Rabbi Completes City’s First Commissioned Torah

Santa Fe, NM — Members of the Chabad Jewish Center of Santa Fe celebrated what they believe to be a first for the City of Holy Faith on Sunday. They danced and marched from a hotel ballroom on Sandoval Street to the gazebo on the Plaza downtown to dedicate the first Torah commissioned by a Santa Fe congregation.

“It’s fantastic. It’s a milestone. It’s a historic moment,” said psychiatrist Phil Milstein of Santa Fe, who joined friends in the procession.

Dressed in the traditional black attire of Chabadic men, Rabbi Berel Levertov and other rabbis danced ahead of the Torah as it was carried past San Francisco Street storefronts, police escorts clearing the way.

The large, newly completed, cloth-covered scroll represents the core of Jewish traditions.

“It’s more important to have a Torah than to have a synagogue,” said Deborah Levertov, the rabbi’s wife.

A small chuppah, or canopy, covered the Torah as it was carried through town.

“We made it — the chuppah,” said Linda Krull, swelling with pride. Women of the Chabad center embroidered gold stars to adorn the cloth cover in preparation for Sunday’s celebration, she said.

Visiting Santa Fe from his home in Haifa, Israel, Abraham Katzanek huddled with other onlookers under a tarp to shield him from a heavy rain that broke out just as the Torah was carried under the Plaza gazebo.

Katzenek at first thought the procession was a Jewish wedding, until he noticed the chuppah was not white but a deep blue.

As an Israeli, celebrations of new Torahs are commonplace for him, Katzenek said. Levertov said Santa Fe’s Torah dedication was one of six such events held across the country Sunday.

Santa Fe residents Diane and Anthony Medina started the effort to commission a Torah for Santa Fe’s Chabad congregation last year after Levertov assisted them with their son’s bris, the traditional Jewish circumcision ceremony. “We asked them what they needed, and they needed a Torah,” Anthony Medina said.

Diane Medina’s brother, David Roth, and his wife, Machaela Roth from New York, contributed about half the cost of the $40,000 Torah. The families dedicated their part of the new Torah to their late father, who was a Polish-born Holocaust survivor.

Levertov then selected a sofer — a person trained and practiced in the delicate spiritual and practical requirements of Torah writing — from Haifa, Israel. Rabbi Betzalel Yakunt started work on the lengthy handwritten scroll last March in the same ballroom at the Hilton of Santa Fe where it was completed Sunday, Levertov said. Yakunt took it home to Israel, and returned to finish the work Sunday — when the final 15 letters were penned onto the parchment scroll with a quill, each in honor of particular Jewish people. The final letter was dedicated to the Jewish people of Santa Fe, Levertov said.

“The fact that we have a Torah that is beautifully written, that is clear, it means the community is more whole,” Levertov said.

The Chabad center had two other Torahs but neither conformed with strict rules of Judaism, Levertov said. One, which had survived a troubled century in Eastern Europe before being brought to Santa Fe, was so old the letters were wearing off, Levertov said.

“When it gets old, it’s not kosher,” Levertov said.

Levertov during the past decade has sparked a revival of traditional Judaism in Santa Fe.

“The evangelical strict observances are growing in leaps and bounds among Christians and it’s the same among Jews,” said Kristina Harrigan, who helped sew the chuppah.

Levertov said some Jewish families are only now beginning to celebrate their faith freely for the first time since the Holocaust.

“The truth of the matter is, I don’t know that much about Judaism,” said Rebekah Kanter, who attended the Sunday Torah dedication.

Her parents followed Jewish political concerns and historical concerns, but never spent much time with Jewish religious teachings.

“My daughter’s not going to be that way,” Kanter said, as her daughter joined other children on a stage in the hotel ballroom to sing about their Jewish pride and their love for the Torah.

3,319
Years people have read from the Torah

3,000
Approximate number of hours spent on the Torah