Chabad Center welcomes new Torah

Milford, MA — With shouts of mazel tov, local Jews yesterday dedicated a Torah, the sacred scrolls that, in the words of one rabbi, bind the Jewish nation together as a people.

The Chabad Center on Cedar Street had been using a borrowed Torah at services. Now, the synagogue has a Torah of its own, a century-old scroll newly restored for the congregation’s use.

At a ceremony on the Jewish holiday of Lag B’Omer, a festive day on the Jewish calendar, sponsors of the Torah’s restoration were invited to accompany a scribe in writing the last letters of the scrolls. A procession accompanied the Torah as it was carried under a huppah, or bridal canopy, to its home in the sanctuary.

Readings from the Torah, comprising the first five books of the Old Testament, are central to Jewish worship.

“A Torah scroll is the most important, the most holy ritual object in Judaism,” said Rabbi Mendy Kivman of the Milford Chabad Center.

“The Torah scroll has been written exactly the same way for 3,319 years, ever since God handed it down at Mount Sinai,” said Kivman. Added his brother Yossi, a rabbi at the Chabad Center in Mansfield, “It’s what binds us together as a people.”

Kivman of Milford said a Torah can take a year for a scribe to write, and every single letter has to be exact. Every synagogue needs a Torah, and the Chabad Center has been borrowing one for services since opening in Milford more than six years ago, he said.

The center was able to acquire a 100-year-old Torah that had been belonged to the family of Sam and Phyllis Petnov of Medway, Kivman said. A gift from Marjorie Kruger of Milford made it possible to buy and restore the Torah, which cost close to $10,000.

“Probably hundreds” of missing or broken letters had to be repaired before the Torah could be used, he said. “Scribes went through the scrolls literally letter by letter. It took months.” Now, Kivman said, the Torah is “like new.”

The final lettering was finished yesterday, with supporters and invited guests using a quill and toasting “l’chaim,” to life, afterward.

“In Judaism, we believe each letter of the Torah scroll represents the Jewish people as a nation,” Kivman said before the ceremony. “What we have done is take the broken and missing letters and put them back in. For us to be whole, we can’t leave anybody out.”

“There are 600,000 letters in the Torah, and every single Jew is represented by a letter in the Torah,” he said. A Torah with a broken or missing letter can’t be used, he observed. Likewise, “every single Jew is important,” he said. “If there is a broken or broken-hearted Jew, it is our responsibility to find that person.”

Scribe Rabbi Dovid Lipschitz of Worcester helped pen the final letters.
He acknowledged he approached the task with gravity. “Every single letter you write in a holy scroll is creating a new world,” he said. “That is what we are giving people the opportunity to do today.”

This was not lost on guests given the honor. “My hand was shaking,” said David Warshaw of Milford, who shared the pen with his wife, Sybil. She likened the experience of hand-lettering Hebrew on parchment to something out of “ancient history – the way they did it thousands of years ago.”

Jack Segal of Medway said he felt a “lift” – and a bit closer to God. “It was very exhilarating,” Segal said. “The creation of a Torah is not something that happens every day. Perhaps once in a lifetime you can participate in such an event.”

His wife, Helen, noting she is a Hebrew calligrapher, said she kept a close watch on the scribe. “He did a very good job,” she said.
Jerry Kahn of Wellesley wrote a letter as did his wife, Suzi. “It was just an honor to be part of a new beginning.”

Marjorie Kruger made the gift to acquire and restore the Torah in memory of her mother, Marcia Bush of Falmouth, who died a little more than a year ago. “She was everybody’s bubbe, which is Yiddish for grandmother,” Kruger said of her late mother.

“What Jewish people should do is give to charity in memory of their parents,” she said, “and I can’t think of a better one (than the Chabad Center).”

The center also announced the launch of a fundraising campaign toward the writing of a new Torah, with donors given the opportunity to sponsor a section, a word, or a letter. A new Torah costs about $30,000.