This High Holiday season, Chabad of Venice welcomed a sacred and extraordinary gift — a Holocaust Torah unlike any other.
The scroll is a mosaic of survival. Each of its parchments was salvaged from Torahs once read in synagogues across Europe before the Holocaust — torn, burned, or hidden as their communities were destroyed. Decades later, these fragments were restored and joined together, forming a single Torah once more.
Placed in the Aron Kodesh for the first time this season, the Torah immediately became a centerpiece of the holidays. During the Neilah service on Yom Kippur, 469 mitzvot were pledged by those present — each one noted on a card and placed beside the Torah. As if to say that not only do the Jewish people live on physically, but in spirit too, we remain bound up with the Torah.
Two weeks later, on Simchat Torah, the scroll was lifted from the Aron, held close to the heart, and with the help of those assembled, the Torah once again danced.
Among those in attendance was Helga Melmed. As a young girl in 1938, Helga witnessed her synagogue in Berlin burn to the ground on Kristallnacht. Now, 87 years later, she stood amongst her Jewish community once again, this time surrounded by children instead of officers, and joy instead of mourning.
Finally, after the High Holiday season drew to a close, Michael Tompakov, a Hebrew School student who had recently learned to chant his bar mitzvah portion, was given a chance to see the Torah up close. He asked if the words were the same as in a regular Torah. When told they were, he paused for a moment and asked if he could read it.
Michael Tompakov finds his bar mitzvah portion in the restored scroll.
He carefully unrolled the mantle to find his section and began to chant. The song of this Torah — last chanted before an assembly of Jews who perished in the inferno of Auschwitz and Birkenau — was once again being sung.
The Torah’s journey — from the ashes of Europe to a vibrant Jewish community in Venice — is a quiet yet powerful expression of a truth that endures through every generation: Am Yisrael Chai — the Jewish people live on.
