Long Island Herald

Congregant Gifts Torah to Long Island Chabad House

A year of writing 320,000 letters with a feather and ink on parchment has led to the Stony Brook, NY Chabad Outreach Center’s newest Torah.

Shlomo Cohen, a Lynbrook resident, donated the Torah in memory of his mother and father, Sara and Tuvia Cohen, to the Valley Stream synagogue. He has been an involved member of the center’s congregation for many years, according to Rabbi Yitzchak Goldshmid.

“He’s here regularly,” Goldshmid said. “He’s one of the very important members of our place here. We are very glad and very appreciative for the fact that he dedicated [the Torah] to our synagogue.”

The Torah, was a “quite expensive” donation, said Chabad Outreach Center President Jules Rabin. “It was made specifically for him in Israel,” he said.

Goldshmid said that the Torah dedication has both a practical and spiritual aspect. The Torah that Cohen donated was made from scratch, meaning that the 320,000 or so letters were hand-written by a scribe in Israel.

“It takes about a year for someone with a full-time job to write it,” Goldshmid said. “There can be no mistakes. If there’s a mistake, you have to fix it.”

Each letter must be written with precision because of the spiritual context of the dedication. “Every letter has a very specific shape,” Goldshmid added. “There’s the original letters that the Torah was given 3,327 years ago.”

Goldshmid said this process adds to the spiritual aspect of the celebration. According to Goldshmid, Jews hold the belief that the new Torahs are the same as the Torah that Moses wrote.

“Most importantly, here is the spiritual celebration, which is the idea that we do have…the same book that was given to us by God himself at Sinai,” he said. “There’s the same amount of letters, [it’s the] same way it was written back then. That’s the beauty of our celebration.”

On May 18, members of the congregation marched with the Torah through the streets surrounding the center and into the synagogue, with adults and children singing and dancing during the parade. It was read for the first Sabbath on May 24. The Torah will become the “principal Torah” used by the synagogue, according to Rabin.

The synagogue has other Torahs to use, but the one Cohen donated is in the best condition. “We have other Torahs that are too old and the writing fades over time,” Rabin said. “You fix the Torah constantly, but sometimes it gets to a point that it’s too much. We’re going to use this new one because it’s nicer and better.”

2 Comments

    • Some Shliach

      The Meshaleach taught us to see the positive in everything and everyone, it takes a lot to try and find negativity even in a positive situation like this…