The Hebrew letters, tiny, meticulous, arranged in tight rows, cover layers and layers of parchment rolled tightly around one another. To 97-year-old Zecil Gravitz, these calligraphy characters, contained in the rare Torah she’s donating to the Woodstock Area Jewish Community, represent the souls lost in the Holocaust. It’s difficult to imagine that, literally speaking, the letters equal just a fraction of the 6 million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazi regime.
As they hold a formal dedication for the Torah next Saturday at Congregation Shir Shalom, members of the Woodstock-based Jewish community want to recognize that grave truth and its long shadow while also celebrating the hope embodied in the artifact.
The Torah is the fundamental text of Judaism, and the object around which Jewish communities congregate, but the Woodstock community’s new Torah has a special history. It comes from the town of Svihov, Bohemia and is one of about 1,500 scrolls recovered from villages in Bohemia and Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic. Collected by the Nazis and stored in a warehouse near Prague, the Torahs were acquired by the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London in 1964 and have been slowly making their way to Jewish communities around the world.
“This is such a gift to us. It’s such a tribute to life,” Rabbi Ilene Harkavy Haigh, who leads the Woodstock congregation, said in a video interview from New York, where she spends some of her time. “It’s saying, in spite of everything that’s happened, we, the Jewish community, will continue to live and thrive.”
Gravitz, who lived in South Pomfret and attended Shir Shalom for many years before moving to a retirement community in Massachusetts, is donating the Torah to the Woodstock Area Jewish Community in memory of her husband, Sidney, who died in 2015.
Watching World War II unfold from the safety of the United States, both Zecil and Sidney enlisted in the war efforts, Zecil as a member of the United States Naval Reserve, better known as the WAVES, and Sidney in the Army’s anti-tank corps. Arriving in Normandy just days after D-Day, Sidney was among the troops who helped liberate prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp, Haigh said. He never discussed those experiences.
Gravitz shared her story last year in an interview for the Natick Veterans Oral History. She said the value of her and her husband’s war-time service had sunk in later in life. “At the time, I didn’t consider it important. It was just a thing to do,” she said in the video interview. “Now, I find it’s very important.”
Gravitz’s donation comes with several conditions, in keeping with the Memorial Scrolls Trust’s mission of honoring the lost communities from which they originated. The Torah has been granted to Shir Shalom in trust, with the understanding that it will be returned if the Woodstock synagogue ever closes, or if a Jewish community is ever re-established in Svihov. The trust also asks all scroll holders to make a web page for their Torahs and to create an educational component centered on the artifact.
As part of that charge, a group of teenagers from Shir Shalom’s Hebrew school has begun researching the history of the Torah and of the Jewish community in Svihov, a small village in Bohemia that was home to Jewish settlers dating back to the mid 1500s. There were either 20-25 Jews or 20-25 Jewish families living in the village around the time the Nazis invaded what was then Czechoslovakia, according to Heidi Fishman, who is helping the teens with their research. In the fall of 1942, the Svihov Jews were deported to Nazi death camps, along with Jews from 152 other Czechoslovakian communities, according to materials compiled by Shir Shalom.
Through their research, the teenagers discovered that one of the Svihov Jews survived. They’ve also found pictures the Nazis took of the synagogue before they stole the Torah, and located a Torah scribe in Massachusetts who has offered to analyze the Torah’s script for clues about its history.
“I’m trying to have them do the work themselves,” said Fishman, of Norwich. “Their understanding of the history is fairly limited at this point, so I’m trying to help them pick up some pieces of it.”
Fishman is the author of Tutti’s Promise, a young adult novel based on her mother’s experiences as a young girl during the Holocaust. Fleeing from Germany to Amsterdam, Ruth Fishman eventually spent nine months in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, along with her brother, parents and one set of grandparents. They all survived. Now 84 and living in Connecticut, Ruth Fishman gives talks at local schools about her experiences.
Fishman, who co-presents at some of the events, has witnessed the influence of her story on young people and hopes the Torah research will prove meaningful in similar ways.
Haigh, too, is excited that young people are drawn to the Torah and its history and hopes the project is just the beginning of many educational programs for the Woodstock Area Jewish Community, which was founded in 1988 and has grown over the years to include about 200 regularly attending families.
“This gift is already transforming our congregation,” she said. “The scroll, and the work around it, are sort of taking on a life of their own.”
In addition to educating and inspiring their own congregation, Shir Shalom members want the Torah to have an impact on the wider community. They hope to bring it to churches, libraries and other places where they can share it with their neighbors.
Susan Feinberg, a long-time member of Shir Shalom who volunteers in a variety of capacities, said the Torah’s message is especially important in this era of hate-fueled rhetoric and violence.
“It’s just a wonderful legacy, not just for the synagogue but for the community,” Feinberg said. “It’s kind of a symbol now about what’s going on in the world. It’s very meaningful.”
The congregation’s desire to share the Torah also comes from a place of gratitude, said Haigh, recalling the way the interfaith community supported Shir Shalom last October, following the deadly attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The morning after the attack, three ministers and three members of area churches showed up at the synagogue and prayed and cried with Haigh, she said. A Friday night service that week drew more than 250 people, many of them unaffiliated with the Jewish community.
“That sense that we’re not alone is so incredible,” said Haigh, who has been serving as rabbi in Woodstock for about eight years. “We all need to stand up for each other.”
The wider community is also invited to the dedication ceremony, which will take place at 2 p.m. on Sept. 28 at Shir Shalom on Route 4 in West Woodstock. Gravitz, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will attend, as will Vermont Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman and other local officials and members of the interfaith community. The ceremony precedes Rosh Hashanah, which marks the Jewish New Year.
“As we enter the new year, it’s in a spirit of hope and unity,” Haigh said.
Sarah Earle can be reached at searle@vnews.com or 603-727-3268.