Jewish Center in Greenacres Starts Writing New Torah Scroll

GREENACRES, FL — Menachem Mendel Korf, 8, was an integral part of the creation of a holy, sacred document.

He wrote the Hebrew letter mem in the word “vayomer,” Hebrew for “and he said,” in the third line of a new Torah scroll, the Jewish holy book.

“If you have one letter missing in the Torah, it makes the whole Torah not kosher,” said Rabbi Mendy Rosenfeld of Chabad Jewish Center in Greenacres. “Even if there is a cracked letter, it’s not kosher and you can’t read from that Torah scroll.”

Korf, of Miami Beach, was one of about 60 community members who gathered Monday evening at the Chabad center to celebrate the dedication of the synagogue’s first Torah scroll by writing the opening letters in the Torah. Velvel Lozynskyy, a study partner of Rosenfeld, donated the scroll, which cost thousands of dollars and will take nearly a year to complete.

“It’s such an exciting occasion,” said Megan Wiston, of Lake Worth. “I wanted my kids to see how they write the Torah as they had for thousands of years.”

The Torah consists of 304,805 letters that are hand-written with ink, a quill and parchment from a cow. Hundreds of rules dictate exactly how the letters are written.

“This is an amazing opportunity to be able to write history,” Rosenfeld said.

“The Torah is one of the only things nowadays that’s still made old-fashioned,” said his wife, Leah Rosenfeld.Moshe Klein, of Brooklyn, N.Y., outlined the first few letters of the Torah so community members could fill them in. Known as a sofer, Hebrew for a licensed Torah scribe, Klein came to the Greenacres synagogue to facilitate the Torah-writing process. He will send the beginning of the Torah to Pinchos Sfarnovitz, a scribe in Jerusalem, who will write the bulk of the Torah. When the Torah is near completion in December, Klein will return to Greenacres to help community members write the last few words on the scroll.

“It’s very fulfilling to take parchment from an animal and to make it the holiest thing the Jews have,” Klein said. “This Torah is connected like a chain to the last Torah made, and that’s how we’re connected to Moses.”

When the Rosenfelds moved to the area in 2006 to found the Chabad Jewish Center, they didn’t know anyone. Today, the congregation has 100 to 150 families.

The center has been borrowing Torahs from nearby schools and community members, the rabbi said. They are blessed now to have not only their own Torah, but one they all helped write.

“To me, the Torah is the book of our existence — this is what it’s all about,” said Allan Wolf, a college counselor at Ben Lipson Hillel Community High School in North Miami Beach and a former religion professor. “Most Jewish people never see this process of writing the Torah.”

As the men in the room wrote letters corresponding to letters in their names, Klein helped them recite a special blessing: “I am writing this for the sake of the holiness of the Torah.”

Leah Rosenfeld said she could feel a deep religious atmosphere in the room.

“People here feel the spirituality,” she said.