Dancing rabbis on I-395

Drivers on Seminary Road witnessed an unusual sight Sunday evening near the I-395 exit. A group of bearded rabbis in black hats and long black coats danced down the middle of the road followed by a long procession of people clapping along to Jewish music coming from a black van that drove alongside with an organist inside.

Apartment residents along the route were seen clapping to the music on their balconies while some of those who drove by reportedly snapped photos on their cell phones. “Everyone was like looking at us dancing in the street,” said 11-year old Ellie Simon of Fairfax.

The parade was part of the celebration held by Chabad of Alexandria/Arlington, in honor of its newly completed Torah, the handwritten scroll containing the Five Books of Moses, which, according to rabbinic sources, God gave at Mt. Sinai in 1312 B.C.E.

“The Torah is the cornerstone of Judaism. It’s our guiding light. It’s our blue print for life,” said Rabbi Mordechai Newman, director of Chabad of Alexandria/ Arlington. “Wherever Jews went they had a Torah. That’s really what held the community together. They were following one Torah.”

Sunday’s event began with a Torah completion ceremony at the Hilton Mark Center hotel where the last two sentences were inscribed. Everyone rose from their chairs and stood while the last letter was written by Rabbi Newman’s father, Rabbi Leibel Newman, of Brooklyn. The project was dedicated in memory of his father, Pesach Chaim Newman, a businessman and devout Jew who died in 2002 at the age of 92.

A number of people from the community also were given the honor of writing one of the last few letters in the Torah. They included Marty Adam, Ken and Janet Barnett, Jerome and Bunny Chapman, Ed Gitow, Joshua and Natalie abatkhorian, and Eliot Stein, all of Alexandria; Morris and Marcia Bloom, Barry and Ingrid Isaacs, Professor Don and Gay Losman, and Jeffrey Shapiro, all of Arlington; Rabbi Jack Moline of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Rabbi Sholom Deitsch, Regional Director of Chabad Lubavitch of Northern Virginia, and Rabbi Shmuel Butman, of Brooklyn, who is Rabbi Mordechai Newman’s father-in-law.

Several hundred people donated the $40,000 needed to pay for the Torah, including its elaborate crown made of silver. An estimated 250 people came to Sunday’s event. Many of them joined the half mile march down Seminary Road to carry the new Torah to the Courtyard Marriott Pentagon South hotel, where Chabad of Alexandria/ Arlington, will have Jewish New Year services this weekend. The Torah was placed in the ark that will be used. The party then continued at the second hotel. Special prayers were recited followed by lots of singing and dancing to the music of Dovid’s One Man Band.

It takes an entire year to write one Torah and a scribe can only work on one at a time. All 304,805 letters are written with a quill and ink and a single error renders the entire scroll invalid, which is why the Brooklyn-based scribe who wrote the new Torah, Gad Sebag, said he used computer software to double check his work. But that’s the only thing that’s new about the process. The parchment is still made out of cow hides sewn together with dried sinew. Sixty three cows are needed for a single Torah.

Rabbi Leibel Newman, pointed out the sanctity attached to celebrating the Torah’s dedication. “This is what is purifying our world; bringing holiness into the world.”