Michael Abiri knew that, while he wanted to help donate a new Torah to the Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley that he belongs to, the opportunity was a chance for so much more. So, he and synagogue officials came up with a plan to involve the entire temple in the process.
“We wanted to have families come and write in the Torah, and make a donation to the temple if they wanted to,” Abiri said. “Because there was no obligation for anyone, participation was significant.”
Director of Lifelong Learning at Har Zion, Rabbi Shawn SimonHazani, said that close to 275 families of the 700-or-so that belong to the shul took part in the event.
“They got to hold the quill with the sofer and learn how to write in the Torah,” he said. “We also had all sorts of stations around art, activities, prayer and other different kinds of programming that prepared people spiritually and philosophically to write in the Torah.”
Har Zion held the dedication ceremony on Sept. 8, with many of the synagogue’s members in attendance. The temple needed a new Torah to replace its well-worn one.
“A lot of the people that signed it told me afterwards that it was very emotional,” Abiri said. “Some said that they were crying while they were doing it — it went beyond my expectations of how people would be touched by this.”
Har Zion celebrated its centennial anniversary last year. Its members have helped create the Perelman Jewish Day School, the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy and Camp Ramah in the Poconos. Har Zion also started the first synagogue chapter of the Zionist Organization of America.
Even with a rich history, SimonHazani said that many of the members of the synagogue said they had never done anything like what they did at the dedication ceremony.
“The community was tremendously moved, more than I had even expected,” SimonHazani said.
He added that, for one demographic, the Torah signing was particularly memorable.
“One thing that was expressed to me more than once was that women over the age of 65 spoke about not being able to read out of the Torah when they were younger, and now here they are writing in a Torah,” SimonHazani said.
Ely Levine, scholar-in-residence and ritual coordinator at Har Zion, said that that wasn’t the only novel experience for the community on Sept. 8. Members also got the chance to see something that few Jews ever have.
“Something that you don’t get to do very often is see the whole Torah unrolled — different parts of the Torah resonate with different people, and we had each of the 54 Torah portions identified and linked in a QR code and all kinds of resources and commentaries that go back to that portion,” Levine said.
A fully unrolled Torah scroll can reach around 100 feet in length.
The logistics of writing in the Torah are as follows: 98% of it was finished, but the sofer was asked to leave 300 letters just outlined so that congregants could fill in the characters. Congregants were taught how to use the quill and how to fill in the letters, and then were given the chance to do so under the watchful eye of the sofer.
The majority of this signing occurred on Sept. 3. Now, the Torah is functional and being used by Har Zion.
SimonHazani said that it is a mitzvah to complete the creation of a Torah, and that is not at all lessened by the fact that a sofer did most of the work. He said that each of the temple members who took part in the activity did a mitzvah on either Sept. 3 or Sept. 8.
The synagogue welcomed the new Torah at the dedication ceremony by introducing it to the other nine Torahs that are owned by Har Zion. Levine said that each of those nine Torahs was carried by members of families that had been a part of dedicating them originally. Har Zion emphasizes connections between the generations, and SimonHazani said that this was exemplified by one very special young man who opted to carry one of the Torahs.
“A fifth grader who is the great-great-grandson of a man who helped dedicate that Torah wanted to be the one to carry it to honor his great-great-grandfather,” he said. “We have six generations of that family at Har Zion, and the fifth generation carried the Torah that was dedicated in honor of his ancestors.”
This procession ended with the welcoming of the new Torah, nearly a year after the previous one was buried. On Kol Nidre last year, one of the synagogue’s longtime Torahs was bid goodbye by the congregation.
“Last year [on Yom Kippur] we said goodbye to one Torah, and this year we introduced the new Torah around Rosh Hashanah,” SimonHazani said. “We hope that this new one is ready for the next hundred-plus years of Har Zion.”
