A Torah comes home after 40 years

My dad sent us a WhatsApp message so we could all breathe easy, knowing that after a 40-year quest, our Torah was coming home.

By LAURA BEN-DAVID
The family triumphantly flanks the Torah: (from left) Marty Ginsberg, Hindy Bryks, Amy Gottlieb, Steven Ginsberg, Hudi Kenigsberg, writer Laura Ben-David and Carol Ginsberg (photo credit: LAWRENCE BEN-DAVID)
The family triumphantly flanks the Torah: (from left) Marty Ginsberg, Hindy Bryks, Amy Gottlieb, Steven Ginsberg, Hudi Kenigsberg, writer Laura Ben-David and Carol Ginsberg
(photo credit: LAWRENCE BEN-DAVID)
Let me tell you an incredible story about a 40- year quest. It all started with an old note, a note that itself was over 40 years old when it all began. The date on the piece of paper was 1934. It was a note written in my great-grandfather Henry Rosenbaum’s name, to a synagogue in Brooklyn that we’d never heard of.
It was among my great-grandfather’s papers, discovered after he died in 1976. It was a note giving the synagogue permission to use and bear responsibility for a family Torah scroll that we’d never heard of and knew nothing about.
My family was stunned, my father in particular. What Torah scroll was this note talking about? How was it possible that we had never heard about it? We began asking family members what they could recall of this mysterious scroll from so long ago.
They asked my grandmother and her two sisters if they remembered a Torah scroll of their father’s. From the three of them, we were able to piece together the fact that my great-great-grandfather, Moshe Ze’ev Ziffer, who was their grandfather and had lived with them before he died in 1933, had a Torah scroll.
In fact, Henry, their father, had built a cabinet to hold the Torah. After Moshe Ze’ev died, apparently Henry gave the Torah to a synagogue in Brooklyn to use.
FINDING THIS out was very exciting. We had a family Torah scroll! My dad – who is also Moshe Ze’ev, having been named for my great-great-grandfather – reached out to the synagogue’s leaders nearly 40 years ago and told them about our claim. They were skeptical at first, but when he sent them a copy of the old letter plus supporting statements by various relatives and neighbors, they realized his claim was valid.
Sure, they told him. You can have your Torah. Just tell us which one is yours.
My father was devastated. How could he possibly identify a scroll that had been put in a synagogue for safekeeping years before he was even born? If the synagogue didn’t know, how could he possibly know?
Finally, several years after the initial discovery, my father took a trip to the synagogue with Rabbi Berel Wein, at the time the head of his synagogue in Monsey, New York. Rabbi Wein carefully looked over all the scrolls and determined, based on everything he knew about where Moshe Ze’ev had been from and when he came to the US, that it was one or another of the Torah scrolls.
Not quite definitive enough. Then nothing happened for 20 years.
Finally, my father picked up the story again and made new efforts. After my family’s aliya in 2002, he was determined to one day bring our family Torah scroll to our synagogue in the beautiful Judean Hills.
He told Rabbi Betzalel Rudinsky from his local Monsey synagogue the story of the scroll. Rudinsky said the Brooklyn synagogue’s leaders had made a mistake: It was their obligation to know which Torah had belonged to Moshe Ze’ev, not my father’s.
Then Rabbi Rudinsky took on the quest as his own. He started going to Brooklyn and speaking with people at the synagogue. He even went to a din Torah at a court of Jewish law. He would go back and have meetings with people there, and incredibly, things began moving.
Every week, my dad would ask the rabbi if there was anything new to report, and the rabbi would give an update. This went on for a few years. We lost count of how many times my dad said, “I think we might actually be getting the Torah this week!” And then, of course, nothing.
Then one day, more than 80 years after the little note was written, and 40 years since my great-grandfather passed away, my dad asked about the Torah and Rabbi Rudinsky said, “Oh, Shmuel Schneid [a local scribe] has it.”
My dad was astounded. We were all astounded. After all these years, I don’t think any of us really believed the day would come. Suddenly, we were actually getting the Torah!
A FEW days later, I was at a Friday market in Gush Etzion to buy wine and halla for Shabbat. I passed a booth where a woman was selling various handmade items, and she said to me: “Are you interested in purchasing a Torah cover?” It was extraordinary. How many people out shopping on a Friday say “I’ll take two hallot, some chopped liver and a cover for my Torah scroll...”
I almost bought one out of shock. They were beautiful but somewhat pricey, and my dad was already arranging to purchase one himself. I made a mental note anyway and took her card.
As luck – or destiny – would have it, my parents were already planning a trip to Israel for their grandson’s bar mitzva celebrations, mere weeks before their own 50th wedding anniversary. My siblings and I decided to have the Torah cover made for them; we would dedicate it in memory of our great-great-grandparents, to whom the Torah had originally belonged, and in honor of our incredible parents, who planted and nurtured the seeds of Torah for our family.
I found the woman’s card and we made it happen.
When my parents boarded that El Al plane to Israel with the scroll, I don’t know which one of them was more happy and relieved. The flight attendant had the Torah placed on pillows in a first-class closet.
My dad sent us a WhatsApp message so we could all breathe easy, knowing that after a 40-year quest, our Torah was coming home.