In February 2024, our congregation was contacted by Andrew Keene of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, on behalf of the Memorial Scrolls Trust which looks after the 1500+ Czech Torah scrolls saved from the Holocaust and now in communities around the world. Andrew had volunteered to help them locate some of the Trust’s scrolls which have been lost over time or misreported in their database. Andrew shared a letter from the MST archive from Rabbi Robert Samuels z”l in 1966 to the Trust, and in 1966, Har-El was the only Reform community in Jerusalem.
Har-El in honor of it’s 40th anniversary published a book of its history, and although there was no mention of a Czech Torah scroll, there was a photocopy of a clipping from Jerusalem post in March 1966 of receipt of an English (!) Torah scroll from the Westminster Progressive Synagogue, where the Memorial Scrolls Trust is located.
The chair of the trust, Jeffrey Ohrenstein, who was already on a visit to Israel, examined what we only knew to be the oldest and most fragile Torah scroll we had, and said without a doubt it was a Czech Torah!
(pictured from left to right: Jeffrey Ohrenstein, Andrew Keene, Cantor Evan Cohen, and Rabbi Sergio Berman – president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism)
Measurements and photos were taken, and upon further examination of the the records at the Trust, it was determined that this Torah scroll was number 1014, from the city Brno, and written in 1813!
For more information about the Memorial Scrolls Trust, how the Torah scrolls from Czechoslovakia survived the Holocaust, made their way to the Westminster Synagogue in England and then were distributed around the world, please visit www.mstczechscrolls.org.