A Torah comes home to H.P., and a family looks to the future
By Michele Alperin
Jan. 18, 2008

In Europe Jews stayed in the same shtetlach for hundreds of years, and it took the Nazis burning down a shul for it to close its doors. But in a country where population regularly shifts from city to suburb, from poorer towns to wealthier ones, the shuls that have nourished these itinerant communities are often left behind.

Leaving behind a beloved synagogue building, however, evokes great sadness, even for members who have been settled elsewhere for years. A shul is the repository of so many life experiences that its demise feels almost like a death.

On Sunday morning, Jan. 13, Devora Schiff, a member of the Highland Park Minyan, came to the closing ceremonies for Temple Israel in Union, where she and her husband David were married and where her 83-year-old mother has attended weekly Shabbat services. Her presence, along with more than a dozen members of her minyan, represented a bridge between past and future.

She was there to say goodbye to a beloved shul, but also to bring home one of its 14 Torahs to her own minyan community -- a Torah paid for by her grandfather and several of his friends whose cover included her grandfather's name, David Sadowitz (Tuvye in Hebrew).

Schiff had asked minyan families to design squares for a chuppah she would create for the ceremony. Forty-five families responded, and the colorful chuppah Schiff designed from these squares, held by David Schiff, Joe Rosenstein, Steve Richman and Jeff Axelbank, accompanied the Torah out of Temple Israel to a waiting car.

Minyan member Judy Richman wrote about the experience in an e-mail, "We arrived at Temple Israel early this morning with joy in our hearts and†a magnificent chuppah envisioned and created by Devora.†But the moment we arrived, we sensed†the deep sadness of the small remains of this congregation. For Temple Israel, this morning's services were its last†as its own congregation in its own shul, the last time the congregation will be together in this way, the last time they will be with their rabbi."†

Temple Israel officially merged that day with Congregation Beth Ahm in Springfield, to become Beth Ahm Yisrael.

For another minyan member, Jerry Langer, who was handed the Torah from Temple Israel's ark, the brief ceremony brought to mind his own synagogue in Woodbridge, which closed last year. Thinking both about how things change and how generous the synagogue was to allow the minyan, through Devora Schiff, to have one of its Torahs, he observed, "The Torah could write its own original history."

Langer described the synagogue's beautiful interior, with lots of rich wood and beautiful stained-glass windows of the Jewish holidays, including Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence Day.

Another minyan member, Steve Eisdorfer, saw and heard a range of emotions at the event. One the one hand, it was very sad. Temple Israel had once been a thriving congregation, and many former members had come back for this last weekend. Eisdorfer heard bittersweet comments like, "We had as many people for Shabbos services yesterday as for Yom Kippur," and "If we had as many people every Shabbos as yesterday, the congregation could survive." Eisdorfer's take on these nostalgic comments: "People felt strongly, emotionally connected to the congregation, and the reality was the congregation could no longer survive as an independent entity."

At same time, congregants were appreciative that the minyan had sent a substantial delegation, said Eisdorfer, "to receive this Torah at their hands and to remove it with some ceremony -- in a way that was intended to communicate a feeling that the Torah would go to a place where people would value it and use it and remember where it had once been."

The story of the new Torah began about 90 years ago, when Schiff's grandfather came to this country from Lithuania and settled in Linden. He started out pushing a cart and selling rags and eventually built a scrap metal business.

He and several other men built a synagogue about a quarter mile from his house, in the next town, Roselle, and called it Congregation Emanuel. Schiff remembered vividly that shul, where she grew up, was named, and often sat on her grandfather's lap. It had a bimah in the middle, with women on the left and men on the right. Her grandfather would place his siddur on a wooden lecturn standing before him. After services, they would feast on Tamtam crackers, chickpeas, herring, schnaps, and soda.

About 25 years ago, Emanuel had to close its doors as the Jews in Roselle had moved on, and the synagogue donated its five Torahs -- including the one with Schiff's grandfather's name on its cover -- to Temple Israel in Union, where her mother's brother was the cantor. Her mother's sister was president of Emanuel when it closed. Schiff said that the pictures of the ceremony giving the Torahs from Emanuel to Temple Israel still hung on the synagogue's walls.

When the synagogue decided to merge with Beth Ahm, it had 14 Torahs. All but one would go to Beth Ahm, and the fourteenth would be given away. Since one of the Torahs had her grandfather's name on its cover, Schiff decided to ask that it be given to the Highland Park Minyan, her community.

She wrote Temple Israel a letter telling the history of how her grandfather and five other men worked hard to purchase that Torah, how it passed to the synagogue where her uncle was cantor, and her mother prayed. "I would like it to stay in the family," she wrote. "I would like it to be our Torah in our congregation." Adding this Torah to the single Torah owned by the Highland Park Minyan would, she hoped, help with wear and tear on the existing Torah. If the minyan ever dissolves, the Torah will go back to Beth Ahm.

On the Shabbat the day before the closing ceremony was the bar mitzvah of the grandson of Schiff's uncle, the cantor of Temple Israel.

"You couldn't have planned it if you had tried," she observed. "In a way it was like my uncle was still there."

For Schiff, walking away with the Torah from Temple Israel was bittersweet, but mostly sad. "It really felt like a funeral," she says. "People coming out were crying, the cars were all lined up like a funeral. Some people don't address anyone when they leave a place of mourning, so they didn't say goodbye."

After the Torah ceremony, several minyan members drove to the vandalized cemetery in New Brunswick, Poile Zedek Cemetery to pay respects. Richman reflected on the two experiences in an email:†"My morning feels like it may be a microcosm of the Jewish experience, joy, loss, sadness, death, vandalism, life, hope, and through it all, a Torah that was purchased almost 90 years ago by a Jewish immigrant man feeding a family of eight on $1 a day will now be read, studied, discussed, interpreted by a vibrant chavurah community.†Etz chayim he lemachazikim bah, it is a tree of life for those who cling to it."†

†

The Highland Park Minyan will formally welcome the new Torah on Shabbat morning, Feb. 2.