May 1991

HA KOL TALUL B'MAZEL AFEELU SEFER TORAH B'ARON

Everything Depends
upon Luck Even the Holy Scroll in the ARK!

PART II

As we are about to celebrate Shevuos, Z'man Matan Torasainu
the Time of the Giving of the Torah - I'd like to relate several stories
about Sifrei Torah which exemplify the title of our message and which were part
of my experience this past year. They will also serve as a continuation of our Sefer
Torah mess­age in the February Bulletin, although they can stand on their own
as well.

In the last months, I had, three distinct and
altogether remarkable encoun­ters with Sifrei Torahs.

1. I was in Hong Kong in October and visited the synagogue
   and Jewish community center there. At the Shacharit service I met a
   bent over gentleman with a full white beard reaching into his ninth decade
   who has been in the British colony since 1932. He had originally come
   there from Czechoslo­vokia as a representative of the Skoda Works, which
   was a premier munition and automobile complex in Europe before World War
   II. Incredibly almost, he remained absolutely faithful to Jewish
   observance through the wrenching tum­ultuous events which transpired in
   that part of the world during the last volatile half century and more.
   Shortly before coming to Hong Kong, I came upon a small biographic sketch
   of its Jewish community which among other things told how a Jew managed
   successfully to conceal all the Sifrei Torah of the Syn­agogue during the
   Japanese occupation. It was this selfsame old Jew. And it was something of
   a miracle. All the other Jews, who were citizens of Britain then, which
   was at war with Japan, were interned for the duration. And only my new
   acquaintance, since he was a Czeck national and Czechoslovakia was then
   under Nazi rule, was ironically treated as a citizen of a friendly nation
   even though he was Jewish, and had he remained home would have been surely
   carted off to some concentration camp and almost certain death. His
   special status allowed him to hide all the Sifrei Torah until peace came
   again. Those Torahs are now the fulcrum point of the community which has
   more than tripled since the war. Now that is Mazel!


2.  Among the recent influx of Russian Jews into our
   community is a remark­able woman who was in charge of an elite bureau in
   Moscow which pre­pared the newspapers and magazines that were delivred to
   Stalin, then Malenkov, Rena, Khruschev, Brezhnev and lately to Gorbachev
   and selected officials of the Politburo and Communist Central committee.
   It's the kind of government agency which is unthinkable in America. And
   only the most reli­able and loyal communists would be entrusted with this
   charge. All through the years she worked in that sensitive office she
   dared to carry on her person an old snapshot which she showed me of her
   grandfather, garbed in a Talis draped over his head, carrying a sefer
   Torah into his house from the syn­agogue of their neighborhood in Moscow
   which the Communists had just closed down. Ultimately the Sefer Torah
   was placed in the Central Chorale Synagogue which for a long time was the
   only synagogue officially permitted to be open in the Soviet Capital and,
   I'm sure, it will be read from and danced with again, with no less fervor
   than in the good old days before the Revolution. That's Mazel also.


3. Finally, several weeks ago, I was asked to speak at a
   Torah ceremony celeb­rating the presentation of a Torah many centuries old
   which until 1936 was housed in a synagogue in a town in Central Germany.
   One of the town's Jewish families, foresighted and courageous enough,
   pulled up stakes while there was still time and fled to America taking
   with them the Torah removing its Atzay Chaim, its wooden rollers,
   and concealing the Scrolls itself in a mat­tress. And now, more than fifty
   years later, it was to find a home in a vibrant, burgeoning new Jewish
   community people with committed young orthodox families.

Now that is Mazel!!     

Rabbi Zevulun Charlop