We are at the same time honored and humbled that one of our Sifrei Torah (Torah scrolls) at Congregation Adath Israel is Memorial Scrolls Trust Torah #903. Adath Israel is one of 1,000 locations throughout the world to house a Czech scroll in loan fro the Memorial Scroll Trust. Our profound gratitude goes to Lenny Cheerman and his wife Natalie for securing this extraordinary Torah for our community.
The scroll was originally from Mělník, Czechoslovakia. Melnik is about one hour away by car from Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia. Mělník sits between two great rivers, the Vlatava and the Labe, and used to have a vibrant Jewish community that was formed in 1864. Today, all is left is a Jewish cemetery, which was active between 1867 and 1941.
Jews have lived in the Czech lands, which includes Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia, present day Slovakia, since at least the 10th century. The Holocaust was a disaster for Czech Jewry, and Mělník was no exception. Most local Jews were either murdered or exiled, and the community never reformed.
During World War II, the Jewish communities of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia gathered their Sifrei Torah, their holy implements from their synagogues and sent them to the Jewish Museum in Prague for safekeeping. There had been at least 350 synagogues in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, but by the end of the war most had been destroyed. In a brave effort to subvert Nazi annihilation, workers in the Jewish Museum in Prague rescued approximately 1,800 scrolls.
After only three years of freedom there was a Communist coup on 27th February 1948 which, amongst other things, took over the Jewish Museum and its warehouses, subsequently transferring the Sifrei Torah to a damp warehouse that had once been the sixteenth century Michle synagogue. Of those, 1,564 scrolls were saved from being stolen or sold by the efforts of people connected to the Memorial Scrolls Trust.
Memorial Scrolls Trust sifrei Torah have been distributed to communities and organizations around the world. The scrolls are never sold or donated, but allocated on loan from MST to be utilized, honored, and cherished.
Our scroll, MST#903 was originally allocated to the Temple B’nai Abraham, located at 127 E Main St, Meriden. Bernie Frydenberg z”l made the beautiful display case, adorned with the word Zachor “Remember” on top, to house and protect the Czech Torah Scroll. When they later merged with Adath Israel, the Torah scroll came to 8 Broad St, Middletown, where it resides, displayed, in our small sanctuary. The Sefer Torah is taken from is display case once a year to be present in the main Sanctuary, when we hold services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
This scroll is part of the Czech tradition of scribes, which had access to a very specific way of treating the animal hides, and so the parchment is particularly thin and light, and the Sefer Torah itself is tall. This present Sefer Torah is 69 inches, and notable is the lower part of the parchment, which was roughly cut with scissors when it arrived at MST. Also, the scribe of this sefer Torah subscribed to a set of antique rules of scribal tradition, described in the book Torah Shleimah by Menachem Kasher. The traditions of exactly which letters are modified varies rather from region to region and period to period. This present Sefer Torah has beautiful oddities in many places, particularly in the part of the Song of the Sea, Exodus chapter 15, see pictures below.
These scrolls are survivors and silent witnesses. They represent the lost communities of Czechoslovakia that were killed and destroyed in the Holocaust, they remind us of our spiritual survival against all odds, and represent our eternal connection to our people, our history, Torah and God.