We attended Shabbat services at our synagogue in Ogden, UT. In honor of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Commemoration week), our student rabbi brought with him from Los Angeles, a Torah that had survived the Holocaust.
Student Rabbi Aron Klein with the Yanov Torah. In preparation for this special Shabbat service, my son Joshua, as well as 4 other teens and 2 adults in our congregation, studied these past few weeks to read from the Torah. Reading from the Torah is always a challenge (which is why it takes Bar & Bat Mitzvah student's years/months of study to learn to do so correctly). Our Torah readers, not only have to read a two thousand year old hand lettered document in ancient Hebrew script, but they have to do so without the benefit of page numbers, chapters/verse markings, and vowels. On top of that, they are also responsible for singing each word using the correct ancient melodies, with no musical notation marks. Needless to say... not an easy task.
Before starting services, student Rabbi Aron Klein, invited us up to see the Torah he had brought from Los Angeles. This small little Torah looked so worn and weathered. It had dirt marks, burn marks, and the size of the Hebrew letters varied from panel to panel. Looking at the handmade stitches that were barely keeping the panels of parchment connected, it looked more like a patchwork quilt than the "word of G-d".
The Yanov Torah. Notice the different sizes of the Hebrew charactersfrom panel to panel and the dirt/stains.
Well, once the rabbi told us the story behind this tattered little torah scroll, it's was transformed before my eyes to one of the most sacred religious objects I have ever seen.
Here is the touching story of the Yanov Torah, Rabbi Aron related to us:
In 1941, the Nazis occupied the city of Lvov, which lies in present day Ukraine, near the border with Poland. In 1941, approximately 200,000 Jews lived in Lvov. As they did in almost every city they occupied, the Nazis immediately selected able-bodied Jews to be sent to slave labor camps. The remaining majority of the Jews of Lvov were gradually deported to death camps, where nearly the entire Jewish community of Lvov was murdered.
The Jews in Lvov who were selected for slave labor were sent to Yanov, a nearby work camp. The Jewish prisoners of Yanov were committed to maintaining Jewish traditions; they were especially committed to praying and learning. Jews who had memorized the prayers led regular prayers in secret and taught the others, even though they did not have any prayer books in the prison.
The Jews who were imprisoned in Yanov were lucky. In addition to never being caught practicing Judaism, which would have led to certain execution, individual inmates were also permitted by the Nazi guards to occasionally return to Lvov to visit their families. These visits were allowed to continue because each time, the inmates of Yanov brought back gifts, which were confiscated by the Nazi prison guards upon their return.
When the Nazis had occupied Lvov, the cities Rabbis decided to bury their Torah scrolls with dignity instead of letting the Nazis confiscate, desecrate, and destroy them. Knowing this, the prisoners of Yanov committed to recovering a Torah scroll to bring into the prison. Knowing that it would be impossible to carry in an entire scroll, they decided to visit the cemetery during each of their visits back to Lvov and cut apart segments of Torah scrolls and smuggle them into Yanov. They chose to desecrate Torah scrolls in order to preserve and protect the Torah, which has sustained the Jewish people for thousands of years. Each prisoner who was permitted to return to Lvov for a visit wrapped however much parchment he could around his body and returned to Yanov smuggling in the parchment sections under his clothes, risking his life each time he returned.
Week after week prisoners from Yanov returned to Lvov, finding fewer and fewer members of their family remaining but each time returning with more fragments from the Torah scrolls of Lvov.
In June of 1945, the Soviet soldiers liberated the Yanov camp. Very few of its inmates had survived. Many had died there or were shipped to death camps when they were no longer able to work.
Months after their liberation, the survivors of Yanov who had not fled immediately after the war met. Near the end of the meeting, one survivor revealed that after the liberation he had gathered all of the Torah fragments that had been smuggled into Yanov and carefully stitched them together to form a complete Torah scroll, comprised of fragments from many different scrolls. The survivors entrusted the scroll to Isaac Levi, who at 60 years old, was the oldest survivor of Yanov who remained in Lvov. He committed to protecting the Yanov Torah until his death and then passing it on to the oldest remaining survivor.
In 1978, the last survivor of Yanov entrusted the Yanov Torah to the family of a friend who had received permission to emigrate to the United States. The next year, the Yanov Torah was again smuggled, this time out of the Soviet Union, when the family was finally able to emigrate. The family used the only money they had to bribe the Soviet border guards to allow them to take it with them.
The man who emigrated with the Torah was now a penniless immigrant in the United States. The man, a doctor, along with his family and the Yanov Torah arrived in Los Angeles. The doctor, seeking to support his family, looked for a rabbi in the phone book and contacted the Rabbi Erwin Herman, (may his memory be a blessing). Rabbi Herman was the regional director of the Union for Reform Judaism, of which Brith Sholem is a member.
The doctor told Rabbi Herman the story and was willing to sell the unique Torah for as little as $250. Rabbi Herman knew that it was worth much more than that and far more than he could afford to pay. Rabbi Herman sent him away with a check to help support the doctor, but not to buy the Yanov Torah.
The next day, Rabbi Herman told the story of the Yanov Torah to wealthy member of his congregation. The man returned several hours later with a large check and the following note:
Dear Rabbi, we have purchased this Torah for you, It must not be given to a museum for that would limit its purpose. We ask you to carry it from temple to temple, from place to place, from synagogue to synagogue, wherever you travel in this world.
Tell its story to Jews and non-Jews alike; let it be understood by all that although millions of Jews have been murdered, our Torah will live forever. The Yanov Torah testifies to that truth.
Rabbi Herman did buy the Yanov Torah with that check and spent almost 30 years fulfilling the mission of taking the Torah with him wherever he travelled.
Rabbi Herman died in 2008. His widow Agnes Herman gave the Yanov Torah to the Hebrew UnionCollege in Los Angeles, where I am a student, charging us and future students with continuing the mission of taking the Yanov Torah wherever we travel and sharing it as a testimony to the horrors of the Holocaust and the survival of the Jewish people.
After Rabbi Aron was done telling us the history of this little Torah, we were all in tears. As I watched my son Joshua, and the other members of my congregation, get up and read from this Torah, I couldn't help but think of all those brave souls in Yanov, who had so bravely risked their lives to save this precious scroll. When my turn came to get up and recite a blessing over this Torah, I touched the parchment with great reverence. It was clear to me now, that the smudges of the "dirt" could be the result of this Torah being buried in a cemetary, smuggled under someone's clothing, or hidden away in the concentration camp from the eyes of the Nazi prison guards.
I was humbled that the Jews in the Ukraine had risked their lives to save this sacred document. Here we were, 70 years later, reading this very same document today in their memory. How incredible? I couldn't help but ponder what freedom we have, being Jews in the United States today, being able to practice our religion with no threat and no fear.
It's my hope that the Jews from Yanov, who perished during the Holocaust, felt proud of all the young people in my synagogue who read from their special Torah today. Hopefully, they consider us kindred spirits, carrying on the Jewish traditions that they were so willing to give their life for. Somehow, I feel that a little bit of that Ukraine Jewish community of theirs will continue to live on through this Utah Jewish community of ours.
The Yanov Torah residing for a day with the Torah's in the ark at Congregation Brith Sholem. We all thought it was so sweet how the little Torah seemed to snuggle up to our bigger Torah.
