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The Indiana Jones of rabbis
For scribe Rabbi Menachem Youlus, Torah restoration can be a dangerous cloak-and-dagger business.
from the May 16, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Youlus embarked on his mission more than 20 years ago. One Friday night, a car struck his father and brother-in-law as they were walking to synagogue. They weren't expected to live. The young rabbi prayed. He promised to devote the first year of his marriage to the Torah if they survived. Today the pair work alongside Youlus.
The time came to fulfill his vow. After studying in Israel, Youlus completed his training in Leningrad, Russia. Today the rabbi – who speaks Polish, Hungarian, Russian, and Yiddish, plus a dollop of Spanish – works with antiquities departments worldwide. He has rescued 523 Torahs, many of which come from places the Holocaust completely obliterated. Often a town's sole survivor is the Torah.
That's how his current project – the Nazi-damaged, 228-year-old scroll – found its way into his workshop at the Jewish Book Store of Greater Washington (D.C.). The Torah comes from Breznice, Czechoslovakia, where 200 Jews once lived. When the Third Reich thundered into town, only 30 remained. The Nazis confiscated all Jewish property and dispatched the Torahs to Prague to be displayed as relics of an extinct people. Unlike Breznice's Jews, the Torahs survived.
A generation later and a continent away, Adam and Monica Chusid, of Westport, Conn. lost their 13-month-old daughter, Rebecca, in 1994. Gripped with sorrow, the Chusids yearned to heal.
"We searched to find something that would honor her memory and link her memory with our other children," said Mr. Chusid, father of Hannah, now 16, and Rebecca's twin, Jenna, now 13.
Chusid hoped to save a Holocaust era scroll. Through the London-based Westminster Synagogue, Chusid located the Breznice scroll, which he was able to get put on permanent loan to The Conservative Synagogue in Westport. It will remain in Maryland until Youlus finishes repairing the Nazi damage. It keeps company with scores of Torahs, stacked floor to ceiling, awaiting the ministrations of the scribe.
The Torah, written in Hebrew, contains the Old Testament. For Jews the Torah transcends theology and law; it embodies Judaism's soul. For that reason there have been those from the Spanish Inquisition to Stalinist Russia who have sought its destruction.
It's a visceral feeling Youlus recalls when once, in the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad, he stood before one of the oldest known versions of the Talmud. "All I wanted to do was break the case and rescue this work from a regime not known for treating Jews very well," he says. Hussein considered Torahs talismans and ordered hundreds of Iraqi scrolls defiled. Youlus hopes to someday save these Iraqi Torahs.
According to Jewish law, damaged Torahs, unless repaired, must be buried. Thus the Westport scroll must be restored, explains Rabbi Robert Tobin of The Conservative Synagogue. "If we bury that Torah scroll we will lose the last living thing from that community," he says.
"Rabbi Youlus may be the only person who can save the scroll," says Rabbi Tobin. Some argue that preserving these scrolls intact, keeping their scars from Nazi bayonets and Jewish blood, can refute Holocaust deniers.
But for people like Chusid, "putting them in display cases is not much better than what the Nazis intended. It makes the scrolls relics."
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