Our Torah Scrolls
The Bridge Shul is privilged to have two Torah scrolls.
Our smaller scroll (and small ark) was rescued from the Holocaust by Rabbi Louis Barish, z”l, and is on generous loan to us by his daughter, Leora Barish, who wrote up the Torah’s remarkable history:
When I was a child, my father, a Jewish Army Chaplain, possessed a small Torah scroll, an object of great fascination to me. The scroll was housed in a portable ark made of painted plywood – a miniature castle, to my childish eye. On certain occasions, I was allowed to open the doors and look at the scroll wrapped in its dark red velvet mantle with a stiffly rearing lion embroidered in wiry, gold thread, its eye a glittering sequin. But those were rare occasions. Because most of the time, my father was traveling and the ark traveled with him. It traveled with him for twenty years during which time he led Jewish services for soldiers in army bases all over the country, and in Germany, Korea, and Vietnam.
When he retired, the Torah retired with him, to Arizona. For some years, it remained in his house… But a Torah isn't alive and doesn't give life unless it's being read and studied, so my father offered it to the congregation of which he was a member. Congregation Beth El had many large and beautiful Torahs, … for one reason or another, the scroll was never used, and finally someone put it in a storage closet where it stayed for another twenty years, during which time the shul grew, members came andwent, rabbis came and went, and the closet got more and more stuffed with unused books and lecterns, until the Torah was completely hidden and everyone forgot it was there.
A few years ago, when my husband and I started coming to services at [The Bridge Shul, then CSH], the congregation had a giant Torah on loan from a synagogue in Queens. But the loan was about to expire. I called my father, then in his early nineties, and
asked him if we could borrow "his" Torah. He, in turn, asked various officers at Beth El, but no one remembered what had happened to the little scroll. I called and spoke to the rabbi, and finally after a number of requests, they searched again, and found the Torah buried at the back of the closet. The Torah was unearthed and returned to my father, who, as he was now too old and blind to do such things, asked his Evangelical Christian neighbors to wrap the Torah in lots of packing and ship it to me, which they kindly did.
Here is the story my father had told me:
In 1946, my father was sent to Stuttgart to work in the office of Jewish Affairs, an Army liaison whose mission was to help the Jews of Germany who were still confined in DP camps, living in desperate conditions, "liberated" but not free. One day, my father's assistant came and said, “I'm sorry to disturb you, Rabbi, but a German is asking to see you.”
“Who is this German?” asked my father.
“Just a man, said the assistant, “We told him to go away but he won't, he insists that he has to speak to "the rabbi".
My father said, “Well then, go and bring him in.”
The assistant reluctantly ushered in the German. The German was dressed like a farmer, a tall man, my father remembers, not old - in his thirties, perhaps. He was polite but not particularly friendly; perhaps merely focused on his mission. He stared at my father for a moment, then he spoke without emotion. "There have been no rabbis around here for a long time... I have a secret I want to reveal, but I can only reveal it to a rabbi. Now that you're here and I've found you, please, let us go quickly."
“Go where?” my father asked.
"I can't tell you, I have to show you my secret. I'd like to show you alone."
My father's assistant took him aside and said, “How do we know it's not a trap? Maybe the man is a Nazi, maybe he means to do you harm.” But my father always thinks the best of people: at least, he hopes for the best. He told his assistant, "yihiyeh tov", all will be well. He said to the German, I will go with you but my driver will drive us: he knows the roads and can translate, and afterwards, he can drive me back. So the German consented. While they drove, the two Germans exchanged a few words in German, but mostly they rode in silence.
Following the German's directions, they drove deep into the countryside and turned onto a dirt road. The road got rougher the further they went. Once or twice, the Jeep got stuck in the mud and the three men pushed it out together. Finally, they passed through a tiny, deserted village, and turned onto a grassy track. Finally they stopped in the middle of nowhere, in what looked like an overgrown field.
Then my father saw that it was an overgrown cemetery. The stones had been smashed, but here and there, my father could make out Hebrew letters. The German started to speak, the driver translated, my father listened without interrupting.
"The Jews who lived in this area were rounded up all in one day and burned to death by the Nazis. But the day before, someone must have warned them, because they came here that night, six or seven of them, carrying something wrapped in a cloth. I was hiding in the trees, and I saw them. They passed the object from one to another, and each one held it for a moment and kissed it; then they buried it quickly and went home. Later, I came back to the spot. I made a point to remember the place, because there was no marker. So now, if you dig here" – he showed them the place – "you will find the treasure the Jews buried."
My father looked at the patch of ground. The sky was starting to darken. “We don't have a shovel for digging, we'll have to come back tomorrow.”
“No,” said the German, “that's not necessary. I came yesterday and hid a shovel under those trees.” He pointed to the woods at the edge of the field. My father waited while the German went to get the shovel – if it was a shovel: my father was unarmed and so was the driver. But when the German returned, it was a shovel he carried with him, and my father and the driver started to dig. Soon the blade struck wood. They dug up a small box, the size of a child's coffin. Inside the box, wrapped in a prayer shawl, was the Torah which had belonged to this tiny community of Jews who would never come to reclaim it.
The German declined to ride back with my father. Relieved of his burden, he was anxious to get away. He said he would walk to one of the German houses, and get a ride from there.
On the ride back to Stuttgart, my father held the little Torah in his arms and thought about the German and his story. He thought of all the questions he should have asked. Why had the man only wanted to share his secret with a rabbi? Why hadn't he dug up the "treasure" himself? Had he been a Nazi? Had he known the Jews who had buried the Torah? Had it been he who had given them up to the Nazis, or had it been he who had warned them?Why had he been in the woods that night, and why had he never told anyone? Why had he wanted to tell "a rabbi"? Was he perhaps a Jew himself, perhaps a Jew who had passed for a gentile? My father realized how little he understood of the story the German had told him. If only he'd thought to ask him some questions! But knowing my father, he had probably been too shy to ask, afraid to hurt the German's feelings. Now he would never know. But it wouldn't bother him not to know. He would say, “What does it matter? The German did a good deed, the Torah was rescued, the Jews were not completely uprooted - that's all that matters.”
Back in Stuttgart, my father asked his assistant to make a portable ark out of whatever wood he could find, so that the scroll, unburied and brought back to life, would be well protected; so that it could be transported; so that it could bring life to all who heard the words of Torah read. This is our Torah scroll.
According to the sofer [a scribe who writes and repairs Torah scrolls], it is perhaps two hundred fifty, even three hundred years old. It was made by a Spanish or perhaps an Iranian sofer, who used a distinctive Sephardic script, and ink made from walnut tree gall and acacia gum, the exact recipe for which no living person remembers. Our scroll traveled from Spain or Iran to Germany, and from Germany to America and Southeast Asia, and now it is here. It has been twice buried, twice brought back to life.
The ink has faded to a delicate purplish brown, but the letters are still beautifully clear. Etz chaim hee lemachazikim ba: It is a Tree of Life to those who grasp hold of it, and those who uphold it are happy.