New Life for Lawrenceville’s Holocaust Torah

Lawrenceville’s Holocaust Torah was rededicated this morning in a ceremony held in the lobby of Bunn Library, where the Torah will reside on view to the School community. Head of School Steve Murray and Rabbi Lauren Levy led the rededication, which heralds a new life for the Torah following a decade in protective storage. 

 

“Fittingly, we bring the Torah out of storage on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, as part of our observance of this important day, a day that reminds us of our collective commitment – not simply the commitment of the Jewish people – but the collective commitment of all people, never to forget,” said Murray.

 

Hidden in attics and basements, buried underground, and in at least one case stashed under a sofa cushion by a trusted neighbor, thousands of Torahs, the scrolls that record the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, were displaced and often desecrated during the Holocaust. Their stories are as harrowing as those of the Jews who tried to save them. It is unknown how many were ransacked and destroyed, but those that survived are cherished as a symbol of the resilience of the Jewish people. To be in possession of one is considered a great honor and an even greater responsibility.

 

In 1991, the family of Jesse Hertzberg ’90 gifted the Lawrenceville community with a Torah scroll that had been rescued from Czestochowa, Poland, a year earlier, where it was among 31 scrolls discovered in a basement. The Torahs had been hidden by the town’s Jews, but only a few of the residents survived the war and fewer still returned home afterward. The Torah donated by the Hertzbergs had been partially burned and was sent to the United States for restoration, rolled in a cardboard tube. 

 

Lawrenceville’s Holocaust Torah was welcomed with dignity and decorum. It was put on display in a specially-built case in the John Dixon Library, now home to the Hutchins Galleries. Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize and author of Night, based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, spoke at the dedication, held during Alumni Weekend.

 

Then, in October 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit. Flooding damaged the building housing the Hutchins Galleries, and the Torah was rescued a second time. It was placed in climate-controlled storage in Bunn Library, in a vault with museum-quality air handling capability. It has remained there as repairs were made to the galleries. Now, the Torah will have a new, more visible home in the lobby of Bunn. But displaying such a precious object, particularly given its previous damage, is not so simple.

 

Sarah Mezzino, Lawrenceville’s Curator of Decorative Art and Design, and Jacqi Haun, the School’s Senior Archivist, in consultation with Rabbi Levy, are working with the Facilities Department to modify the original enclosure to display the Torah while continuing to preserve it. It’s a complicated process that involves getting the humidity levels just right, essentially creating a micro-climate. Prior to undertaking the project, Mezzino researched the requirements for preserving and displaying the Torah with the Curator of Jewish Art for The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, a leading center for Jewish higher education. 

 

“It’s just wonderful to have a symbol here of something that has been taken care of, cherished, and preserved for hopefully many many years, especially now that we have a special case for it,” said librarian Paula Clancy.

 

The creation of a Torah scroll is a religious act, undertaken by a specially trained scribe called a sofer. Each Torah scroll is handwritten in Biblical Hebrew on parchment made from the skin of a kosher animal, and the finished scroll is attached to wooden rollers. A Torah scroll contains 304,805 letters, and the process generally takes about 18 months. The Torah is read using a pointer called a yad, both to preserve the scroll from handling and because the text is considered sacred.

 

Most of the surviving Holocaust Torahs are housed in synagogues, Jewish schools, and other religious institutions, and many of these share a single provenance. Nearly 20 years after WWII, 1,564 Torahs removed from 153 Nazi-occupied villages in Czechoslovakia and stored in the Jewish Museum in Prague were rescued from the Communist government and taken to London’s Westminster Synagogue. The scrolls were painstakingly restored and numbered and are currently on loan to Jewish institutions worldwide, including the Center for Jewish Life at Princeton University. Lawrenceville is likely one of very few non-religious sites to possess a Holocaust Torah. 

 

“This Torah, now on display once again, is both a reminder of the past, and an invitation to reflect on our humanity including at times our inhumanity, and our responsibility as human beings to seek a just world,” Murray said. 

 

We remain grateful to the Hertzberg Family for this remarkable gift.

 

View more photos from the rededication here.