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World Jewish News
Rabbis: Ukrainian state archives should return Torahs
23.03.2009
KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) - The Ukrainian State Archives is prepared to return Torah scrolls and fragments to Jewish communities, but community rabbis say it is not enough.
All Torah scrolls and fragments must be returned to their original owners, the rabbis say.
The Central State Historical Archive in the western Ukrainian city of Lvov recently returned 14 old Torah fragments to the local Jewish community.
Mordehai Shlomo Bold, the chief rabbi of Lvov, told JTA Sunday that the fragments will be buried in accordance with Jewish law.
Unique Jewish religious objects taken from synagogues during the Soviet regime are in two Lvov museums: the Museum of the History of Religion, and the Museum of Ethnography and Crafts. There are about 1,000 Jewish religious objects in each museum, including over 420 Torah scrolls and fragments from the 15th through 20th centuries.
Some items confiscated from Lvov Jews during the Soviet regime were returned to the Jewish community in 1989. Approximately 1,000-2,000 Jews live in modern Lvov.
Most of the Torah scrolls now being used in Ukrainian synagogues were acquired by the state archives and museums through communist and Nazi looting.
Jewish communities need the thousands of Torah scrolls currently languishing in state archives, according to local rabbis, to restore and to use during services.
"Some synagogues probably don't need them, but we do need these objects on an all-Ukrainian level," Rabbi Yakov Dov Bleich, chief rabbi of Kiev, told JTA.
Bleich said that the Ukrainian Jewish community insists on the restoration of historical justice, namely the return of Torah scrolls to religious communities and organizations. Specifically, he said, the state archives must return Torah scrolls and fragments to the largest Jewish communities: Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Odessa.
"This is just a first small step and we continue to negotiate with the Ukrainian central State Archives to return all Torah scrolls and fragments to the Jewish communities in Ukraine," Bleich said.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko signed a decree in 2007 ordering the restoration of Jewish religious objects to Ukrainian Jewish communities.
Professor Aleksandr Sagan, head of the Ukrainian State Committee on Nationalities and Religions, told JTA that the objects must be used to help revitalize Jewish religious life in the country.
Ukraine is home to the third-largest Jewish community in Europe, with 200,000-250,000 Jews.
Источник: JTA
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