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World Jewish News
Torah Scroll Preserved in War Reconstructed for Victory Day
13.05.2009
Sefer Torah, which the Jews of Starokostyantiniv shtetl managed to take out in the early days of the war, was restored in Dnepropetrovsk National Soyfer Centre. Restoration of a Torah scroll with an astonishing fate has been completed before Victory Day by specialists of the Centre under the supervision of the Chief Soyfer of Ukraine, Rabbi Ruven Morgolin. The project was funded by Dnepropetrovsk philanthropists Leonid Livshits and Alexander
Shraybman.
The scroll is over 150 years old, and it was used for prayers in Starokonstantinov until the very beginning of the war. In this small but ancient Jewish town, 50 kilometers from the city of Proskurov (now Khmelnitsky) there were two synagogues, five prayer houses, Jewish schools and charitable institutions. When the invasion of the Nazis began, the Jews were able to miraculously remove it to the city of Troitsk, in the Urals. After the war, the
scroll was brought back into the town, and people secretly prayed with it, while there was an underground minyan.
Alexander Shraybman, born in Starokonstantinov, says: "One can only admire those people who took no extra suitcase, no pillow, no blanket, but the Scroll in the evacuation. They saved it as if it were a child, carried for thousands of kilometers, hid, and protected. We do not know exactly who moved the Sefer Torah out of Starokonstantinov, but we know exactly who brought it back. His name is Shaya Mikelman."
In Starokonstantinov, a small Jewish community "Shalom" still exists, but it is already difficult to gather a minyan, to say nothing of the schools and other important matters.
The Torah scroll itself during the years of wandering has become unsuitable for the divine services, it needed expensive restoration, and the chairman of the community passed it to Alexander Shraybman for taking care and reviving it for the Jews.
First they turned to the National Soyfer Centre, where a complete diagnostics of all injuries was held, and the Chief Soyfer, Rabbi Ruven Morgolin, acknowledged the Scroll suitable for restoration. Alexander Livshits and Leonid Shraybman decided to pay for this complex process, requiring the highest level of proficiency, a thorough manual labor for a long time, and presented the Torah to
a Jewish community, which desperately needs it and which is situated near Starokonstantinov. Most likely, it will be a community of Khmelnytsky, and the Torah scroll, saved from the fire of war, will be handed over to the Jews to be treated with honor and used for collective worship again.
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