“The journey of this sefer Torah was nothing less than breathtaking”
O
ne of the most heartbreaking stories we heard in Mevo Modiim came from Mrs. Zelda Brecki, who owned a 150-year-old sefer Torah that was destroyed in the flames. The sefer Torah, which had survived the Holocaust, was buried at a levayah held by students of the Ner Tamid yeshivah in the village of Chashmonaim, where she works.
“The journey of this sefer Torah was nothing less than breathtaking,” she explained. “It was written in Poland. The sofrim who fixed it in Israel told us it had a very special kesav. Around the time of the Holocaust, maybe after it, it was moved to America. From there, it came to us in Eretz Yisrael.
“Two months ago, my grandsons, who were going on a trip to the [concentration] camps in Poland took it with them, in order to read from it in the cities and towns where it’s possible it was used in the past. It’s like it went through a long circle. They brought it back to Israel, and here it perished in the flames.”
How did it come into your hands?
“According to what I’ve been told, this sefer Torah, which was of a fairly small size, was written in Poland and was read from on Mondays and Thursdays, the market days. The Jewish traders who came from out of town and who couldn’t daven in their own villages would hold a minyan and read from it. I don’t know if it was right before or right after the Holocaust that it was moved to the United States.
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