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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Does a Torah belong at home?
Fla. Synagogue Offers Time-Share Torah
Sep 12th, 2007 | PINECREST, Fla. -- Dinner was over by the time the party's honored guest showed up at the table. She didn't speak a word. And she left in the rabbi's arms.
The visitor to this family home was no lady. It was a torah.
Most Jews see the holy scroll only in their synagogue and have rarely held one. But one synagogue in Miami is taking the unprecedented step of allowing congregants to host Judaism's sacred text in their homes in exchange for a donation. They call it a torah time-share.
For a one-time gift of $1,800, members of Temple Israel can sponsor a section of the scroll. Each year, during the week before that section is read at Shabbat services, donors can keep the torah in their home _ an event that has prompted families to host scripture studies, parades and dinner parties.
"When it's brought into a house, it makes the house more holy," said Rabbi Mitch Chefitz, who came up with the idea. "If the torah's in your room, then you have an honored guest."
Chefitz showed up at Sandy Grossman's house this Rosh Hashanah week with the torah in a wheeled black duffel bag. After dinner, while children were dancing the "Macarena" and pounding on a bongo drum, he put it on the dining room table, and everyone's attention shifted.
Chefitz took off the torah's white fabric covering, or dress, as he called it. He sat at the head of the table and began to slowly unroll it.
"She's a she," he explains, "because she wears a dress."
As for its age, the rabbi said you shouldn't ask a lady. But she's about 160 and appears to have originated in Poland. The scroll later was bought by a couple who dedicated it to their only son, William Earnest Jacoby, who died in World War II.
The torah was in need of cleaning and repair _ to patch holes and fix lettering _ so Chefitz came up with the time-share project.
About 40 of the 52 available weekly torah time-shares have been purchased at Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue. Other members have given $18 to sponsor a single letter of the scroll, and all five books have been sponsored for $18,000.
All told, the project raised about $325,000 for the temple, far more than the restoration cost. Still, Chefitz quips, he should have thought about charging annual maintenance fees, just like real time shares.
Chefitz has been at Temple Israel for six years. Before that, he served as the rabbi of the Havurah of South Florida, which serves Jews disconnected from formal synagogue life. Because they had no actual temple, members took turns taking the torah home with them, an experience that led to his idea at Temple Israel.
Temple Israel's program is believed to be the first of its kind. Chefitz said it has since inspired a Tel Aviv temple to start its own.
Last year, Chaim LieberPerson picked the torah up from the temple, put it in the passenger seat of his car and fastened the safety belt. He said he was giddy about taking it home. As a Jewish educator, he is used to handling torahs, but this was different.
"Every time that a torah is opened, I'm like a young child again," he said. "Having it in your home is kind of like having somebody from TV or the movies or someone famous in your home."
LieberPerson and his wife hosted a "Torah Tea Party" for their two children and several dozen others. They decorated torah-shaped cookies, made T-shirts with their Hebrew names on them and paraded around the mango tree in the backyard, singing, playing instruments, and hoisting the scroll.
The family also hosted a more traditional adult study gathering, which Chefitz led. At night, the LieberPersons put the torah in a closet to protect it from two cats and two children.
Like real estate time shares, participants in the torah project can swap weeks. And some, like Randi Trazenfeld, have bought "futures" to ensure their children will have the torah in their home before their bar or bat mitzvah.
Trazenfeld remembers that as a child she'd stand on her chair in temple to just to get a glimpse of the torah on the High Holidays. It was in the distance. She wants her children to have a more intimate experience.
"I can't tell you how emotional it was," Trazenfeld said, "and we're not a religious family at all."
Because Rosh Hashanah marks the start of the Jewish calendar year, the torah was at the end of its five books when it arrived at the Grossmans' home a few days before the holiday. Chefitz, with help from those at the gathering, rolled back through Deuteronomy, Numbers, Leviticus and Exodus, to the start, in Genesis.
As the 120 feet of parchment unfurled, Chevitz gave lessons on its production and its content, discussing the painstaking lettering, the way it is spaced and the stories within. The guests were riveted.
"It suddenly gives you a relationship with something you always hear about," Grossman said.
When the torah was rolled back to the beginning, children took turns holding it, and the rabbi returned it to its bag.
"Time for cake?" he asked.
When Grossman first had the scroll in her home last year, she had a gathering for friends and family. When the guests left, her 12-year-old daughter, Bari Pasternack, ran to the torah and kissed it. She read from it, and she took it to her bedroom with her and chanted prayers.
The mother watched. All her life, Grossman said, she never truly understood the torah. But that night, it came alive.
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