Greenpoint Gets New Torah in Honor of Rubashkin

The Torah is central to Judaism. The text, consisting of the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, provides the basis for the 3,000-year-old religion, serving as a legal guide as well as a history of the Jewish people. The Torah contains 613 commandments, with the final one, to write your own Torah, appearing in Deuteronomy 31:19: “Now therefore write this song for you, and teach it the children of Israel.”

Easier said than done. The production of a new Torah is a painstaking process, which takes up to a year to complete and costs from $25,000 to $50,000. The Torah is written on parchment made from tanned animal skin, using a quill dipped in ink. Each of the more than 300,000 characters is hand drawn by an expert scribe resulting in an exact copy of every other Torah written over thousands of years. Any error makes the Torah unusable for synagogue services.

With the extraordinary time, cost and effort involved in writing a Torah, its completion calls for a special celebration. North Brooklyn had such an event on Sunday, September 25th. As Jews everywhere wrap up their year (the Jewish New Year begins at sundown on Wednesday, September 28th), Chabad of North Brooklyn put the finishing touches on their new Torah at a dedication ceremony at North 6th Street’s Public Assembly. Guests “helped” the scribe complete the new Torah, holding on to the top of the feather quill as the final few letters, left blank, were written in. This gave each participant a chance to fulfill the commandment to write their own Torah.

The new Torah was dedicated in merit of Sholom Rubashkin. Rubashkin was convicted of financial fraud in November 2009 in a well-publicized and controversial case. He is currently serving 27 years in prison. Questions about the judge’s relationship to the case have led many members of Congress to question Attorney General Eric Holder about how it was all handled. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) have each filed amicus briefs supporting Rubashkin′s appeal for a new trial.

Once it was completed and the ink had dried, a procession sang and danced with the Torah from Public Assembly to the Chabad House at 132 North 5th Street, where the new Torah will be read on the New Year and beyond. Along the way, people joined in with the celebrants while others snapped away with their camera phones at the joyful parade. Rabbi Shmuly Lein, co-director of the Chabad House, enjoyed “the fact that the neighborhood responded so nicely at the parade from Public Assembly to the Chabad House on North 5th Street and Bedford Avenue. The street was dancing, everyone participated, everyone smiling, everyone happy and there was lots of Jewish pride.”