IN THE COMMUNITY Bat Yam’s Holocaust Torah
Sanibel is home to a sacred Czech artifact
How did it happen that a small Reform congregation on Sanibel acquired a Czechoslovakian Holocaust Torah? The quest began in February 1991 when 61 Sanibelians met to develop plans and organize goals at what was the fi rst congregational meeting. They set their goals and priorities and developed their mission statement. They decided to affiliate with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, linking them to more than 850 Reform congregations in the United States and Canada.
Then they took three significant votes on how they saw the congregation going forward: A majority voted for using their own Torah regularly at Shabbat services; they voted to hire a rabbi; and they voted to affiliate with Sanibel Congregational United Church of Christ (UCC) and share the church building.
Mel Bleiberg became the first president of Bat Yam Temple of the Islands. Rabbi Karen Soria became its first rabbi, but acquiring a Torah took a little longer.
Bleiberg was aware of “Holocaust Torahs.” These were sacred scrolls that Westminster Synagogue in London had gathered from the ruined Michle Synagogue in Prague, where 1,564 of the scrolls had lain in piles for more than 20 years. The Nazis had anticipated exhibiting them and other ceremonial objects as relics of a dead culture. After the scrolls had been unpacked and numbered, a committee distributed them to synagogues around the world on “permanent loan.” Each scroll bears a brass tablet with a number corresponding to a number on a certificate, which describes its origin and any known particulars.
Bleiberg made six telephone calls to the offices of the Memorial Scrolls Trust in Westminster requesting a Torah, all to no avail. He was told the congregation was too small. But when Ingaborg Mauksch, a Holocaust survivor and a member of Bat Yam, visited London and told her story, the small Sanibel synagogue was allocated a Czech Torah that came from Boscovitz, a city 100 miles south of Prague. It was written in the 19th century.
This endeavor became very personal for Leonard and Ann Arnoff, two of the founding members of the Bat Yam Temple of the Islands, as Ann’s family roots
were in Prague. The Arnoffs sent $1,000 to transport the scroll from London to Miami.
Ann designed and needlepointed a special mantel for the Torah. The mantel tells a story: In the upper left corner is a barbed wired fence and behind the fence is a mostly barren tree, with one limb full of leaves. The tree is a symbol of the Holocaust and the barren limbs the loss of lives, but the living limb gives the Torah new life. A yellow hibiscus symbolizes the tropical climate of Sanibel. The star of David, sparkling in gold thread, lies on the sand. Ann said this meant Jews have found their place on this island. Four shells lie on the beach, representing the Arnoffs and their two daughters. A great egret, a species once killed for its feathers, denotes man’s inhumanity to animals. Floating in the water is the name Bat Yam.
A yad, a pointer used by readers to follow the text of the Torah, was a gift from Ken and Henny Karasin, parents of Bat Yam congregant Elissa. Tarnished and neglected, it was found in a bazaar in Teheran in the late 1970s. The Karasins brought it home and restored it to its original beauty. They discovered it had been made between 1865 and 1890. A Hebrew name is inscribed on it and they felt it probably belonged to a Russian congregation whose original synagogue was destroyed.
Randall Niehoff, senior minister of Sanibel Congregational UCC from 1991 to 2008, continues the story in his own words: “From my first year, one of the delights of my career was living/worshipping/serving with our sister congregation, Temple Bat Yam of the Islands. Perhaps the dearest symbol of our bonding was the housing of the Holocaust Torah. When it first arrived in our island community, it was kept in the security of my church office—locked and hurricane sheltered; it was brought out carefully only for worship.”
Initially, Bleiberg had planned to carry it back and forth, when he went north for the summers, but Rev. Niehoff’s strong convictions swayed him. “That’s no way to treat a Torah!”
A ceremony to rededicate the Torah was held in the sanctuary of the church to accommodate members of both the synagogue and church congregations. Mel and Shirley Bleiberg wrote a moving service with the help of Bernette Jaffe and Ken Karasin. Ann Arnoff and her daughter, Susan, presented the Torah to Rabbi Karen Soria and the congregation. Bleiberg and Karasin then walked down the center aisle of the sanctuary, unrolling the holy scriptures from the front of the room all the way to the back. Rev. Niehoff recalls, “The rabbi and members of Bat Yam had all of us line up along the central aisle, and as the precious scroll was unrolled, each of us shared in holding it up, reverently blessing it with our hands and hearts.”
It was a moving moment and a “oncein-a-lifetime experience” for all present, notes Bleiberg.
Prior to this occasion, a number of ties bound members of both congregations, but many agree with Bleiberg, who labeled that moment as the official “bonding” of the two congregations.
The church allotted a corner of Fellowship Hall for the ark to house the Torah. Irv Stein, a Bat Yam congregant and the architect of the ark, had certain requirements to fulfill. The goal was a structure that safely stored and showcased the Torah scrolls, plus items used in services such as candlesticks, wine goblet and Menorah. The design needed to be reminiscent of Mount Sinai (central to the story of Moses receiving the law in the Biblical tradition)—hence the “peak” toward which the ark rises.
Upon the ark’s completion, it was consecrated in Dr. E. Leonard Arnoff’s memory at services on December 11, 1992, in Fellowship Hall. The historic Torah, together with another donated by Benno and
Becky Kon, had found a home.
Rev. Niehoff recalls that each time the church congregation welcomed new members, he and his clergy colleagues conducted a tour, which included the ark. They would point out its symbolic meaning and respectfully open it to reveal its sacred contents. “The Holocaust Torah always seemed to make the deepest impressions on those who saw it for the first time,” Rev. Niehoff relates.
The Torah reminds the Bat Yam Temple congregation of their historic origin as a community of faith. That venerable parchment makes them aware of their lineage: Americans connected to European ancestors over many centuries.
And the survival of this treasured relic, a provenance some would consider miraculous, provides a tie that binds all who see it to the generation that experienced the Holocaust—preserving the painful but profound lesson it has to teach for all generations to come.
The Holocaust Torah was read for the first time in 56 years during the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, 1995/5756, by Rabbi Frankel. Then as now, when the Torah is carried through the congregation on a Friday night, in Ann Arnoff’s words, “Remember it carries many generations of Jews and the memory of the Shoah [Holocaust].”
Stephen Fuchs, rabbi of Bat Yam Temple of the Islands, appreciates the Torah as being a precious treasure for the congregation. “It is in the words of the prophet Zechariah, ‘a brand plucked from the fire’” (Zechariah 3:2), he says. During the Holocaust one-third of all Jews in the world—two-thirds of the Jews in Europe—perished in the conflagration that engulfed the world. The Bat Yam Temple’s Torah symbolizes not only the determination to survive as a people but to use the lessons of the past to build a better future for their children, grandchildren and generations to follow. Tanya Hochschild has been a freelance writer both in South Africa where she grew up and in the United States where she has lived since 1981. She is the author of a historical novel, a memoir, an anthology of poetry and biographies of nonagenarians at Shell Point.