
More than that, she adds, Samantha is now part of this Torah’s story.
Repairing the Torah, continues Busey, is especially important in today’s world.
“Each letter symbolizes the fact that we’re standing for so much, that we’re standing for freedom, for our rights as Jews,” she explains. “It’s very powerful that G-d’s work should stand—that it shouldn’t be destroyed, that it should be repaired, and that we should have a better hope for tomorrow.”
